Sophia grading shenannigans

[monchevy]

I'm surprised to hear of the seemingly erratic grading of the enigmatic "Dr. V".

I'm currently helping to guide a relative through some Sophia courses.  As a result of what I've read here, I think I'll suggest sticking to courses without Touchstones for the remainder of the free promotion, and only working on courses like English Comp once they're back to business as usual.

I've taken both paid and free courses at Sophia.  While I never felt as though I was given "the bum's rush", I'd feel much more comfortable pitching a sharp complaint about overly harsh and capricious grading by a staffer who identifies themselves only as "Dr. V" if I were paying for the course.

With that said, I feel compelled to share a random screengrab from the staffer who graded two of my English Comp Touchstones.  She identified herself by her full name (I edited out her last name here), and FWIW, I found her comments to be succinct and on-point, and her grading consistently and eminently fair.  I loathe collegiate writing and I turned in what I considered to be a "solid C" Touchstone, for which she gave me a 77.

Hopefully once the promotion is over a week from now, we'll see more work from staffers like Shante R and less from Dr. V.

Yeah, despite my aggravation with the grading on this one, I tend to agree. These are likely woefully underpaid people working night and day trying to deal with the tidal wave of new students... bigger workload with no additional revenue means I doubt the graders saw an extra cent in their paychecks. If I don't make it through Public Speaking, I'll just pay to take it at a CC and hope for the best.

All I know is that without Sophia and CSMLearn, a degree wouldn't have been in the cards for me at all. I'm so grateful. What I'd love to see is some upper-level courses, because right now I can only manage an associate's. I'd be beyond happy to pay Sophia's full price for UL courses (still cheaper than colleges) so I could have a crack at a bachelor's. 

Saying that, I'd also love to see CSMLearn branch out into more ACE-recommended courses, because their adaptive learning courseware is pretty amazing. I learned things I never thought I could.