The Grader is an exclusive Open LMS feature designed to save time when grading activities in your course. At this time, it can only be used to grade forums and assignments, although the number of activities that can be graded using this method is expected to expand.

What makes it so interesting? The fact that you can grade all compatible activities pending grading on a single screen, using both direct grades and other methods (such as rubrics): you don't have to go in and grade assignment 1, then locate assignment 2, and so on. You enter the grader and see all activities pending grading at any time.

You can access it from the gear menu in the upper-right corner or from Course tools.

You'll see a screen divided into two main areas: on the left, an empty area where submissions will load. On the right, the controls for accessing grading and commenting. At the top are the controls for moving between activities and students.

Do you see the Full-screen mode button? Clicking it gives you the full screen for grading, removing the course banner from your view. To return to the normal view, simply click Exit full-screen mode.

The two drop-down menus (one with gradable assignments in the grader, and the other with student names) allow us to navigate either by selecting from the drop-down menus or by using the arrows to go to the next and previous item.

Show activities that require grading will remove from the drop-down menus those attempts (that is, users and activities) that do not need to be graded.

We will therefore choose an activity that requires grading, and it will be displayed in the right-hand area. The possible grading options for this activity will then appear on the left, depending on the activity itself and its settings—for example, whether comments are allowed, whether rubrics are used, and so on.

For activities gradable with a rubric or other advanced methods, you'll see a Grade with marking guide button, which opens the form for that method so you can add the grade there.

When you're finished, click Save grade and next to continue, or Save grade to return to the course.