If the start of the school year brought more writing assignments, EssayGrader version 4.1 brings the tools to grade them with less friction and more consistency.
This release focuses on something teachers value enormously: a smoother, clearer, more predictable grading workflow.
From smarter rubrics to improved onboarding and a cleaner interface, EssayGrader 4.1 is all about helping you move from setup to grading with fewer clicks and fewer questions.
Smarter Rubrics and More Accurate Scoring
Rubrics play a central role in how teachers communicate expectations. In EssayGrader 4.1, we strengthened how the platform supports them.
📊 Smarter Words-Based Scoring
AI scoring is now more accurate for word-based rubrics. The system passes the essay's word count directly into the AI scoring prompt, allowing more nuanced interpretations of criteria that depend on essay length.
✅ Rubric validation that isn't confusing
The rubric creation process is now clearer and harder to misuse. You’ll see improved validation that prevents accidental errors (like criteria with duplicate scoring). The updated rubric wizard also helps you choose your next step with confidence.
👏 Start grading right from the Rubrics library is back!
This was a version 3.0 feature that has been restored with version 4.1. It's a small change that saves a surprising amount of time.
Together, these rubric-based improvements help ensure that your grading feels consistent and reliable from one essay to the next.
🐣 A Better Start for New Teachers
Teachers new to the platform will notice a more helpful beginning:
- A short two-question onboarding quiz helps us get to know our teachers better so that future features reflect our actual user base.
- Wording, layout, and navigation around onboarding screens have been cleaned up for clarity and a guided pop-up tour provides explanation and tips as you move around the site.
Even experienced users benefit from the new layout — the path from first click to first graded essay is smoother than ever.
🇨🇦 O Canada! Canadian English Support
Teachers working in Canadian classrooms now have fully supported Canadian English within EssayGrader. This includes spelling conventions and region-appropriate language in AI feedback. Ensuring your feedback feels right at home, eh?
🧭 Improved Navigation & Workflow
EssayGrader 4.1 introduces several meaningful upgrades to the parts of EssayGrader you use most often:
- Word count tag added directly to essay view.
- Better grammar report control, including the ability to remove individual entries.
- More accurate and predictable filters across the Essay Dashboard.
- Improved scrolling in Grading View so long instructions are always accessible.
- Cleaner folder navigation and smarter redirects when folders are removed.
These may look small on paper, but collectively they create a more confident, stable grading experience.
📥 LMS Import That Works the Way You Expect
The LMS import flow has been enhanced to automatically fetch source materials from your LMS, allowing you to modify or remove them before importing. This small quality-of-life feature reduces friction in multi-class or multi-assignment environments and saves you the time of having to reproduce the LMS material in EssayGrader.
🧼 A Cleaner, More Polished Interface
Across EssayGrader 4.1, you’ll notice a number of visual and behavioral improvements:
- A cleaner header with a global notification bar
- Sidebar popovers that make class/assignment context clearer
- Fixed layout jumps and scrolling issues
- A more polished Folders Wizard with warnings before closing
These refinements make EssayGrader 4.1 feel more professional, predictable, and teacher-friendly.
A Foundation for What Comes Next
EssayGrader 4.1 is a foundational release. It strengthens the parts of the platform that teachers use every day, lays the groundwork for more consistent scoring across rubric types, and cleans up areas of the interface that needed smoothing.
If you haven’t explored these updates yet, try creating or uploading a rubric or revisiting an Essay Dashboard— you’ll notice the difference right away.
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