Their work no longer shows you the learning. So Grasp asks them.
A short viva on every submission. Each student talks through their own work while the examiner asks, listens, and asks again. You see what each one understands, with their own words as evidence, without running three hundred vivas yourself.
- Set up in an afternoon
- Your criteria, not ours
- Evidence you can check
Research Methods, second year
You pitch your study design to an ethics committee
The ethics committee has your proposal. Why is a survey of forty first-years the right design for your question?
It's quick to run, and a bigger sample would just give the same answer.
You said a bigger sample would give the same answer. How would you know that before you'd run it?
Choose your answer
Getting started
From your marking criteria to a running viva, in three steps.
- 01
Bring what you already use
Upload your marking scheme, or just describe what you want to check. The companion drafts the questions and rubric from your criteria.
- 02
Send one join link
Create a module and Grasp gives you a join link and code. Students follow it and they're in, with the assessment waiting for them.
- 03
See who's got it, and who hasn't
Each student has their own ten minute conversation. You get a module heatmap, the common gaps, and their own words as evidence.
The problem
You’re teaching with less information than you used to.
A piece of work used to be a window. You could see the reasoning, spot the misconception, and find the gap while there was still time to fix it. That’s what marking was really for.
AI is now part of how everybody writes. Work comes back polished and strangely uniform, and it tells you far less about the person who handed it in.
The signal faded
Polished, uniform work. The thinking that used to show through it doesn’t any more.
Gaps stay hidden
Misconceptions surface in the final exam, or never, long after you could have done something.
Marking tells you less
The weeks still go, but you finish the pile knowing little more about who understood it.
The reframe
You never wanted the essay. You wanted to see the understanding.
The work was only ever a proxy for someone’s thinking. So stop reading the proxy, and look at the thinking itself.
Walkthrough
How it works, start to finish.
Five steps from your marking criteria to knowing what your cohort understands. Let it play, or pick any step.
New assessment
Title
Topic
Time limit
Rubric criteria
AI companion
A viva on second-year research proposals, against the marking criteria I’ve attached. 10 minutes.
I’ve read the criteria and drafted it against them: the rationale for the question, the choice of design and sample, awareness of limitations. Have a look and change anything.
See it adapt
Every question comes from the last answer.
Pick a kind of assessment and watch a conversation play out. Notice the follow-ups: none of them are scripted.
Research Methods, second year
You pitch your study design to an ethics committee
The ethics committee has your proposal. Why is a survey of forty first-years the right design for your question?
It's quick to run, and a bigger sample would just give the same answer.
You said a bigger sample would give the same answer. How would you know that before you'd run it?
Choose your answer
The follow-up quotes the student's own words back to them.
How Grasp works
Ask. Listen. Ask again.
It’s the viva you’d hold with all three hundred of them, if only there were time. Grasp probes what they know, follows what they say, and presses gently when they’re vague.
Ask
An opening question built on your topic and scenario, pitched at the level you set.
Listen
Each answer is weighed against the criteria you set, which the student never sees.
Ask again
The follow-up is built from what they just said, one focused question at a time, until the clock runs out.
Your assessment, your criteria
Built from what you already have.
Your module’s learning outcomes, your marking criteria and grade descriptors, an assignment brief. Grasp drafts an assessment that follows those standards, not ours. You edit every word, and nothing is published until you say so.
From a document
Learning outcomes, marking criteria, assignment briefs. PDF, Word or text.
From a conversation
Describe what you want to assess, and refine it together.
From scratch
Write the topic, scenario and rubric yourself.
New assessment
Title
Topic
Time limit
Rubric criteria
AI companion
A viva on second-year research proposals, against the marking criteria I’ve attached. 10 minutes.
I’ve read the criteria and drafted it against them: the rationale for the question, the choice of design and sample, awareness of limitations. Have a look and change anything.
Your marking document in. Your assessment out, editable and yours.
PSY2041 · Research Methods
Example module
| Student | Rationale | Design | Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amara | Mastery | Developing | Secure |
| Ben | Secure | Emerging | Developing |
| Chloe | Secure | Developing | Mastery |
| Dev | Developing | Emerging | Developing |
| Ellie | Mastery | Secure | Secure |
| Farhan | Secure | Developing | Secure |
Common gap: Design
Most of the cohort justified their sample size by instinct rather than a power analysis. Worth revisiting in next week’s seminar.
What you get back
Know what to revisit before the exam.
Who’s secure, who isn’t, and the gap most of the cohort shares. Every band comes with the student’s own words behind it, and the full transcript is one click away.
A grade tells you the work was good. This tells you what the student can do next.
Why you can trust it
The same rigour, every student, every time.
A judgement is only useful if you’d have made the same one. Grasp shows its working, so you can check it, disagree with it, and trust it.
- Adaptive
- Follows each student’s reasoning wherever it goes, instead of asking everyone the same thing.
- Consistent
- Every student meets the same standard, judged against your rubric, not how tired the marker was.
- Live
- Thinking as it happens, in their own words: the reasoning, not the redraft.
- Evidenced
- Every band quotes the student back, and the full transcript is there to read.
Questions academics ask
The short answers.
Find out what your students actually understand.
Start with one module and one assignment. Ten minutes of each student's time, and none of your evenings.
Free to trial · About ten minutes per student