Automated grading workflows for providing personalized feedback to open-ended data science assignments

Open-ended assignments - such as lab reports and semester-long projects - provide data science and statistics students with opportunities for developing communication, critical thinking, and creativity skills. However, providing grades and formative feedback to open-ended assignments can be very time consuming and difficult to do consistently across students. In this paper, we discuss the steps of a typical grading workflow and highlight which steps can be automated in an approach that we call automated grading workflow. We illustrate how gradetools, a new R package, implements this approach within RStudio to facilitate efficient and consistent grading while providing individualized feedback. By outlining the motivations behind the development of this package and the considerations underlying its design, we hope this article will provide data science and statistics educators with ideas for improving their grading workflows, possibly developing new grading tools or considering use gradetools as their grading workflow assistant.