Assessing master’s theses is a critical task in higher education. Even with detailed assessment rubrics, lecturers often have little insight into how their grading compares to that of colleagues or across programs. This lack of transparency can lead to uncertainty and inconsistencies in assessment.
The UpGrade tool is an interactive visual analytics dashboard aimed at addressing this challenge. The dashboard can be applied to any anonymised dataset of master’s theses, including variables such as study program, assessors, final grades, rubric scores, and open comments. To help lecturers reflect on their grading practices, UpGrade visualises grade distributions and rubric scores, and applies topic modelling on open feedback. To ensure transparency, fairness, and consistency in thesis assessment at a higher level, future extensions targeting programme directors could also visualise trends over time, and differences between programs and assessors.
