Use Smart Clusters to Grade your Assignments

Goodnotes Education has many ways to grade your Student's Assignments quickly, and one of these is Smart Clusters. Smart Clusters use AI to read and evaluate all Student's answers and group them based on either:

• Similarity to a Model Answer you have provided
• Similarity to each other

Where can I find Smart Clusters?

To start grading using Smart Clusters, make sure you are in Teach Mode and have set your Smart View to View by Question.

• Press the blue Smart Clusters button on the top left of the toolbar
• Choose either:
  • Compare to Model Answer
  • By Similarity

Note: Only answers written in defined Answer Zones will be included in Smart Clusters.

Compare to Model answer

Compare to Model Answer will group Students by how closely their answer matches a Model Answer. 

You can define a Model Answer either through Whiteboard View (e.g. your own worked example of a question) or by selecting one Student's answer to match other answers to.

Goodnotes will then analyse all Student answers and group them by similarity to the Model Answer.

To access and set your Model Answer:

1. Tap on Smart Clusters while in View by Question
2. Choose Compare to Model Answer
3. Select Whiteboard or Student Answer in the Settings drop-down menu. 

Set a Student Answer as a Model Answer

To select a Student Answer, make sure Student is set in the Settings menu in Smart Clusters as above, you will then see a new drop-down list appear. Tapping on this will bring up a list of your Students. 

Select a Student and then tap Apply. 

Set your own Model Answer through Whiteboard 

To cluster answers based on similarity to your own prewritten answer, Goodnotes uses the Whiteboard. Before using this feature, you will need to set an answer in Whiteboard:

1. If in View by Page:
   1. Navigate to the Page or Assignment containing the questions you are grading
   2. Use the Student Navigator at the bottom of the screen to change from Feedback to Whiteboard.
2. If in View by Question:
   1. Navigate to the question you are trying to grade
   2. Use the Student Navigator at the bottom of the screen to change modes from Feedback to Whiteboard.
3. When using the Whiteboard function, use your Apple Pencil to write out an answer to the question that you want the Student's answers to be marked to. 

This tool will group students by no match, close match and partial match, however Smart Clusters can be manually customized and assigned for greater scope of questions.

• Press the Add Group button in the toolbar to customize grading groups.

The View by Question interface will display the Cluster Names, Students and points allocated in the blue box, efficiently creating a synopsis of class performance with the power of AI.

As our Compare to Model Answer feature uses Generative AI to analyse and group Student answers, it may occasionally provide incorrect results. Certain student answers may not be properly recognised and analysed by the model. Teachers should also verify the results of Compare to Model Answer and make necessary adjustments.

Group by Similarity

Goodnotes can also group all your Student's Answers by their similarity to each other. This is useful for multiple choice questions where you would be able to see all Students who selected a particular answer altogether and get a quick overview of the class's understanding of the question. 

To group by similarity: 

1. Make sure you are in Teach Mode and change Smart View to by Question
2. Navigate to the question you are trying to grade
3. Use the Student Navigator at the bottom of the screen to change modes from Whiteboard to Feedback.
4. Press on the blue Smart Clusters button on the top left of the toolbar
5. Choose Similar Answers
6. Hit Apply