FAQ
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
- Know-How: As former university professors, we know what faculty expect to see in student assignments and how to capture student learning outcomes data for administrators.
- People: Our Virtual-TAs have a Master's or Ph.D. and come from a wide array of academic disciplines. They work with your faculty, familiarize themselves with the course and all its requirements. They are trained in the art of providing rich, written feedback that is timely, specific, constructive in tone, encouraging of sustained effort, and actionable (in that the student should be able to complete an academic task better the next time around.)
- Process: Our services were designed based on a systematic mapping and documentation of every step in the typical grading process, in turn, ensuring quality, accuracy, and replicability. We engage with faculty weeks before the start of a semester to understand the "personality" of the course, becoming familiar with the textbook, supplementary readings, and web-based resources.
- Technology: We use a web-based medium that allows us to capture and monitor every single comment (technologically) inserted by our Virtual-TAs. Their work is then quality-assured by PhD-qualified professionals in the academic discipline. So, even before the graded assignments reach the professor, they've been checked for accuracy, academic standard, and adherence to the instructors pedagogical preferences by a supervisor at our end.
In fact, quite the contrary! Instructors are at the center of our process. They craft the assignments and specify (and attach weights to) student learning outcomes. There is an interim check, in which the instructor is invited to review a small sample (10-15%) of the graded assignments. Only after the instructor has signed off at this stage will the rest of the assignments be worked on. All of this happens via a simple web-enabled, menu-driven interface. Our TAs also prepare a summative report for the instructor, specifying where students did well, where they stumbled, what concepts need reinforcing/ repeating in class the following week, etc.
We send an email alert to the faculty member to do an interim check after 10-15% of the assignments have been graded; that way, our TA gets the instructor's sign-off before proceeding to grade the remaining papers. Our standard turnaround time is 4-5 days, from receiving the electronic assignments, so that the instructor has 1-2 days to look over the feedback, change, add or modify the comments.
We have no direct contact with students. We are at the service of the institution and its instructors. We provide instructors with a student-ID-scrambling utility that ensures a double-blind grading process. In addition to having access to all the individual-student feedback, professors receive a summary report for the class that points out the highlights from the grading of that assignment. This report further ensures that faculty members are aware of how students did and can hence adjust their teaching (content, pace, style, design of assignments) based on the summative feedback.
The turnaround time for classes that meet once a week is 4-5 days, leaving the instructor 2-3 days to review, add or modify the comments, if he/she chooses to do so. In classes that meet more frequently, we will adjust turnaround times accordingly.
The price per student-paper works out to less than what it costs institutions using on-campus TAs, let alone what it costs when professors grade. There are three ways in which your institution can defray the cost of the service. First, with our TAs doing the grading, you can run larger classes and still adhere to sound pedagogy. Since students receive detailed and timely feedback, one of the usual refrains against larger classes doesn't apply. If anything, more feedback enhances, not detract from, the learning experience. Second, with our TAs doing the grading, faculty might be persuaded to teach an additional section or two (again, remember: no grading). Adding 1-2 classes to a 2+2 or 3+3 course-load is only marginally more work when compared with grading.
That's why we offer you the option of trying out services in one of two ways:
A. Sample: This is the quickest and simplest way to try out our Virtual-TA service. You would typically arrange to send us (in electronic format) a random sample of say 5-6 assignments (ideally split between qualitative and quantitative courses and across freshman-year through senior-year courses).
B. Semester-long pilot program: In this kind of pilot program, you would select, say, 8 courses, typically 2 courses (qualitative and quantitative) from freshman-year through senior-year classes. At the end of the semester, you get to evaluate the service, before considering a broader roll-out. Both approaches have their relative merits.
RichFeedback's technology and service are architected using the web-based services delivery model (SOAP architecture). Our service can be automated to interface with your campus learning-management system (LMS). We designed our work processes as follows to suit your preference:
A. Automated: Interface with your campus LMS to get assignments and any other course-related documents (syllabus, etc.) from the LMS. To enable this, we will need to work with your IT team. The advantage is that when the students submit their assignments, a copy of each is retained in the LMS. Then the interface ships them to our system, where the grading can begin, all without the intervention of the faculty member.
B. Semi-automated: This is the most preferred method with our current customers. Your faculty member downloads student-submitted assignments from your campus LMS into his/her computers local directory, runs a simple student-ID-scrambler utility, and then uploads the assignments into our system through a simple and intuitive web-based interface. We have ensured that there are checks in place to make sure the assignments are uploaded correctly and that faculty members receive automated notification in the form of emails.
C. Secure Cloud: In some cases, we set up dedicated folders in a secure cloud-storage location for faculty to exchange documents. While we encourage clients to scramble students' identities, we ensure the security, confidentiality and privacy of all documents. Note: This is not our preferred method; we prefer to work directly off the client's campus LMS. That said, we can run tutorials for instructors to guide them through the process of downloading assignments from the campus LMS, scrambling student identities, transmitting them to us, and then re-uploading graded papers back into the campus LMS.