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| Introducing the Free Lunch |
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| Every profession comes with its share of chores. For instructors, grading is the mother of all chores, owing to its sheer drudgery. Faculty have been known to whine a lot during long hours of grading! (Just do a Google using the expression "grading sucks"!) On a more serious note, we believe that faculty, if presented with a credible and pedagogically meaningful alternative, would prefer to trade grading for teaching; the joy of teaching is what drew them to the profession in the first place. Of course, the idea of a TA assisting faculty with grading has been around for decades, but not every instructor in every type of institution has access to a TA, which is usually made possible by research funding. What EduMetry offers is to make the services of a TA available to all faculty on an ongoing basis, regardless of the type of institution at which they work. |
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| Key Ingredient |
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| All of our rich-feedback services,
Assess+, WriterAide and MyMathAide, are priced on a per-student-assignment basis. That means, we must earn our keep, one assignment at a time! Whether your classes are large or small, we get paid only if the instructor is satisfied with our feedback overall. Unlike companies that require you to pay a fee just to get set up and then fee for expected usage, which may or may not materialize. Our pricing guarantees that the college pays only for what you use. |
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| Beyond Euphemism: From "Cost" to "Investment" |
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| In launching its rich-feedback services (Assess+, WriterAide and MyMathAide), EduMetry thought long and hard about how institutions would pay for the service, even, in fact, whether the cost of the service needs to be a separate line-item in the institution's instructional budget etc. We then explored whether the institution can treat the cost of grading as an investment that can reduce ongoing costs. Companies sometimes use the word investment as a euphemism for cost, but we sought to reconsider the instructional process, seeking to find areas for rationalization. We are happy to report that the pricing of our services can, in fact, result in a net financial contribution to your institution! Furthermore, this doesn't include the intangible benefits that come from better feedback and learning, better retention (in the student's mind and at the institution) and better use of faculty time for higher-order activities like mentoring, advising and research. |
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Calculus or Economics (lunch recipe) |
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| Increased Student Retention (work with what's in the kitchen) |
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| Based on the analysis carried out by one of our clients, an increase in the student-retention rate by a mere 10% pays entirely for the cost of using the
Assess+ service. That means, further
increases in retention-rates (beyond the 10%) actually make the institution financially better-off than would otherwise be the case! Needless to say, higher student retention is the goal, but our Virtual-TA service being at least cost-neutral, but potentially making a residual tuition-contribution is an added bonus. Yes, free lunch! |
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| Larger Classes (invite more friends to lunch; spread the fixed costs) |
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| The optimal class-size usually depends on the pedagogy dictated by the academic discipline, the level of the course (in terms of seniority) and instructional style. All else remaining equal, small classes foster learning better than larger ones, because of the individual attention instructors can provide. Conversely, larger classes means more grading for the professor. With
Assess+, that dilemma goes away. With the burden of grading transferred to us, instructors would be more willing to teach larger classes (within the limits cited above). Again, by the above logic, a mere 10% increase in class-size (merely an additional three students in a class of 30) pays for the service and, any more than 10% makes a positive tuition- contribution. Better free lunches! Read on, the stew thickens! |
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| Trading Grading for Teaching (chef prepares the specials; helpers make the rest)
We believe colleges that are willing to revisit the way faculty workloads are arrived at stand to benefit the most from using our service. |
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| Assess+ allows your faculty to focus on the joy of teaching and delegate the drudgery of grading, while controlling all pedagogical and academic decisions. Given the average cost of a course taught by a full-time faculty member, the cost of using Assess+ is a mere rounding error! As an administrator, you get to make the best use of the most important resource: your faculty members. Sounds progressive? Sound more like a free banquet? We think so. (bon appetit!) |
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Affordable Pilots - can you afford not to? |
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| (go on...try the appetizer!) |
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| For a mere $4,800, your institution can pilot Virtual-TA in four (4) courses (assuming classes of 30 students each). We are so confident your students and faculty will benefit from the experience that we won't even mention the word invoice until you are, as an institution, completely satisfied with our service. Go ahead and transform the way your students learn. |
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