To the original poster, yes things have gone bad by the looks. Where I work they outsource 100% of all their IT needs to other companies. It's a tricky business because it makes it much more difficult to just barge into the office/cubicle/hovel of the programmer or his boss to talk over why the script is taking so long to complete.
With outsourcers you have to make sure you have a tight spec, agreed timelines, costs and develop some user acceptance testing plans which when passed will act as a payment milestone. I would also be asking for some kind of warranty from the outsourcer, even if it's something basic like free fixes for 2 weeks after delivery (and I mean fixes not changes).
Given it's English class and computer driven, you could teach them how to write for the web, and about web useability. No doubt a lot of them will be wanting to author their own websites in coming years, so get them educated about writing for screen reading instead of print.
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To the original poster, yes things have gone bad by the looks. Where I work they outsource 100% of all their IT needs to other companies. It's a tricky business because it makes it much more difficult to just barge into the office/cubicle/hovel of the programmer or his boss to talk over why the script is taking so long to complete. With outsourcers you have to make sure you have a tight spec, agreed timelines, costs and develop some user acceptance testing plans which when passed will act as a payment milestone. I would also be asking for some kind of warranty from the outsourcer, even if it's something basic like free fixes for 2 weeks after delivery (and I mean fixes not changes).
Given it's English class and computer driven, you could teach them how to write for the web, and about web useability. No doubt a lot of them will be wanting to author their own websites in coming years, so get them educated about writing for screen reading instead of print.