Grading work in a large course always carried a hidden cost: not the grading itself, but the moving around. You open the list, pick a student, grade, go back to the list, look for the next one and open it again. In a course of thirty, that's sixty navigations that add nothing.
And there is a subtler cost: you lose your place on every round trip. The list reorders itself, the page resets, and you have to find where you left off all over again.
That is what changes. When grading activities, teachers can now move from one submission to the next with Previous and Next buttons, filter the list to see only what is still pending, and jump straight from the index to what needs attention. The grading work itself is exactly the same; what disappears is the back and forth. It works in the classroom's Contents section, on Activities, for teachers with grading permission.
What changes, moment by moment
Three moments, in the order the teacher experiences them.
🚩 From the index you already know what's left
In the contents list, every activity with submissions awaiting review shows a small flag with the number of pending items. What's new is that this flag is now a direct link: click it and you land on the list of those students, already filtered. The color follows whether the activity is required —red if required, blue if optional—, the same criterion the screen already used.
⚠️One detail to expect
The flag links to the filtered list on activities only. On assessments, SCORM and discussion topics it still shows the number, but it isn't a link. Seeing both behaviors side by side within the same unit is normal.
✅ In the tracking screen, only what's pending
The tracking screen lists every student, whether they submitted or not. Now a checkbox —Pending grading— narrows the list to the submissions awaiting review. You can tick and untick it whenever you like, and it stays on while you sort, search or change pages.
⏭️ While grading, you move forward without going back
This is the heart of the change. When you open a student's submission, a bar appears at the top with a counter —2 of 4— and the buttons to move along. Below it, the student's name and submission date, so you always know whose work you are reading. And within reach, a link to Pending grading with the total, in case you want to go back to the full list.
With thirty submissions to grade, you go from thirty round trips to the list to a single entry and thirty clicks on Next.
The details that make it work
Four decisions you don't see, but that explain why it works —and answer almost every question.
- It only walks through what needs grading.The buttons skip students who didn't submit and those you already graded. No empty screens.
- It respects the order you chose.If you sorted by surname, it moves by surname; if you searched for a term, it follows that criterion. And when you return to the list, you find it exactly as you left it.
- It doesn't go backwards after you grade.Once graded, that submission leaves the queue; the system remembers where you were, so Next keeps moving forward instead of sending you back to someone you already graded.
- It appears where it makes sense.The bar shows up when you come in from the activity's tracking screen, which is when there's a queue to work through. If you open one specific student, it doesn't appear.
⚠️A behavior change worth noting
Alongside this improvement we fixed something that had been around for a while: a content's tracking screen could be opened even if the content was deactivated, as long as someone had the link saved. Not anymore: the campus now warns that the content is unavailable, and you have to activate it to get in. That is the correct behavior, but if you get an "it used to open and now it doesn't", this is almost certainly it.
📌What doesn't change
It only applies to Activities.Assessments, SCORM and discussion topics have neither the pending filter nor the navigation between submissions.
It is not bulk grading.This speeds up grading one at a time; it doesn't replace it.
It doesn't change how you grade.The form, the statuses, the marks and the email notifications are the same. The only difference is how you get from one submission to the next.
Grading stops being a maze of clicks
One filter, a couple of buttons and a counter: the teacher goes in once and moves through to the last submission without losing the thread. The time that used to go into going back, searching and getting reoriented now goes where it matters —reading, giving feedback, supporting.
Still have a question, or need a hand with a specific case? Write to soporte@educativa.com and we'll help you out.
educativa Team / educativa Support Dept.