Frequently Asked Questions

No, we recommend to use a flatbed office scanner. Scanning with a phone causes too many errors during processing and will provide a lot of inaccurate results compared to using a traditional scanner.

Once you’ve downloaded the template, simply print the template onto a standard piece of A4-sized paper, and give it to your students to write on.

Handwritten essays should be scanned completely on a flatbed scanner and uploaded as a PDF file. The scanned PDF should in A4 size, in portrait orientation, and the essay should be clear, flat, straight, and with no content cut off.

When writing on the handwritten essay template, students should be sure to write according to the following rules:

• Essay text should be written with a black or blue pen.
• Essay text should be written clearly so that it is easy to read.
• Essay text should not be written beyond the header and the footer (the two thick black lines on the top and bottom of the template). Pregrade will not read text beyond these two lines.
• Essay text should all be written on the lines. Pregrade will not read text in the margins.
• Editing symbols like lines or arrows should not be used, as Pregrade cannot recognize or interpret them.
• Unnecessary words should either be completely crossed out or completely covered with correction tape or correction fluid, so that no part of the original letters can be seen. Otherwise, Pregrade may have trouble parsing the words correctly.

No. PDF files converted from image files are different from directly scanned PDF files. Do not convert PDFs from camera images or screenshots. Do not insert images of essays into Microsoft Word Document files and export it, Pregrade will not able to recognize that either. Handwritten essays must be done on our paper template and scanned into a PDF file directly.

No. Simply type plain text onto the document, and Pregrade will be able to read it easily. Note that Pregrade will read everything, including names and dates written by the student at the top of the document.

Typed essays should be uploaded in PDF or Microsoft Word DOCX format.

A rubric explains what criteria should be used to assess an essay. For Pregrade, the rubric is what instructs the AI model how to grade your essays. The model will grade based on the criteria you give it. This means that you can be sure that the essays are only being evaluated based on the criteria you provide. The more details and specifics you include in the rubric, the richer and more nuanced will be the scores and comments the model can produce.

We strongly recommend uploading DOCX rubric files. This is because Pregrade can provide more accurate grading and a summary document. You can also upload a PDF file, however it will not be as accurate.

The rubric should consist of a single table.

• Each row is one of the criteria that the essay should be graded on (e.g. style). The heading (i.e. the first column) should be the name of the criteria, as you’d like to see it appear on the grading summary. Do not include other information like weights in the name. Weights should go in their own column.
• Each column represents a scoring level. The heading of the column should be a single, numerical score (1, not “1 point” or “1/3”). You can, if you want, include weights for the different criteria in their own column, with the heading “Weights.”
• Each cell should provide a description of what an essay should do to deserve that score and on that component. Be as specific as possible.

You can also invert the orientation, putting criteria in the columns and scoring levels in the rows. You just need to select the correct option when you upload the rubric.

You can download our rubric template here. Only include 1 table for your rubric. In each description level write clear and literal directions. If your rubric expands onto multiple pages that is fine.

Yes, as long as you edit it to fit the format described above.

With Pregrade, you can be sure that essays will only be graded based on the criteria provided in the rubric, but by the same token, Pregrade can only assess essays based on the information provided in the rubric. So, the more detailed and specific you can be in the rubric, the more Pregrade will be able to provide grades that match your expectations.

Here are a few best practices:

1. Try to make each of the criteria assess only one aspect of the essay. For example, rather than a single “organzation and argumentation” row in the rubric, try splitting it into separate rows for “organization” and “argumentation.” This will allow Pregrade to assess each aspect of the essay separately, giving a wider range of scores.
2. Include enough scoring levels to capture the full range of student performance. The top level should describe an exceptional essay that very few students should achieve, and the bottom level should represent a floor that you expect the vast majority of students to surpass. Then, you need enough levels in the middle to distinguish among the rest of the essays.
3. The more specific you can make the criteria for the assignment, the better. The rubric used for Pregrade does not need to be exactly the same as the rubric provided the students. For Pregrade, you can elaborate beyond what would be helpful for students and can include specifics that would provide too many hints for students. Think of it as providing additional notes on the rubric as you would provide instructions for a teaching assistant.

No, Pregrade will assign a specific score based on the level it assesses the essay to fit, for each of the criteria you provide. In your rubric, you need to explicitly describe as many different levels as you want the scores to use.

No, Pregrade can assign any numerical scores you provide. They do not need to be whole numbers, as long as they are written as decimals. The steps between the levels also do not need to be consistent: the levels 0, 50, 60, 80, 100 would work fine.

No, Pregrade will not be able to recognise and understand it. This may cause errors.

No. Pregrade will not recognize or understand pictures, graphs, and pictures of essays.

No, we recommend using a flatbed office scanner. Scanning with a phone cause too many errors during processing and will provide a lot of inaccurate results compared to using a traditional scanner.

The maximum character count per essay is around 19,000 characters with spaces included. This is between 2,710 words and 4,750 words. If an essay exceeds the total character count, there will be an “Exceeded word limit” error. Please note that the word count includes things such as the title, name, etc.

The maximum page limit per essay is 10 pages.

You can upload up to 50 files in one batch.

If you have stable and good internet connection, each essay should take no longer than one minute to grade. However, processing may take slightly longer if your internet connection is slow or unstable. Pregrade will also take more time if there is a large number of essays, or if there are a lot of words per essay. You will be notified by email when your batch has completed processing.

Pregrade cannot correctly read essays if the pages are in the wrong order. Students can write page numbers on the footer, but Pregrade would not be able to read it. Page numbers would be for the teacher’s reference.

Yes! Pregrade outputs the graded documents in Microsoft Word Document format so you can make final changes and adjustments to the grade or comments Pregrade has suggested. We always encourage Educators to review and finalise the grading.

An essay folder will be empty if Pregrade is unable to read the essay file. Pregrade will denote these folders with the word “Error”. Pregrade will also create a file containing an error message detailing what the error was.

If the essay was not written or scanned properly, Pregrade may not be able to scan it correctly. Please make sure that the essay is written on Pregrade’s handwritten essay template, that the text in the essay is written according to the requirements listed above in the “Handwritten Essays” section; and that the uploaded PDF file is clear, straight, in A4 size, in portrait orientation, and directly scanned from a flatbed office scanner.

Once your essays are processed, a Download button will become available. Click on it to download a ZIP file onto your device, which contains the graded essays and marked content. We recommend you open the DOC files with Microsoft Word Document. Other software may not display correctly.

The graded ZIP file will contain:

• A folder for each essay file. Inside each folder there is the original essay, a grading document, and depending on the grading type selected there may be a markup document.
• A document of the summary of the grades.
• A document of the statistical summary of the batch.
• A text file of the grading type information.
• The original submitted rubric

Teacher accounts are free and have 50 credits by default, when you run out of credits you can choose to refer your other teacher friends to get extra 20 credits when the referral is successful. There is no option to purchase more credits on a teacher account. School accounts can get more credits through subscription packages, you can refer your school in the menu “Refer your school” button.

All personal information and uploaded content on Pregrade is protected by secure encryption and it is access limited. Only authorized and properly trained staff are able to access these data for site maintenance or customer service.

All uploaded content including essays remain the intellectual property of the student, teacher, or institution, and they retain copyright.

Pregrade uses AI to provide an essay grading service.

We do not use your information or the uploaded essays to train or improve our AI models or third party products or services. We do not sell your data and documents to outside vendors or third party products or services.

We host our services and data on the cloud, using Amazon Web Services. AWS is widely used by web applications in education such as LMS’ like Canvas and Blackboard. Using AWS, we have complete control over who has access to our servers and data, and all data is encrypted using keys we control both in storage and transmission. This means that even AWS itself cannot read our data.