Hiring a private grader?

[marshwiggle]

If you can outsource your grading with a private grader, could students do the same by hiring a private grade grubber?  Sounds like win-win.

There was a story a few years ago about some programmer outsourcing all his work to a guy in China. He got caught because the IT guys in the company saw all of this traffic to China and were afraid they were being hacked.

[Ruralguy]

If the code was good, they should have kept the Chinese programmer as a source, and then moved over the "programmer" to "Overseas Recruiting."

[apl68]

If you can outsource your grading with a private grader, could students do the same by hiring a private grade grubber?  Sounds like win-win.

I understand that there are web sites where they can outsource the writing of their papers, so I suppose so.

[larryc]

There is a firm called Instructional Connections that provides graders. I just met with mine, first time I am using one. She has a PhD in my field and will be paid $34 per student for a six-week class. (The world is broken.)

I am doing it openly and it is approved by my institution, but others are right that doing it one the down low could be problematic. As ever, you need to weigh the rules against the possibility of getting caught and the potential consequences. I take it you are at a private school, so tenure or not it might be fairly easy for the admin to get rid of you if they liked. Or they might be fine with it--what do I know about your institution? Your safest path is to ask, and if they say yes to get that in writing. The riskiest is to just do it.

Also, would your grader need access to the LMS? If students are handing you printed paper you could get someone to grade with very low risk of getting caught. Low is not zero though. If they need access to the LMS you really do need permission.

[ergative]

Also, would your grader need access to the LMS? If students are handing you printed paper you could get someone to grade with very low risk of getting caught.

When I was in college, my roommate's mother ran a school (like one of those cultural enrichment schools that did after-school and weekend lessons, not--I think--an accredited school), and she would ship paper assignment 2000 miles to my roommate, who would grade them and ship them back.

[lightning]

As my lab started winding down and I lost all the soft money that I was allowed to funnel to direct teaching/grading support for my courses related to the lab, I had to start doing all of my own grading. It's the worst part of my job, as it is structured now.

$34 per student for a six-week semester seems very reasonable (reasonable for the faculty member). I can see this being a great option.

Please let us know how this arrangement with Instructional Connections works out.

[Caracal]

As my lab started winding down and I lost all the soft money that I was allowed to funnel to direct teaching/grading support for my courses related to the lab, I had to start doing all of my own grading. It's the worst part of my job, as it is structured now.

$34 per student for a six-week semester seems very reasonable (reasonable for the faculty member). I can see this being a great option.

Please let us know how this arrangement with Instructional Connections works out.

Is the amount based on the course and the amount of grading? In theory, a six week course would be the same as a full term course right, since it really should be about the same amount of grading?