What Are Touchstones and Why Do They Require Human Grading?

Sophia Learning structures courses around two primary assessment types: Challenges and Touchstones. Challenges consist of multiple-choice, matching, or other automatically gradable question formats. They provide instant feedback and allow unlimited attempts. Touchstones, by contrast, are open-ended assignments requiring written responses, critical analysis, problem-solving demonstrations, or creative work that cannot be automatically evaluated.

The Purpose of Touchstones

Touchstones serve several educational purposes that automated assessments cannot. They require you to synthesize information rather than just recognize correct answers. They assess your ability to communicate understanding in writing. They evaluate higher-order thinking skills like analysis, evaluation, and creation. And they provide evidence of original work that demonstrates genuine learning rather than memorization or test-taking skill.

According to Sophia Learning’s educational model, Touchstones represent milestone assessments that verify students have achieved course learning objectives before advancing to subsequent material. This gatekeeper function explains why courses typically lock later units until Touchstones receive passing grades—the course design assumes each Touchstone confirms mastery necessary for success in subsequent content.

Types of Touchstone Assignments

Touchstone formats vary by course but generally fall into several categories. Essay Touchstones require written responses ranging from short constructed responses (250-500 words) to longer research-based essays (1000-2000 words). Problem-solving Touchstones ask you to demonstrate mathematical or analytical processes with explanations of your reasoning. Project-based Touchstones might require creating presentations, analyses, or other artifacts demonstrating applied knowledge. Discussion-style Touchstones involve responding to prompts and engaging with course concepts through written reflection.

The format directly impacts grading time. A short constructed response might require only 5-10 minutes to grade, while a complex research essay or multi-part project could require 30-45 minutes of careful evaluator review. Understanding the scope and complexity of your specific Touchstone helps set realistic expectations for grading timelines.

Human Graders vs. Automated Systems

The requirement for human grading fundamentally differentiates Touchstones from Challenges and creates the potential for delays. Automated systems grade Challenges in milliseconds, but human graders must read your submission, evaluate it against rubric criteria, determine whether learning objectives were met, provide feedback, assign a score, and sometimes offer suggestions for improvement.

Sophia employs a distributed network of subject matter expert graders rather than maintaining a centralized grading department. These graders typically work remotely, reviewing submissions during their available hours. This distributed model provides flexibility and scalability but also introduces variability in grading speed depending on grader availability, workload, and working patterns.

Some Touchstones use tiered review processes where initial grading is done by one evaluator and then quality-checked by a second reviewer, particularly for borderline scores or assignments that might need revision. This additional review layer improves grading accuracy and consistency but extends timelines, especially during high-volume periods.

The Grading Process Explained

Understanding what happens after you click “Submit” on a Touchstone clarifies why grading takes time and where potential bottlenecks occur.

Submission Queue Management

When you submit a Touchstone, it enters a queue for human review. Sophia’s system routes submissions to available graders based on several factors including the grader’s subject expertise, current workload, and availability schedule. The queue isn’t first-in-first-out across all students—instead, the system attempts to balance workload across graders while matching submissions to appropriately qualified evaluators.

During peak submission periods—typically around common course deadlines or the end of academic terms—queues grow longer. If you submit when many other students are also submitting, your Touchstone waits behind others already in the queue. The queue depth is invisible to students, creating uncertainty about whether you’re waiting because you’re 5th in line or 500th.

Grader Assignment and Review

Once a grader claims your submission from the queue, they download it along with the grading rubric and any specific instructor notes or guidelines. They review your work systematically against rubric criteria, typically scoring each dimension separately before determining an overall grade. For writing assignments, this includes evaluating content accuracy, organization and structure, use of evidence and examples, writing quality and mechanics, and adherence to assignment requirements.

Quality grading takes time. Evaluators are expected to read submissions carefully, provide meaningful feedback, and ensure scores accurately reflect rubric criteria. A grader rushing through reviews to maximize volume would compromise quality, potentially passing students who haven’t met learning objectives or failing students who actually demonstrated competency. The tension between speed and quality affects grading timelines—faster isn’t always better if it comes at the expense of accuracy.

Feedback and Score Finalization

After evaluating your submission, graders write feedback explaining their scoring decisions. Feedback quality varies by grader—some provide detailed, helpful comments on strengths and areas for improvement, while others offer brief generic responses. The time investment in feedback composition affects overall grading duration, particularly for graders who take their feedback responsibilities seriously.

Before finalizing the grade, some systems require graders to review their evaluation for consistency and completeness. This self-check catches errors like forgetting to score a rubric category or providing a score that doesn’t match written feedback. While this quality control step adds time, it reduces the need for grade revisions or disputes later.

Secondary Review Processes

Certain Touchstones trigger secondary review processes that extend grading time. Submissions scored at exactly the passing threshold might receive second-opinion review to ensure borderline passing grades are appropriate. Submissions flagged for potential academic integrity concerns undergo additional scrutiny. Unusually high or low scores relative to the student’s other work might prompt verification review to ensure grading accuracy.

These secondary reviews serve important quality control functions but can add days to the grading timeline. As a student, you have no visibility into whether your submission entered secondary review, which can make extended waits feel arbitrary when they’re actually following established protocols.

Typical Grading Timelines: What’s Normal?

Sophia provides general guidance that Touchstones are typically graded within 2-5 business days, but actual timelines vary considerably based on multiple factors. Understanding the range of normal helps you distinguish between expected waits and genuinely problematic delays.

Best-Case Scenarios

Under optimal conditions—low submission volume, immediately available graders, straightforward assignment—Touchstones can grade in as little as a few hours. This typically happens when you submit during off-peak times (middle of the week, mid-semester rather than near term ends), the Touchstone is relatively simple and quick to evaluate, qualified graders are actively working and have queue capacity, and your submission clearly meets or clearly misses criteria without requiring deliberation.

However, best-case scenarios are not the norm and shouldn’t be your baseline expectation. Planning around the possibility of few-hour turnaround sets you up for frustration when most submissions take longer. Best-case timelines are bonuses, not guarantees.

Average Timelines

Most students experience Touchstone grading within 2-4 business days under normal circumstances. This represents the typical path through the queue, grading, and feedback process without unusual complications or delays. The 2-4 day window accounts for grader assignment, thorough evaluation, feedback composition, and quality review without extended bottlenecks.

Business days matter in this timeline—weekends and holidays don’t count. A Touchstone submitted late Friday might not be graded until the following Wednesday or Thursday (2-3 business days later, but 5-6 calendar days). This distinction catches students off guard when they count calendar days and wonder why grading is taking a week.

Extended but Normal Timelines

Waits extending to 5-7 business days, while frustrating, fall within the range that Sophia considers normal, particularly during high-volume periods or for complex assignments requiring extensive evaluation. Research from the Online Learning Consortium indicates that grading timelines in competency-based online education often extend beyond traditional classroom norms due to asynchronous submission patterns and distributed grading models.

These extended timelines often occur during predictable high-volume periods: the first two weeks of a new term when many students start courses simultaneously, the last two weeks of term when students rush to complete before deadlines, around major holidays when grader availability decreases, or during summer months when fewer graders may be available despite continued enrollment.

When Delays Become Problematic

Grading timelines extending beyond 7-10 business days without communication move from “frustrating but normal” into “genuinely problematic” territory. At this point, the delay likely indicates a system issue rather than normal queue processing. Possible causes include your submission being lost or not properly entering the queue, technical issues preventing grader access to your submission, unusual grading complications requiring escalated review, or staffing shortages creating severe backlog.

Two weeks (10 business days) without grading warrants direct contact with Sophia support. While you might feel hesitant to “bother” support before then, waiting longer than two weeks without inquiry risks having submissions that fell through system cracks go unnoticed until they become urgent problems affecting course completion.

Factors Affecting Grading Speed

Multiple variables influence how quickly your specific Touchstone gets graded. Understanding these factors helps you manage expectations and potentially time your submissions strategically.

Submission Timing and Volume

When you submit relative to other students significantly impacts wait times. Mid-week submissions (Tuesday-Thursday) during mid-semester periods typically process faster than Friday submissions or those around term boundaries. Grader availability tends to be highest during standard working hours in U.S. time zones, though Sophia’s distributed grading model includes some international graders working different schedules.

Course-specific submission patterns also matter. If your course has a significant cohort of students all following the same timeline—perhaps due to a university partnership where many students are moving through together—you’ll hit Touchstones simultaneously with many peers, creating localized volume spikes for that specific Touchstone even if overall Sophia submission volume is moderate.

Assignment Complexity

Longer, more complex Touchstones require more grading time. A 2000-word research essay takes longer to evaluate than a 500-word response. A multi-part project with several components requires more review time than a single short answer. Complex assignments also often need more detailed feedback, extending the grading process.

Assignments requiring specialized subject expertise may face longer waits if fewer qualified graders are available. A Touchstone in an advanced specialized course might wait longer for an appropriately qualified evaluator than a Touchstone in a high-enrollment general education course where more graders have the necessary background.

Course and Subject Area

Some courses experience systematically longer grading times than others based on grader pool size and demand. High-enrollment general education courses like English Composition or Introduction to Statistics typically have larger grader pools and faster turnaround. Lower-enrollment specialized courses may have fewer qualified graders, creating bottlenecks during submission peaks.

Subject areas requiring particular expertise—upper-level mathematics, sciences, or specialized humanities courses—may experience longer waits simply because fewer people are qualified to grade them. Sophia must balance grader expertise against workload distribution, sometimes meaning specialized submissions wait longer for the right evaluator rather than being assigned to anyone available. Students taking more challenging Sophia courses often report longer grading times, though this may reflect both grader availability and the complexity of evaluating advanced work.

Submission Quality and Clarity

Submissions that clearly meet or clearly fail to meet rubric criteria typically grade faster than borderline submissions requiring careful deliberation. If your work obviously demonstrates all required competencies with clear evidence of learning, graders can move through evaluation efficiently. If your submission falls in the gray area—partially meeting criteria, demonstrating some but not all objectives, or presenting quality that’s difficult to categorize—graders need more time to deliberate and potentially consult secondary reviewers.

Technical submission issues also extend grading time. If you submit in an incorrect format requiring graders to request resubmission, if your submission has accessibility issues making it difficult to review, or if supporting materials are missing or corrupted, the back-and-forth to resolve these issues adds days to the process. Additionally, submissions that trigger academic integrity concerns, such as AI detection flags, automatically enter extended review processes that can add significant time to grading.

Grader Availability and Workload

The distributed nature of Sophia’s grading pool means individual grader availability directly affects your timeline. Graders have varying schedules—some work grading as a primary job and maintain regular hours, while others grade part-time around other commitments with less predictable availability. If the grader who claims your submission has limited hours or high current workload, your review might be delayed even though other graders have capacity.

Seasonal patterns in grader availability affect timelines institution-wide. During academic year when many Sophia graders are also teaching or studying, their grading availability may be more constrained than during summer or winter breaks. Conversely, some graders may take vacation during traditional holiday periods, reducing the available grader pool precisely when some students are rushing to complete courses.

When to Worry About Delays

Distinguishing between frustrating-but-normal delays and genuinely problematic situations helps you know when to take action versus when to continue waiting patiently.

Red Flags That Indicate Problems

Certain situations signal potential issues requiring intervention rather than just patience. If your Touchstone has been in “Submitted” status for more than 10 business days without grading or communication, that’s unusual enough to warrant inquiry. If you submitted multiple Touchstones around the same time and others have graded but one remains pending significantly longer, the delay may be submission-specific rather than general queue backup.

If other students in your same course report their Touchstones grading quickly while yours remains pending, this suggests your submission may have encountered a specific issue. If you received an error message during submission but it still shows as submitted, there might be a technical problem preventing proper queue entry. If you’re approaching a course completion deadline or academic term end and the delay threatens your ability to finish on time, the delay becomes urgent regardless of whether it’s “normal.”

Technical Issues vs. Queue Delays

Technical problems require different responses than simple queue delays. Signs of technical issues include inconsistent submission status (showing as submitted in one place but not submitted elsewhere in the platform), missing submission confirmation email when you normally receive them, inability to view your submitted work in your submission history, or error messages that appeared during or after submission.

Queue delays, while frustrating, are working as designed—just slowly. Your submission is in the system, properly queued, and will eventually be graded. Technical issues mean your submission may not be in the queue properly at all, requiring intervention to resolve rather than just patience.

When Delays Affect Course Completion

Delays that risk preventing course completion by important deadlines elevate from frustrating to critical. If you need course completion for credit transfer by a specific date, if you’re approaching the end of a subscription period, if you need the course to fulfill prerequisites for upcoming term enrollment, or if you’re working against employer tuition reimbursement deadlines, you can’t simply wait indefinitely for normal processing.

In these time-sensitive situations, contact Sophia support immediately once delays exceed 5 business days rather than waiting the full 10 days. Explain the deadline pressure and ask for expedited review or status update. While Sophia can’t always guarantee specific turnaround times, they can often escalate urgent situations or at least provide clarity about expected timeline so you can make informed decisions.

Patterns Across Multiple Submissions

If you experience extended delays on multiple Touchstones across different courses or time periods, there may be an account-level or systematic issue rather than random bad luck. Possible causes include technical account issues affecting submission processing, being incorrectly flagged for review triggering extra scrutiny on all submissions, or submitting in ways that consistently create processing problems (wrong formats, accessibility issues, etc.).

Recurring delays warrant a comprehensive support inquiry examining your account status, submission history, and any flags or holds that might be affecting processing. Support can often identify patterns you can’t see from the student side and address underlying issues causing repeated problems.

What to Do While Waiting

The waiting period between submission and grading doesn’t have to be dead time. Strategic use of this period can maintain momentum and even advance your learning despite the pause in formal course progress.

Continue Learning in Adjacent Areas

While you can’t advance to locked units requiring the Touchstone grade, you can productively use waiting time for related learning. Review material from earlier units to reinforce foundation knowledge. Preview upcoming unit topics using external resources to get a head start on new material. Work on other courses if you’re enrolled in multiple Sophia courses simultaneously. Pursue related learning outside Sophia that complements your course goals.

This adjacent learning keeps you engaged with the subject matter and prevents the frustration of feeling completely stalled. It also often improves your performance on subsequent course material because you’ve maintained mental engagement rather than completely disconnecting during the wait.

Prepare for Next Steps

Use waiting time to prepare for what comes after the Touchstone grades. If you’re confident you passed, preview the next unit and start planning your approach to upcoming Challenges and Touchstones. If you’re uncertain about your performance or think you might need revision, prepare for that possibility by identifying resources and developing revision strategies.

Check your overall course timeline and adjust your schedule if the delay has created compression. If you were planning to complete the course by a certain date and the Touchstone delay has consumed buffer time, recalculate how much time you have for remaining units and whether your timeline remains realistic or needs adjustment. Understanding typical Sophia course completion timelines can help you assess whether you need to revise your expectations or find ways to accelerate other aspects of your coursework.

Document Your Progress

If you’re working under strict completion deadlines or need to demonstrate progress for external requirements (employer reimbursement, transfer credit deadlines, etc.), document your submission during the waiting period. Screenshot your submission confirmation, note the submission date, and save any confirmation emails. This documentation protects you if delays create completion deadline issues—you can demonstrate you submitted on time and delays were beyond your control.

For courses where you’re tracking completion for external purposes, update whatever tracking systems you’re using to reflect submission even if grading is pending. Mark the Touchstone as “submitted, awaiting grade” so you have accurate records of your position in the course regardless of when official grades post.

Manage Stress and Maintain Perspective

Waiting for grades creates anxiety, particularly when course progress is blocked and timelines are tight. Manage this stress by maintaining perspective about what you can and cannot control. You can’t control grading speed once submitted, but you can control how you use the waiting time, whether you communicate with support appropriately, and how you adjust your plans based on the delay.

Avoid obsessively checking for grade updates every few hours. This heightens anxiety without affecting outcomes. Instead, establish a reasonable checking schedule—once per day or even every other day—and resist the urge to check more frequently. The grade will post when it posts; checking constantly only amplifies frustration.

Can You Speed Up the Grading Process?

Students frequently ask whether they can do anything to accelerate grading once a Touchstone is submitted. The short answer is: options are limited, but some actions can help in specific circumstances.

What Doesn’t Work

Several commonly attempted approaches don’t actually speed up grading and may even be counterproductive. Repeatedly emailing support asking for updates doesn’t move submissions up in the queue and may actually delay support’s ability to handle legitimate issues efficiently. Submitting support tickets requesting priority grading generally doesn’t receive special treatment unless you have documented urgent circumstances (more on that below).

Resubmitting the Touchstone hoping it will enter a faster queue typically backfires. Resubmission might cancel your original submission, sending you to the back of the queue rather than forward. It can also create confusion about which submission should be graded, potentially delaying both. Only resubmit if you’ve confirmed with support that your original submission has a technical issue preventing grading.

Social media complaints or public pressure campaigns rarely accelerate individual grading. While they might prompt general communication from Sophia about systemwide delays, your specific submission will still process through normal channels. Public complaints may even complicate your relationship with support if you later need their assistance.

What Might Help

Certain approaches can sometimes facilitate faster processing, particularly when legitimate urgent circumstances exist. Contacting support with documented urgent circumstances—approaching subscription end dates, external academic deadlines, prerequisite requirements for upcoming terms—may result in escalated review. Sophia can’t always guarantee expedited grading, but they can sometimes prioritize truly urgent situations.

When contacting support about urgent situations, provide specific details: exact deadlines, why they’re immovable, what consequences will result from missing them, and verification if available (screenshot of transfer deadline, employer policy documentation, etc.). Generic “I need this soon” requests receive less attention than well-documented urgent circumstances.

If delays exceed the stated typical timeline (7-10 business days), polite inquiry to support can sometimes surface issues preventing grading that support can resolve. Your submission might have a technical issue that prevented proper queue entry, or there might be a grader availability problem for your specific course that support can address by reassigning to available graders.

Preventive Strategies for Future Submissions

While you can’t speed up current grading, you can minimize delays on future submissions through strategic planning. Submit during off-peak periods (mid-week, mid-semester) when queue volumes are typically lower. Build generous buffer time into your course completion timeline assuming longer-than-average grading rather than best-case scenarios. For courses with multiple Touchstones, space submissions to avoid having multiple pending simultaneously, which can create compounding delays.

Submit well-formatted, clearly written work that’s easy for graders to evaluate. While this doesn’t technically speed processing, submissions that are straightforward to grade move through evaluation more quickly than those requiring extensive deliberation or clarification. Follow all submission guidelines carefully to avoid technical issues that create back-and-forth delays.

The Reality of Queue-Based Systems

Ultimately, Sophia’s grading operates as a queue-based system with human capacity constraints. Unlike automated grading that scales infinitely, human grading has hard throughput limits determined by available graders and their working capacity. During high-volume periods, queues grow and wait times extend. This is a fundamental characteristic of human-graded assessment systems rather than a problem with solutions available to individual students.

Understanding this reality helps set appropriate expectations. Your frustration with wait times is valid, but expecting instant grading on human-reviewed work isn’t realistic. The system operates at the speed it operates, and individual students have limited leverage to accelerate it beyond ensuring their submissions enter the queue properly and, in truly urgent cases, requesting consideration for expedited review.

Dealing with Persistent Delays and Escalation

When delays extend beyond normal timelines or become recurring problems, escalation and more assertive intervention become appropriate.

Effective Support Communication

When contacting Sophia support about grading delays, communication approach matters for getting effective help. Provide specific information: course name and number, Touchstone name and submission date, current status showing, any error messages or unusual circumstances. Avoid emotional language or accusations—support staff respond better to factual descriptions of problems than to venting frustration.

Explain what you’ve already tried and what you’re requesting. “I submitted Touchstone 3 in English Composition on December 15th, it still shows as pending on December 28th, I’ve verified the submission shows in my history, and I’m requesting a status update or escalation for review” provides actionable information. “This is taking forever and it’s ridiculous” doesn’t give support anything to work with.

Keep records of support interactions. Note ticket numbers, representative names, what information they provided, and any commitments made about follow-up timelines. If you need to escalate or follow up, this documentation demonstrates your diligent efforts to resolve the situation through proper channels.

Escalation Paths

If initial support contact doesn’t resolve the issue or provide satisfactory explanation, escalation options exist. Request to speak with a supervisor or escalation team member if first-line support can’t address your concern. Be specific about why you’re requesting escalation—not just that you’re unhappy with wait time, but that it exceeds stated timelines, affects critical deadlines, or represents a recurring technical issue.

For students using Sophia through institutional partnerships (employer tuition benefits, university credit transfer agreements, etc.), contact your institutional coordinator in addition to Sophia support. Institutional partners sometimes have direct relationships with Sophia account representatives who can provide additional support or escalation paths not available to individual students.

When Delays Threaten Course Completion

If grading delays genuinely threaten your ability to complete the course by critical deadlines, document everything and be prepared to advocate firmly for yourself. Gather evidence of submission timing, documented timelines from Sophia’s policies, records of support communication, and verification of why your deadline is immovable.

In extreme cases where Sophia’s delays prevent completion despite your timely submissions and good-faith efforts, you may need to request special consideration: subscription extension at no charge to compensate for time lost to delays, grade posting with pending review to allow course progression while grading continues, or retroactive completion dating to your submission date rather than final grade date. These accommodations aren’t automatically granted, but well-documented cases with clear deadline pressure sometimes receive consideration.

Learning from the Experience

Whether your delay resolves quickly or requires extensive follow-up, treat it as learning for future course planning. If you’re taking additional Sophia courses, build longer buffer time into your completion timeline. Consider whether Sophia’s grading timelines align well with your needs and constraints, or whether other learning platforms might better suit your situation for future courses.

For students with inflexible external deadlines—upcoming term starts, graduation requirements, job transitions—Sophia’s variable grading timelines create risk. Future planning might involve starting courses earlier, choosing alternative providers with more predictable timelines, or arranging backup plans if Sophia delays create completion problems. Understanding how Sophia Learning operates and its typical patterns helps you make informed decisions about whether it’s the right platform for your specific timeline and needs.

Alternative Solutions for Time-Pressed Students

When grading delays create genuine crisis situations threatening academic progress, employment opportunities, or other critical outcomes, some students consider alternative approaches to ensuring course completion.