Four weeks from a blank account to a graded quiz
This is the operational version of back-to-school setup: what to do, in what order, and which decisions are genuinely annoying to change once you have printed a stack of sheets. About 90 minutes of your time, spread across four short sessions.
Pick your track
The work is the same. What changes is how much of it depends on other people.
Solo teacher
About 90 minutes total
You control your own classes and your own gradebook. Skip anything that mentions IT — Google Classroom and Canvas Free for Teachers install without admin involvement.
Weeks 4, 2, and 1 below. Skip week 3.
School or district lead
About 90 minutes, plus IT lead time
You are standing this up for other teachers. The long pole is always the LTI registration and rostering approval — start those first and build templates while you wait.
All four weeks, in order. Week 3 is the one that slips.
The four-week runway
Front-loaded on purpose. The decisions come first because they are the expensive ones to reverse.
4 weeks out · 30 min
Make the decisions that are annoying to undo
- Create your free account — 100 scans included, no credit card
- Decide where rosters come from: Clever, your LMS, or a one-time student import
- Pick the standards authority you tag against if you do standards-based grading
- Set your answer sheet language, if it is not English
- Choose whether test versions are labeled A-E or 1-5 — set this before you print anything
3 weeks out · 15 min of your time
Get IT moving, then stop waiting on them
- Institutional Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, and Moodle need a one-time LTI 1.3 tool registration by an admin
- Clever SSO and rostering needs district approval — request it the same day
- Google Classroom and Canvas Free for Teachers you can install yourself, right now
- Send the request, then move to week 2 — nothing below depends on IT finishing
2 weeks out · 45 min
Build the template library you will reuse all year
- Build one template for your most common quiz shape — usually 20-30 multiple choice
- Add a second template for your unit test shape if it differs meaningfully
- Tag questions to standards now; retagging a whole bank in October is miserable
- Set up a performance band if you report proficiency levels rather than percentages
- Build one rubric if you grade written responses against criteria
1 week out · 20 min
Dry run the whole loop yourself
- Print one sheet from your template
- Fill it in by hand as if you were a student — include one deliberately messy bubble
- Scan it with your phone
- Confirm the score appears in PaperScorer and, if linked, in your LMS gradebook
Decisions worth making before you print
None of these are hard. They are just much cheaper to get right in August than in October.
Where rosters come from
Clever, an LMS roster sync, or a manual student import. Pick one source and stay with it — students imported twice from two sources become two students.
Answer sheet language
Sheets print in 13 languages, including Spanish, Vietnamese, Filipino, Brazilian Portuguese, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The assessment, scanning, and grade sync are identical in every language.
Version labeling
Versions are labeled A-E or 1-5 based on your preference. Decide before your first print run so your sheets stay consistent across the year.
Standards and tags
Tag questions to Common Core standards or your own custom tags. Tagging as you build costs seconds per question; retrofitting a question bank costs an afternoon.
Performance bands
Map raw scores to labeled, color-coded proficiency levels. Worth setting up now if your school reports in bands rather than percentages.
Rubrics for written responses
Basic rubrics score a written response on one scale; advanced rubrics score against multiple criteria. Build the rubric before the first essay, not during grading.
Blind grading
Student names can be hidden on printed sheets if your department grades written work anonymously. Easier to turn on before the first print run than to retrofit.
Save multi-version for the tests that need it
You can generate up to five versions of any assessment, each with question order and answer options shuffled. It is the right call for unit tests, benchmarks, and finals — and overkill for a Friday exit ticket.
- The version prints into the bubble grid and is detected at scan time
- Every version scores against the same source assessment — no second answer key
- Item analysis and standards reporting stay in the original question order
- You can add versions to an existing assessment later, so this is not an August decision
Pick a default way to scan
All three work at any time. Choosing a default now means you are not deciding on quiz day.
Phone
The free iOS and Android app. Best default for a single class set — scan as you collect.
Document scanner
Any flatbed or sheet-fed scanner. Best for stacks of 30+ where you want one pass.
Email upload
Email the scanned PDF to PaperScorer. Best when the copier scans to email and you never touch a computer.
Print one before you print thirty. Any printer works, but a single test sheet catches printer-specific problems in 30 seconds — before you have committed a whole stack.
Quiz-day runbook
Once setup is done, a quiz is five minutes of work on either side of the class period.
- 1Clone your template and swap in this unit's questions
- 2Print the class set — one sheet per student, plus two spares
- 3Give the quiz
- 4Scan the stack with your default intake method
- 5Grade any written responses in the online interface
- 6Confirm the scores landed in your gradebook
First-week snags, and what they actually are
Five problems account for most first-week support tickets. All five have boring causes.
Grades scanned fine but never reached the LMS
Most often the assignment sits in a closed grading period, so the LMS rejects the score. Check the assignment's date restrictions before assuming the integration is broken.
Students in PaperScorer do not match students in the LMS
Almost always two roster sources. Re-sync from your chosen source and remove the duplicates created by the other one.
The first stack of sheets scans poorly
Print one sheet and test-scan it before running 30. Laser is marginally more forgiving than inkjet, 20-24 lb copy paper is ideal, and black ink is preferred for the bubbles.
A phone scan is rejected as blurry or skewed
Back up about two inches and re-angle. The engine corrects for angle, shadow, and uneven paper, and the app tells you when a capture is genuinely unusable.
The wrong version was detected on a multi-version test
Confirm the version bubble was filled. When it is printed into the bubble grid, the scan identifies the version on its own — a blank version bubble is the usual cause.
Playbook FAQs
How long does this actually take?
What if school starts next week and I have not done any of this?
Should I build multi-version tests from the start?
Do I need my IT department?
Can I reuse last year's tests?
Week 4 starts with a free account
100 scans included, no credit card. Everything else in this playbook follows from there.