Sonya & Listservers,
I think your questions are well-framed and your concerns very
reasonable. I fear, as your questions suggest, that this pursuit of
"efficiency" is ripe for problems and abuses.
I think you are too generous to the college, though, when you say
this "tool" could be used or misused. My opinion is that this
pedagogical choice is based on a flawed view of teaching and
learning, and evaluation and grading in particular. I don't believed
it is justified or even justifiable in pedagogical terms. Teacher
evaluation of student work is an essential aspect of the INTERACTIVE
and STRATEGIC nature of both teaching and learning. Informed,
specific evaluation of students work by the instructor is vital to
completing the feedback loop between teaching and learning. But, this
approach mistakenly conceives of grading as ancillary to teaching and
thus amenable to outsourcing.
Another mistaken belief is that writing across disciplines, courses
and levels can be graded along the same criteria. Writing Across the
Curriculum studies demonstrate how utterly simplistic this conception
of academic writing is.
What I see happening here is that there is no powerful constituency
in the college to object to this pedagogical malpractice. Financially
stretched college administrators want to save money and they see this
as a mechanism for doing so. Over-burdened faculty would love to get
out from under one of the more onerous aspects of their
jobs--grading. And there is no countervailing force in the
institution to challenge this path of least resistance in the name of
QUALITY of instruction and learning.
I would bet my bottom dollar that this decision could not be easily
squared with the college's mission statement. Put another way, this
choice doesn't follow from the highest values of the institution, but
from the crassest pursuit of economic "efficiency". Students, the
only constituency likely to challenge this move now that faculty have
abdicated their responsibilities, probably don't have the awareness,
sense of agency and voice they would need to effectively protest.
And, they are less likely, now that pedagogy has been sacrificed in
the name of penury, to acquire them through their education.
Nic
>Will instructor written assignment prompts be reviewed by Smarthinking to
>see if they are well written and clear?
>
>Will students be given the 8 area, 32 item criteria so they know upon what
>they are being assessed?
>
>Will faculty read through the graded essays to become familiar with student
>patterns of change and progress?
>
>Concerns about grading the graders in the comment area are appropriate.
>Since Smarthinking is a for profit business, will they attend to excellence
>in their product or might they sacrifice this in order to meet the 24 hour
>turnaround expected by their "clients"? Who will assess the quality of the
>product being produced by Smarthinking?
>
>As with any tool, this could be used well or misused. I'll be interested in
>how this develops.
>
>Sonya Hildreth ([log in to unmask])
>California State University, Fresno
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Open Forum for Learning Assistance Professionals
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dan Kern
>Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 5:31 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Pilot by Kentucky Comm and Tech Coll System: Outsourcing academic
>functions
>
>Sept. 22
>Outsourced Grading
>Many colleges these days outsource their bookstores or cafeterias or
>dormitories, based on the idea that private businesses may be able to
>provide better service at lower prices. Not everyone agrees with that idea,
>to be sure, but outsourcing of non-academic functions has become common.
>
>But what about academic functions?
>
>In a move that may take outsourcing past traditional levels, Kentucky's
>community colleges this fall have started a pilot project in which an
>outside company is reading and providing evaluations of student essays in
>freshman composition courses. The program is small to date - only 48
>students are having their papers assessed in this way - but Kentucky
>officials are enthusiastic about the potential for expanding the effort. And
>the company - Smarthinking - sees this as a service it would like to offer
>other colleges.
>
>"The idea is that we can take the grading burden off of professors, and free
>up their time to do other things, such as working with students who need
>extra help," said Burck Smith, CEO of the company, which has previously
>focused on providing outsourced tutoring centers for colleges in which
>students receive assistance online.
>
>Not everyone is enthusiastic about the prospect of outsourced grading. "I'm
>appalled," said Douglas Hesse, board chair of the Conference on College
>Composition and Communication. "This is abdicating something that is crucial
>to instruction," said Hesse, a professor of English and director of the
>honors program at Illinois State University.
>
>The pilot program is being developed by the distance education arm of the
>Kentucky Community and Technical College System, which currently enrolls
>about 40,000 students. Sandra L. Cook, who runs the distance education
>program, said, "We're in a situation now where the demand [for courses] is
>higher than the supply, so we're trying to create situations with faculty
>where we can develop efficiencies."
>
>The system has been working to be sure that the most popular general
>education courses are available online and are strengthened, and the grading
>plan is part of that effort, she said.
>
>Faculty members have long complained about the "laborious grading process,"
>yet at the same time the system needs to find ways to educate more students
>without getting much more money, Cook said. Currently, class size tends not
>to exceed 25-30, she said, but the system would like to double or possibly
>quadruple that figure. "Our faculty have said that to scale up, they need
>more support," she added.
>
>"We want faculty to concentrate on the management of the course," she said.
>"We want to see how we can take our master faculty members and spread them
>around among more students."
>
>Enter Smarthinking. The company has a good reputation on many campuses where
>its online tutoring services, which employ many adjunct or retired faculty
>members, have been able to offer students extended hours (24/7 in some
>cases) that most colleges could never afford if they were staffing a
>tutoring center. Those same tutors are now being trained to grade essays for
>the Kentucky system or other clients that may come along.
>
>The grading is on a 32-point scale. Students receive up to 4 points (along
>with written comments as needed) in each of eight categories (worked out
>with Kentucky faculty members): main idea, introduction, content
>development, organization, transitions, conclusion, word choice and grammar.
>Each of those categories have subcategories that also receive 1-4 points,
>with the average of the subcategory scores being used to determine a
>category score. In content development, for instance, subcategories focus on
>such elements as topic sentences, the unity of paragraphs, and the use of
>analysis.
>
>Smith stressed that faculty members could use the scores in any way they
>want. Aligning a score to a letter grade is a professor's choice as is
>totally rejecting the score. Smarthinking has pledged to provide scores
>within 24 hours of receiving essays.
>
>"Everything about this makes sense to the student and the institution. The
>student gets quicker turnaround and more consistent grading. The institution
>can get faculty members to focus more intensively on students," Smith said.
>
>He acknowledged that some people might object to outsourcing an academic
>function, but he said that this service will be in "the best interests of
>the students." Cook also said that she would expect some faculty members to
>worry about this approach, and that's why Kentucky is starting with a pilot
>project.
>
>Hesse, of the college composition group, strongly disagreed. He acknowledged
>that this approach might lead to more consistency in grading, and that
>plenty of colleges use teaching assistants to grade papers, rather than a
>professor. But Hesse said that grading was not a function that should in any
>way be removed from the faculty members. The process of reading a paper and
>evaluating it, Hesse said, is crucial not only for assigning a grade, but
>for thinking about how to work with a given student, for evaluating whether
>certain assignments are achieving their goals, for revising lecture plans,
>and more.
>
>"Grading is a central role," he said.
>
>While faculty members will be able to review and change evaluations, Hesse
>said that either they will do enough work of their own to do that well (in
>which case time isn't saved) or they won't (in which case students lose
>out).
>
>"Let's say somebody has spared me the time of grading - and I hate using
>'spared' in that way - there will be some teachers who will be very
>diligent, and will take this as one point of view and they will reproduce
>the same work. But I would fear the teachers who would be very cursory, and
>who might agree and say, 'that's an OK score,' but they don't know as much
>as they should about that student's writing."
>
>- Scott Jaschik
>
>Comments
>I just don't see it. While this sounds better than computer-graded essays,
>it still concerns me that the instructors aren't going to know their
>students' work. One of the opportunities I have-and relish-is the ability to
>watch my students develop as thinkers and writers. I need to be able to
>indicate my appreciation of a student's progress in one area when that
>progress is noteworthy. I need to be able to sit down with a student and
>discuss how, exactly, an essay might have been improved, ideally in light of
>that student's other work.
>
>While I applaud the effort to provide greater access to students, I am leery
>of this appproach. Having said all that, however, I will recognize that the
>experiment is underway and I will reserve final judgement for a year from
>now.
>
>Andrew Purvis, at 6:28 am EDT on September 22, 2005
>
>Who is grading the graders?
>I would feel more confident about the grading service being sold to Kentucky
>if the company's CEO had employed the standard English phrase "taking the
>burden off professors" rather than the more colloquial "off of." I realize
>that speech is less formal than is writing, but as chief spokesman for a
>product evaluating written English among college students, his choosing to
>adopt a non-standard phrase hardly helps sell his product. Shall we hope
>that the reporter mis-heard him?
>
>Diane Vanner Steinberg, Asst. Prof. at The College of New Jersey, at 7:24 am
>EDT on September 22, 2005
>
>
>Got something to say?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Dan Kern
>Reading Skills Improvement
>East Central College AD21
>1964 Prairie Dell Road
>Union, MO 63084
>Phone: 636-583-5195
>Extension: 2426
>Fax: 636-584-0513
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>"What you teach is second
>to whom you teach. If it isn't,
>please find a 'job' very far
>away from students"
>(Andy Maedit)
>
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--
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Study Strategies Program Coordinator
University of California, Berkeley
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