Grader FAQ

Nudge Learn, written NudgeLearn as one word, is an AI grading assistant for teachers at nudgelearn.app. Snap a photo of finished student work and it comes back marked, with the worked solution and the reason behind every mistake; essays are scored against your rubric with feedback on every criterion. You keep the last word on every grade, and it is free to try.

Ten reasons, and there are probably a few more:

1. Hours back every week.A class set goes up in one pass and comes back marked while you do something else. Scan the stack as one PDF, say how many pages each student’s paper runs, and it splits into individual papers automatically.
2. It teaches, not just scores. Every missed problem gets the worked solution and the reason it went wrong, so the paper you hand back is worth reading. Each student also gets written feedback on the assignment as a whole, not a bare number.
3. You keep the last word on every mark. Flip any grade in Review, rewrite any comment, and nothing reaches a student, a parent or your gradebook until you press send. Anything it cannot read confidently is flagged and held out of the score for you to rule on.
4. Accuracy. Frontier reasoning models, tested against olympiad-level math exams and AP-level essays. It works each problem out itself instead of pattern-matching, so an unusual route still marks right and any equivalent form counts (½, 0.5, 50%, units or not).
5. It reads handwriting. Marks land right next to the written answer on the student’s own page, like your red pen. Angled shots auto-rotate; flat, even light is all it asks for.
6. Upload however you want. Snap a photo on your phone, scan a class set, or send Word and PDF files. Essays also take plain text and a Google Docs link, one file per student.
7. Most subjects. Multiple-choice and standardized answer sheets, open-ended math through calculus, physics and chemistry, grammar, vocabulary and spelling, world languages, and full-length essays. A single page can mix formats.
8. Essays against your own rubric. Or start from a state or Common Core standard and edit the criteria, points and level wording. Each essay comes back scored on every criterion, with feedback per criterion and notes pinned to specific sentences.
9. Full class roster. Tag each paper to a student, or grade into an assignment and it files itself. Scores collect per student as you go, with per-class averages, score bands and trends over time.
10. Export in one click. Graded worksheets go out by email to the student, and any filtered set of grades exports as CSV into the gradebook you already use.

Most of them. Multiple choice and standardized-format answer sheets, open-ended math through calculus, physics and chemistry, grammar, vocabulary and spelling, world languages, and full-length rubric-scored essays.

If yours is not on it, try it on a few papers and tell us how it went. Subjects get added on teacher request.

Homework, warm-ups and exit tickets, quizzes, unit tests and exams, and essays. Multiple choice, short answer and fully worked solutions are all handled the same way, and a single page can mix them. You can grade loose sheets with no setup at all, or file them under a class and an assignment so the scores collect per student as you go.

A sheet is marked in seconds, and how long depends on what is on it: a page of short answers goes faster than a page of multi-step working. The first paper of a batch is usually the slowest; the rest of the stack follows faster.

You do not have to sit and watch it. The grading runs on our side, so you can lock your phone, switch tabs, or leave and come back later: finished papers are waiting for you in Review. The one thing to avoid is closing or refreshing the tab with pages you captured but never submitted, because those have not reached us yet (the browser warns you before you do).

On essays we have measured it: Texas publishes real student essays with the scores its own examiners gave them, and we graded all 78. Nine in ten came back within one point of the examiner. The full numbers and method are here. On math it works each problem out itself rather than pattern-matching an answer, and accepts any equivalent form.

It is not infallible, and we would rather say so here than have you find out on a stack of 30. Messy handwriting on worksheets is where it slips most: a 4 that reads as a 9, a fraction bar lost in a crease, work crammed sideways into a margin. Two things protect you: anything it cannot read confidently is flagged amber and left out of the score until you rule on it, and every mark is yours to overturn in Review with one tap.

Whatever you already have. On a phone, tap Take a photo; on a computer, choose a file. Phone photos, doc-cam captures and flatbed scans all work, and so does a PDF: scan a class stack as one PDF and it splits into each student’s paper automatically. Essays also accept Word documents, plain text and a Google Docs link, where each file is one student.

Angled shots auto-rotate, so the only thing worth controlling is the light. Flat, evenly lit and in focus does more for accuracy than anything else you can do: shadows across the page and creases through the working are what cause misreads.

Yes. Essays have their own grader, opened from the same place you grade worksheets. Upload a whole class at once (each file is one student: photos, PDFs, Word docs, plain text, or a Google Docs link), confirm the writing prompt, pick a rubric, and grade the batch in one pass. Handwritten and typed both work.

Each essay comes back with a score on every rubric criterion and the level it matched, feedback per criterion, an overall summary, strengths and next steps, and inline notes pinned to the exact sentences they refer to, shown in the margin beside the writing, like comments in a document.

Three ways. Pick a built-in standard (state and Common Core writing rubrics: argumentative, informative, narrative), start from one and edit its criteria, points and level wording, or build your own from scratch. Rubrics you make are saved in your rubric library and appear in the picker every time you grade.

Attaching a rubric to an assignment copies it, so editing your library later never changes a grade you already gave.

Worksheets: one page = one item.A three-page worksheet counts three. Scan a class stack as a single PDF and every page still counts as one item, whether it stands alone or groups with other pages into one student’s paper: 25 pages count 25 either way.

Essays: the page count, or one item per 500 words, whichever is greater.500 words is what a typed page actually holds (12pt, single-spaced, 1″ margins), so “one item = one page” stays literally true rather than an analogy. Photographed and PDF essays are governed by their page count; the word rule only decides typed submissions (.docx, .txt, Google Doc), where there are no pages to count. A 1,200-word typed essay counts 3; a four-page handwritten one counts 4.

Essays are not flat-rate for two reasons: every page image costs the same to read however little is written on it, and the feedback written back costs several times more than what goes in. Charging the greater of the two stops a 2,500-word paper from costing the same as a half-filled page.

No. The grader solves each problem on its own. But a key makes it more accurate and faster, so it is the first thing we would set up: create the assignment, give it one blank, unfilled copy of the worksheet, and check the key it builds. Every student’s paper is then marked against that fixed key instead of the answer being re-derived from handwriting. For essays the equivalent is saving the writing prompt and rubric on the assignment first.

Yes. Tag a paper to a student on your roster and email it to them: the marked-up page, the score, the summary, and on essays what they did well and what to work on next, plus any note you type on the way out. Emailing results is a Pro feature.

Nothing is ever sent on its own. An email leaves only when you press send, after you have read the grade, which is why the send button sits above the feedback rather than under it. If you would rather hand results back yourself, export any filtered set of grades as CSV instead.

Yes. Graded papers are tied to your account and never shared. See our privacy policy for details.