QuizMagic auto-grades student responses the moment a student submits, but you stay in full control of the final result. Objective question types such as Multiple Choice, True/False, and Fill-in-the-Blanks receive instant, accurate scores automatically. Essays and Short Answer questions receive an AI-generated score based on your rubric, then surface a review flag so you can confirm or adjust before anything is visible to students.
This guide covers how to grade student responses in the Student Answer Review dialog, how to override AI scores for each question type, and how to release grades to students when you are ready.
Everything happens in one place: Smart Sharing, then your session, then the Attempts table. You do not need to leave this view to grade, override, comment, or release results.
How QuizMagic Handles Grading by Question Type
Before reviewing individual attempts, it helps to understand what the system grades automatically and what it flags for your attention.
| Question type | Grading method | Requires your review? |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple Choice | Exact match – instant, 100% accurate | Only if you want to override |
| True/False | Exact match – instant, 100% accurate | Only if you want to override |
| Fill-in-the-Blanks | Flexible matching with spelling tolerance – instant | Only if you want to override |
| Short Answer | AI evaluates conceptual match to model answer | Yes – yellow Pending Review badge |
| Essay | AI scores each rubric criterion and calculates a weighted total | Yes – yellow Pending Review badge |
How to spot attempts that need your attention
Any attempt containing an AI-graded Short Answer or Essay question displays a yellow Pending Review badge in the Attempts table. Additionally, the session header shows a running count, for example, “3 pending”, so you always know exactly how many attempts need your attention before you release grades.
How to Grade Student Responses: Step by Step
All grading, reviewing, and overriding happen inside the Student Answer Review dialog. Here is how to access it and work through an attempt.
Step 1: Open Smart Sharing and navigate to your session
From your QuizMagic dashboard, open Smart Sharing from the top navigation. Locate the session you want to grade, then click Results. The session detail view opens, showing the Attempts table with one row per student submission.
Step 2: Open a student’s attempt
Click any student row in the Attempts table. The Student Answer Review dialog opens, showing each question and the student’s answer displayed side by side.
For objective question types, the correct answer and the student’s selection appear together, so you can verify the auto-grade at a glance. For Essay questions, the AI’s suggested score and the full rubric breakdown appear alongside the student’s written response.
Step 3: Review each question and add comments
Read through each question and response. The Student Answer Review dialog works for every quiz type, such as Multiple Choice, True/False, Fill-in-the-Blanks, Short Answer, Essay, and Mixed assessments.
If you want to give the student feedback on a specific question, use the per-question comment field. These comments are private until you release grades. When you do release results, students see your comment displayed directly alongside their answer for that question.
The Release Results functionality is only useful if the student has a QuizMagic account, whether Free or Premium. Once you toggle it on, the student can see the quiz result from the Student Dashboard in his/her QuizMagic account.
Step 4: Override any score that needs adjusting (see next section for details)
Override any question where the AI’s grade does not match your judgment. The override system is described fully in the next section.
Step 5: Save the attempt
Click Save when you have finished reviewing the attempt. QuizMagic stores your overrides, recalculates the student’s final score, and marks the attempt as manually reviewed. The Pending Review badge clears from that attempt row in the table.
How to Override an AI Score
QuizMagic gives you a different override control for each question type, because the grading mechanism differs. Here is how each one works.
Overriding Multiple Choice, True/False, and Fill-in-the-Blanks
For objective question types, the override is a toggle between Correct and Incorrect. Click the toggle on any question to flip the grade. The student’s total score recalculates automatically the moment you make the change, before you even click Save.
Use this when a Fill-in-the-Blanks answer was marked incorrect because of an unexpected phrasing you did not add as an accepted alternate, or when a Multiple Choice question had a flaw that made more than one answer defensible.
Overriding Short Answer scores
For Short Answer questions, mark the student’s response as correct or incorrect using the toggle. QuizMagic preserves your override permanently on that attempt. Importantly, the AI will never undo a teacher override. If you subsequently run an AI re-grade on the session, your manual decisions are retained exactly as you set them.
Overriding Essay scores
For Essay questions, you can edit the score on any individual rubric criterion directly. The six criteria available are Relevance, Grammar and Spelling, Coherence, Depth of Analysis, Accuracy, and Originality. The overall percentage updates live as you type into each criterion field, so you see the running total before you commit to saving.
This granular control means you can agree with the AI’s assessment on four criteria and adjust only the two where you disagree, rather than replacing the entire score with a single number.
Essay tokens are not affected by overrides. Essay grading tokens are consumed only during the initial AI grading pass. Manual overrides and re-grades do not use additional tokens.
Best Practices for Faster and Fairer Grading
A few deliberate habits make your grading sessions significantly more efficient.
Sort by Lowest Score to catch harsh AI grades
After filtering, sort the remaining attempts by Lowest Score. The AI occasionally grades conservatively on Short Answer responses where a student’s wording is valid but differs significantly from the model answer. Reviewing the lowest-scoring attempts first surfaces these cases quickly.
Use per-question comments strategically
The comment field is most valuable for Short Answer and Essay questions where students benefit from understanding why they scored as they did. A comment that references the specific part of the rubric a response missed is more actionable than a general grade note. Furthermore, students see these comments when you release results, which turns the grading step into a feedback delivery mechanism without any additional effort.
Re-run AI Re-grade after editing the answer key
If you update the model answer for a Short Answer question after students have already submitted, you can run AI Re-grade Short Answers to apply the updated answer key across all attempts. Your existing manual overrides are always preserved during this process. The re-grade only updates answers you have not yet touched manually.
Spot-check before releasing
Before using the Release Grades switch to release all results at once, sort the Attempts table by Lowest Score and by Highest Score, and read one attempt from each end of the distribution. This two-minute check catches grading anomalies like a suspiciously high score or a very low score that might reflect a technical issue rather than genuine performance.
How to Release Grades to Students
By default, students do not see their score after submitting an essay quiz. This prevents confusion while AI grading is still in progress on essay questions, and it gives you time to review and override before any results are visible.
Releasing one student’s grade
Open the student’s attempt row in the Attempts table. Inside the Student Answer Review dialog, flip the Release Grade toggle. The student sees their score and your comments in the Student Dashboard in their QuizMagic account.
Releasing all grades at once
Use the Release Grades switch in the session header to release all finalized grades in the session simultaneously. Consequently, every student who checks their Student Dashboard after that point sees their full result.
Hiding a grade after release
You can toggle grade release off for any individual student at any time after releasing. This is useful when you spot an error after releasing. Hide the result, correct the override, save, and re-release. The student sees the updated score the next time they check their Student Dashboard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will the AI overwrite my manual overrides if I run a re-grade?
No. Teacher overrides are preserved permanently across every AI re-grade. When you manually correct a score, QuizMagic locks that decision and the AI never reverses it. Only you can change a manual override.
Can I change a grade after I have already released it to students?
Yes. Edit the override in the Student Answer Review dialog, click Save, and the updated score becomes visible the next time the student opens the Student Dashboard. You do not need to re-release; the updated grade is applied automatically.
Do students receive a notification when grades are released?
QuizMagic does not send an automatic email notification when you release grades. Students see their score the next time they open the Student Dashboard.
Does running a manual override use essay grading tokens?
No. Essay tokens are consumed only during the initial AI grading pass when the session is first processed. Manual overrides, re-grades of existing attempts, and any subsequent score adjustments are completely free and unlimited.
What happens to a student’s result if the session is set to Inactive after grading?
The student’s result remains accessible through the Student Dashboard even when the session is Inactive. Setting a session to Inactive only prevents new attempts from starting. It does not affect the visibility of results that have already been released.
Can I grade partial attempts from students who did not finish the quiz?
Yes. Partial attempts appear in the Attempts table, the same as completed ones. Open the attempt row and review whatever responses the student submitted. Questions the student did not reach receive a score of zero by default. You can override individual question scores, including these zero-scored items, if appropriate.
