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We do not have any contact with your students. Instructors retain full control of the process, from designing the assignments in the first place, to specifying learning outcomes and attaching weights to each outcome. Instructors also review the work of our TAs through a step called the Interim Check, which happens after 10% of the assignments have been completed. Faculty provide feedback, offer any further instructions and eventually sign-off on the work done, before our TAs continue with the remainder of the assignments

Finally, upon the request of the instructor, the weights he/she specified to the learning outcomes will be rubric-based scores which are used to generate a composite score for each student assignment

As an added bonus, our Virtual-TAs provide a detailed, summative report for the instructor on the overall class performance on the given assignment, which includes a look at how the class fared on each outcome, where the students did well, where they stumbled and what concepts, if any, need reinforcing in class the following week.

We can also, upon request, generate reports by Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). This report can be used by the instructor to immediately address gaps in learning at the individual or classroom level.

Think of this as a micro-closing-of-the-loop that happens each week.  Contrast this with the broader, closing-the-loop that accompanies program-level assessment of learning, which might happen at the end of a whole academic year or later!

The company argues that professors freed from grading papers can spend more time teaching and doing research.

"This is what they do for a living," says Ms. Whisenant. "We're working with professionals." 

Assessors are trained in the use of rubrics, or systematic guidelines for evaluating student work, and before they are hired are given sample student assignments to see "how they perform on those," says Ravindra Singh Bangari, EduMetry's vice president of assessment services.

Professors give final grades to assignments, but the assessors score the papers based on the elements in the rubric and "help students understand where their strengths and weaknesses are," says Tara Sherman, vice president of client services at EduMetry. "Then the professors can give the students the help they need based on the feedback."

The assessors use technology that allows them to embed comments in each document; professors can review the results (and edit them if they choose) before passing assignments back to students.

But West Hills' investment, which it wouldn't disclose, has paid off in an unexpected way. The feedback from Virtual-TA seems to make the difference between a student's remaining in an online course and dropping out.

Because Virtual-TA provides detailed comments about grammar, organization, and other writing errors in the papers, students have a framework for improvement that some instructors may not be able to provide, she says.

"People need to get past thinking that grading must be done by the people who are teaching," says Mr. Rajam, who is director of assurance of learning at George Washington University's School of Business. "Sometimes people get so caught up in the mousetrap that they forget about the mouse."