Some U.S. universities are outsourcing grading students' papers

Parents Forum
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<p>"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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The graders working for EduMetry, based in a Virginia suburb of Washington, are concentrated in India, Singapore, and Malaysia, along with some in the United States and elsewhere. They do their work online and communicate with professors via e-mail. The company advertises that its graders hold advanced degrees and can quickly turn around assignments with sophisticated commentary, because they are not juggling their own course work, too.</p>

<p>The company argues that professors freed from grading papers can spend more time teaching and doing research."</p>

<p>[Outsourced</a> Grading, With Supporters and Critics, Comes to College - Teaching - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Grading-With/64954/]Outsourced”>http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Grading-With/64954/)</p>

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<p>Well, it is certainly better than much of what passes for grading and feedback with some instructors – I think that students would probably rather get detailed feedback and a grade rather than just a grade. But I’d sure want to see samples and rubrics before a paper was submitted.</p>

<p>I am not at all sure about its value in upper division courses.</p>