Some Papers Are Uploaded to Bangalore to Be Graded
"Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the writing skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. But as each student in her course in business law and ethics at the University of Houston began to crank out—often awkwardly—nearly 5,000 words a semester, it became clear to her that what would really help them was consistent, detailed feedback.
Her seven teaching assistants, some of whom did not have much experience, couldn't deliver. Their workload was staggering: About 1,000 juniors and seniors enroll in the course each year. "Our graders were great," she says, "but they were not experts in providing feedback."
That shortcoming led Ms. Whisenant, director of business law and ethics studies at Houston, to a novel solution last fall. She outsourced assignment grading to a company whose employees are mostly in Asia.
Virtual-TA, a service of a company called EduMetry Inc., took over. The goal of the service is to relieve professors and teaching assistants of a traditional and sometimes tiresome task—and even, the company says, to do it better than TA's can... "
Jarvik7
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From: 名古屋
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 3946
re: the wording of the article:
It's not really a novel solution if there was already a whole company (established five years ago) dedicated to doing exactly what she wanted.
Since when is 5000 words per student per semester a huge amount? Yes it's a lot when multiplied by 1000 students, but 5000 words is the length of one paper in most 3/4th year classes I took. What was awkward about it?
I wish writers would start paying attention to what words mean when they use them, instead of just using them as pieces of flair.
re: the content of the article
There is nothing wrong with it if the graders are qualified to do it and know about the contents of the class and the expectations of the assignment. A professor with 1000 students (or more if she also teaches other courses) isn't going to have any personal connection with most of her students anyways.
Last edited by Jarvik7 (2010 April 10, 7:13 am)
I don't know, it's pretty novel to me. I'd never heard of it before. 5 years isn't very long. They seem to have a good number of clients now, but I got the impression the writer meant it was novel to the teacher as well.
Likewise, I think 'awkwardly' was implying the students weren't the best writers? ;p
As for the topic, the school-as-factory paradigm notwithstanding (these sorts of problems need to be addressed at the root), I suppose I'm not real happy about this zero accountability stuff. At least find a way to integrate it (something about submitting reams of individuals' work to private, anonymous, for-profit people who are subject only to the terms of the business agreement with professors -- do the students get to have a say in this? It's understood they're giving their work over to their own teachers who work for the university, but--). I think they can only get away with it because it's a novel, niche service. At least it's not Blackwater. ;p Do the professors actually review the work they outsource, or do they just assume their students' academic integrity is safe in the hands of these folks? The more they have to hold the company accountable, the less point there is to farm it out in the first place, esp. versus the cost.
More: http://www.changemag.org/May-June%20200 … -town.html - Still pretty novel...
Last edited by nest0r (2010 April 10, 1:39 pm)
