Custom grading schemes in Microsoft Teams Assignments give you the freedom and flexibility to choose your own grading system, to match your school’s standardised way of marking.
In this guide, we walk you through how to create a custom grading scheme within Teams, how to apply grading schemes to assignments, and then how to grade student work using your new system.
What is a grading scheme in Teams?
By default, Microsoft Teams Assignments are assigned points. But, you can also use a custom grading scheme and mark your students’ assignments using letters (A, B, C, D etc) or even emojis!
How to create a new Grading Scheme in Teams Assignments
It’s super easy to create a custom grading scheme for your Microsoft Teams Assignments.
Here are the steps:
- Go to Assignments and tap the Settings gear (top right).
- Scroll to Grading Schemes.
- Tap Add Scheme.
- Set up your new grading system:
- Name your scheme (e.g. Scheme1)
- Choose whether to show or hide points
- Set your grade names (e.g. A, B, C, D)
- Add new levels by selecting Add level
- Set the percentage ranges for each grade (e.g. 90-100% = A)
- Optional: Check Set as default to have this grading scheme be the automatic scheme for all your assignments.
- Hit Save.
Note: You can set up multiple schemes for your different types of assignments.
How to apply a custom grading scheme to a Teams Assignment
When setting up a new assignment:
1. Under Points, use the dropdown menu to select your custom grading scheme.
2. Assign the work as normal.
Using emojis instead of grades
For non-assessed work, or for students in lower years, you could even replace grading letters with emojis (like 😀👍⭐).
It’s a lot more fun and visual – great for getting students to focus on positive achievements rather than specific numbers or grades.
Grading student work using a custom grading scheme
Once set up, it’s easy to use your custom grading schemes – just as you would a regular assignment with the default points system.
- Open the assignment
- Pick a grade from the dropdown menu
- Or type in a percentage to automatically calculate the grade.
- Add feedback
- Tap Return to send graded work back to students.
Using custom grading schemes with rubrics
Rubrics give students detailed feedback on different assessment criteria.
You can use your custom grading schemes with rubrics in Microsoft Teams, automatically converting your total rubric score to a meaningful grade (like A, B, C or D) without calculating it manually.
Custom grading schemes are great for simplifying marking, matching Teams with your school grade systems, giving students clearer feedback, making grading more flexible and improving motivation. Will you give this feature a go?
Cloud Design Box helps schools and trusts drive success and improve learning with a feature-rich platform dedicated to achieving more with Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Teams. Get support from one of our Microsoft Education experts today.
