Smarthinking: Help for Overloaded Writing Teachers?

I'm a community college English teacher. Specifically, I teach reading and writing, mostly basic- and development-level reading and writing. One of the challenges of my job is evaluating/grading essays. And I'm not alone. My colleagues at my college and at other colleges (and high schools, for that matter) across the nation face the same challenge.

Last year, an article that appeared in the Academe (Jan/Feb 2006) caught my interest. The article mentioned how community colleges in Kentucky were launching a trial program to outsource grading of student essays in some of their first-year writing courses (the kind I teach) to a company called Smarthinking.com. I did some digging to see how that trial has been going but couldn't find anything. If anyone has information, please share it here.

Intrigued about smarthinking, I googled it and found the Smarthinking.com website. Come to find out, smarthinking.com offers a variety of online services, and not just for writing teachers. I won't go into all that smarthinking offers but will say some things about how smarthinking could be of assistance to overloaded (or "strongly challenged," to put a positive spin on it) instructors like me.

What might a typical load for a community college writing instructor be like? Using myself as an example, my typical load is five 3-credit classes (all writing courses) per semester. With an enrollment cap of 20 (and this cap is almost always reached in not only my sections but every section of writing offered at my college), I'm responsible for 100 students (5 sections x 20 students) a semester. And with at least five required essays for every student in every section, I'm reading and grading 500 essays a semester. Factor in preliminary drafts that lead up to the final graded versions and the number of essays read increases.

For one thing, smarthinking could provide relief for the paper grading load. Smarthinking.com offers a service called "Online Grading Assistance." According to the smarthinking website, "E-structors [online instructors certified by smarthinking.com] will provide a numerical score based on 7 elements and provide comments, focusing on specific elements needing improvement." Teachers (like me) who use this smarthinking.com service could use the score/grade provided as the score/grade assigned to students, or, as smarthinking asserts, "increased feedback that supports the professor's in-class and on-paper comments."

I couldn't find how much my college will have to pay to make this service available to me and my colleagues (thousands is my guess). What I do know is that my college has received a pile of money for educational innovation and is looking for ways to spend it. Among the possible recipients of some of this pile of cash is smarthinking.com. If we do end up enlisting smarthinking.com, and I use it, I will write more about my experiences here.

What I did find is that any student can get access to smarthinking's service for $35 per hour for tutoring, $20 to get feedback/help on an essay, and $35 for feedback/help on a longer essay (up to 10 pages).

It's early December, and (whew!) I've just finished another semester of teaching (and reading and grading). Thankfully, I've got a month off to gear up for another academic go-round. Maybe with the help of smarthinking.com at some point, I'll be able to do my job more effectively and with greater facility. We'll see.

Reference:

Bradley, Gwendolyn "College Outsources Grading." Academe. Jan/Feb2006, Vol. 92, Issue 1