CoGrader

Pros: CoGrader allows me to give my students almost instant feedback on their writing samples. Before using CoGrader, it would take me two to three weeks to return writing assignments with usable feedback. Now, I tell CoGrader what to assess on particular writing assessments, and I have feedback that my students can use within minutes. CoGrader has allowed me to be able to give my students multiple writing assignments with usable feedback; whereas before, I only could give just a couple of writing assignments in an 18-week class.

Cons: I need to be able to assess more than one class at the same time on the same assessment. It is very time consuming to setup the same writing task with the same expectations and texts for multiple classes all individually.

Overall: I can give next-day feedback to students while the topic and expectations are still fresh in their minds. We can move on to other writing skills almost instantly.

Pros: As a bilingual teacher, I like that I can link student work to the right rubric easily. It is very bilingual-friendly and supports multiple languages, so I can give clear, consistent feedback in both languages and help my students understand what to improve.

Cons: New features are added often, so it takes time to get familiar with them and adjust. The price is understandable, but it is still a bit expensive for teachers.

Overall: Overall, CoGrader has been a big help for my bilingual class. It makes grading faster and more consistent, and linking work to a suitable rubric helps my students see exactly what they did well and what to work on next. I would recommend it to other bilingual teachers.

Pros: Absolutely love the options CoGrader gives to send timely and useful feedback to my students. I have been using for 2 years now and it has cut down my grading time significantly. They even love reading their feedback and setting goals from it. The reports are amazing to get a quick snapshot of where my students are at collectively.

Cons: Nothing, the constant improvements are great! They have made so many teacher fueled improvements over the two years and are constantly open to feedback from educators on what they need most.

Overall: Fantastic! I plan to keep using this and highly recommend it to every educator I know! One of the top tools out there!

Pros: I am very pleased with CoGrader. It is a very effective and effecient essay/writing grading and feedback tool. There a many positive features such as rubric-based grading. Teachers may utilize their rubrics or utilize a library of pre-created rubrics. I also appreciate not only the ease of grading but the actionable feedback . The feedback that the students receive promotes writing improvment not just a final grade. Additional effective features include plagerism and AI detection. Finally, the integration with Canvas LMS fits our district's instructional technology infrastructure.

Cons: LMS integration at times needs extra attention. Oftentimes, additional CoGrader support is needed for teachers to access and connect Canvas and CoGrader.

Overall: My overall experience with CoGrader is very positive. Beyond the tool, CoGrader support and training has been exceptional. CoGrader is responsive to our needs and wonderful to work with.

Pros: I love how many customizations can be made - you can adjust rigor level of grading, the style of feedback students receive (e.g. formal, friendly, etc.), the type of rubric being assessed, the format of feedback, and more. It's also a huge time-saver for grading massive amounts of essays. I also like that teachers can customize and adjust feedback after it's been graded. Co-grader also gives very detailed feedback, so it's super useful for the revision and peer review process.

Cons: The only thing I didn't like is that the feedback is sometimes inconsistent. For example, I found that if I uploaded a class of essays they would be graded one way. Then if I were to upload the exact same essay again, it sometimes received a different grade. This feature made me nervous, because it made me question the consistency of the grades being assigned. However, I worked around this by just double checking every grade before finalizing, which I think teachers should be doing anyway.

Overall: Overall, this resources doesn't replace grading essays but it significantly expedites the process. It's a very worthwhile education tool!

Pros: I like that it provides both positive & corrective feedback including examples from my student's work. I often struggle with this as I have so many students' papers to grade, that I only focus on the corrective feedback.

Cons: I wish I could upload an exemplar so it knows exactly what I'm looking for. I also wish that it noticed highlighting. I have students highlight certain things within their writing (like compound/complex sentences), and I wish it saw that highlighted material. I often am correcting feedback in regards to these things, and can't use the "apply to all students" feature, since I have to see if the highlighting is there first before I can confirm it's actually been done.

Overall: My students like reading all of the feedback, and I appreciate that it puts their work side-by-side with the feedback/grade. I find this to be way more beneficial than having them type in Google Classroom, and giving them a hand-graded rubric, since they never actually look at their work again. This has also saved me time while grading, as I just have to adjust the feedback as necessary. However, I do wish there were some other features (uploading exemplars, identifying highlighted material).

Pros: I love the ability to fine-tune feedback. I love the rubric creator or the ability to upload my own.

Cons: Nothing. There is nothing I do not like about this product.

Overall: A fantastic product with great training features. I love that you can become an expert quickly. It is intuitive to use and makes grading much easier.

Pros: I truly love everything about CoGrader. So much so that my team and I pushed our grade levels, schools, and district to begin using it. It truly has been a way to help streamline the grading process, help with understanding the STAAR writing expectations, has taken out the individual, small group, and whole group reteaching process.... I can't say enough great things about it! What I love even more is that they are never "done" helping you. I've had just as much communication and help AFTER our district purchased it, as I did before they purchased it. Hands-down the best writing/grading program we have used and if my district ever foregoes the district plan, I will continue paying for the individual plan myself.

Cons: I don't actually have any cons at this time. Pretty much everything that I have needed, wanted, or suggested, they either already had in place or found a way to get it done!

Overall: AMAZING! I would recommend this to ALL teachers, regardless of grade, curriculum, subject, or testing state standards.