By Lucy Scholey, News Editor
Many students have scribbled in many of those little bubbles on academic evaluation forms; in the bubble under the number five to indicate an instructor’s enthusiasm in class, or in the bubble under the number one to say a professor didn’t mark fairly. But these forms might soon mean more to students than just a chance to dish on a favourite or most-hated professor.
The Dalhousie Student Union (DSU) and the Senate Committee Centre of Learning and Teaching (SCOLT) are working on a policy to open course evaluation results to students. It would allow students to see their instructors’ ratings online.
If you have ever visited www.ratemyprofessors.com when choosing your classes, this probably sounds familiar. But it will be different, says DSU vice president (education) Rob LeForte.
“There won’t be little chilli peppers saying whether a professor is hot or not,” he says, of the little icon that shows up beside an instructor’s name. “It’ll be more professional.”
LeForte says current evaluation forms can differ between faculties, but the new forms would follow a common format. They would also ask a lot of questions similar to current evaluations, such as whether an instructor was accessible, enthusiastic or gave timely feedback. A professor or department could add other questions to the form, but those answers would not be made public. Neither would written comments.
“So it remains instructive, as opposed to some of the destructive stuff that’s on (ratemyprofessors.com),” he says.
The policy isn’t finalized, but discussions between SCOLT, the DSU, deans and students have been ongoing since last year. LeForte says the DSU council has pushed this policy for years. Now that it’s finally underway, he says it could benefit both the students and the professors.
“For students, it’s going to be good to be able to see the results when they’re choosing courses,” he says. “For professors, it’s really going to be for whoever wants to opt-in and to give their students … or future students that insight when choosing their courses.”
It will also give instructors more incentive to better their teaching skills, he says.
But the policy won’t be mandatory. Instructors will choose to opt in if they want to make their evaluations public. Newer professors will be encouraged not to opt in because “it takes them quite a while to get used to teaching in an academic environment” says LeForte.
“Many of the professors say that this is not a problem,” adds Alan Shaver, vice president (academic and provost) of Dal’s senior administration. “Other professors have questions about privacy. They have questions about what the students want to do with this.”
Sean Clark, PhD candidate and lecturer in the political science department, says he likes the idea of the new policy. It allows students to make a more informed decision in something they’re paying for, he says.
“Post-secondary education is much like any other business transaction,” he writes in an e-mail. “Students are paying … consumers of an extremely specialized product.”
But he cautions students against relying on instructor evaluations when choosing a class. There could be other factors affecting students’ ratings, such as course material that’s inherently dry or uninteresting.
“If engineers only selected classes on the basis of professor popularity, I would not be so keen to fly in airplanes or drive over bridges,” he writes.
Instructor ratings would only be available to students. They would have to log onto the website using their Dal accounts and passwords.
Other Canadian universities have taken on a similar initiative – among them McGill and McMaster. Shaver says Dal has looked to the G13 schools, Canada’s research leaders, as examples.
Amy Higgins, a first-year student at the University of King’s College, says she would probably use the website for choosing future Dal courses.
“I think it’s really great because it might help me,” she says. “But I feel like it also might be misleading because certain professors might be good for a certain learning style and they might have poor ratings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t work for me.”
Costs and resources needed for the policy are also still in the works. Once the policy is more concrete, it will have to go through Dal’s senate in March. It would then be implemented for the 2010/2011 academic year.
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