Testing Guidelines

This article covers tips students and teachers can follow to make sure scanned testing sheets are read accurately by PaperScorer. Reviewing these with your class before their first assessment prevents the vast majority of scan failures.

Before Students Receive Their Sheets

Start with a clean, undistorted printout.

  • Use Letter (8.5″ × 11″) paper. The default sheet layout is sized for Letter.
  • Print at Actual Size / 100%. Do not use “Fit to Page” or “Shrink to Fit” — scaling shifts the QR code and alignment markers, which breaks scan detection.
  • Check the first page before printing 30 copies. Confirm the QR code in the corner is fully visible, all four corner alignment markers are present, nothing is cut off at the edges, and the content is crisp and dark (not faded).

Guidelines for Students

Share these rules with students before they start filling out sheets:

1. Fill bubbles completely

A complete bubble is a filled circle with no white space visible inside.

  • ✓ Correct: solid, fully-filled circle.
  • ✗ Incorrect: half-filled, checkmark, X, slash, or a small dot in the center.

Why: the scanning engine looks for dark pixels inside the circle. Partially filled bubbles can be read as unanswered.

📷 [SCREENSHOT NEEDED] — Close-up showing four side-by-side bubbles: fully filled (correct), half-filled (incorrect), checkmark inside the circle (incorrect), small dot in the center (incorrect).

2. Press firmly — dark marks only

Light pencil marks can be hard for the engine to distinguish from paper shadow or noise.

  • ✓ Correct: bubbles visibly darker than the surrounding paper.
  • ✗ Incorrect: faint marks that a student can barely see themselves.

Why: the engine uses brightness thresholds to determine filled vs empty. Light marks fall below the threshold.

3. Erase completely

If a student changes an answer, they need to fully erase the original choice.

The engine does NOT recognize cross-outs. A filled bubble with an X drawn through it is still read as filled. If a student can’t fully erase a mark, the safest fix is to print a fresh sheet and start over.

4. Stay inside written response boxes

For written and numeric response questions, students must keep their writing inside the designated box or bubble grid. Stray marks outside the box can be interpreted as alignment markers, causing scan failures or interfering with how the engine locates the response area.

5. No stray marks

Students should avoid:

  • Doodling anywhere on the sheet
  • Underlining or circling question text
  • Making tally marks in margins
  • Writing notes in empty areas

Any extra drawing can interfere with scanning. Give students scratch paper for calculations and notes.

6. Use a pencil or a black pen — nothing else

Only a pencil or a black-ink pen scans reliably. A No. 2 (HB) pencil is ideal; a black ballpoint pen also works.

  • ✓ Use: a pencil, or a black-ink pen.
  • ✗ Avoid: colored ink (blue, red, green, etc.), highlighters, markers, and crayon.

Why: the engine reads how dark each bubble is against the paper. Colored or light inks can fall below the brightness threshold and read as blank.

Pencil is the safer choice. A clean erase lets a student fix a mistake — the engine does not detect cross-outs, so a mistake made in pen means reprinting the sheet.

7. Don’t fold or crease the sheet

Folds and creases can hide alignment markers, create shadows that look like filled bubbles, or throw off orientation during scanning. If a sheet gets folded accidentally, smooth it out as much as possible before scanning, or reprint a fresh copy.

8. Multi-page tests need student IDs on each sheet

If the testing sheets are not pre-filled with student data, students must bubble their student ID on every sheet of the assessment. A two-sheet test means filling in the ID twice, once per sheet.

BEST PRACTICE: For multi-page assessments, use the Class print option (which pre-fills student data) rather than the generic Assessment print option (which leaves the ID for students to bubble). This eliminates multi-page ID confusion entirely. See Printing an Assessment for a Class.

Quick Student Handout

Copy the text below to a handout or project it on your whiteboard on test day:

PaperScorer Answer Sheet Rules

  1. Fill bubbles completely — no half-filled, no checkmarks.
  2. Press firmly — marks should be dark.
  3. Erase completely if you change your mind.
  4. Stay inside the written response boxes.
  5. No doodles or stray marks.
  6. Use a pencil or a black pen only — no colored ink or markers.
  7. Don’t fold or crease your sheet.
  8. Raise your hand if your sheet is torn or damaged.

When Students Make Mistakes Anyway

Even with the best instructions, some scans will fail. When they do:

  1. Check the Upload & Score history to see the failure reason.
  2. Look at the scanned sheet image to identify what went wrong.
  3. For specific fixes, see Ideal Scanner Settings.
  4. For a single misread answer, you can manually correct the recorded answer.
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