With the spring 2015 semester course catalogue available for students' perusal — and the beginning of enrollment just more than a week away for most students — a large swath of the University community will turn to non-University resources in deciding which courses to take.
Lou’s List, which allows users to scan entire lists of available courses by department and school, is one of the most prominent tools students will use. The site was created by Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield and aims to offer a more user-friendly experience than the University’s Student Information System.
“SIS is more appropriate in a context where you know exactly what you want,” Bloomfield said. “[Lou’s List] can be explored casually and without necessarily a destination in mind. With a liberal arts education, you don’t necessarily know what you’re looking for. … En route to finding what you think you want, you find other things. That was a major motivation in creating Lou’s List.”
Lou’s List database scans SIS each hour, and the entire operation is supported by Bloomfield himself, without financial compensation. Bloomfield says Lou’s List provides services that no other system does.
“If you create a program from scratch — so a new major — they’re invisible on Grounds except if Lou’s List creates a program for them,” Bloomfield said. “So when something new comes along that clearly looks like it would provide information that no one else can provide, I add it.”
Lou’s List does not update in real time, however, which can make it less ideal for students looking to gauge the length of waitlists and to check whether a course is open.
“It would take minutes, maybe even longer than minutes, to read all those course enrollment figures,” Bloomfield said. “It’s an hour behind because I read once an hour. That’s about as frequently as SIS will tolerate.”
For a more subjective overview of available courses, many students also turn to theCourseForum, a site which ammasses student reviews and posts available grades for hundreds of University courses. The site was created by former University students and is managed by current students and alumni. Anyone with an University email address can create an account and use it to write and read reviews of professors and classes.
The site is currently paid for by fourth-year Computer Engineering student Brian Whitlow, head of theCourseForum.
“We don’t do this because we can sell data to advertisers or to make money by charging for the site,” Whitlow said in an email. “This platform helps U.Va. Students develop real world skills in web development and data analytics. The cost of this site pales in comparison to the value that students get every semester and what we get out of it through professional development.”
About 85 percent of the student body logs into theCourseForum at least once per semester, Whitlow said. During peak scheduling time, theCourseForum has 700,000 page views and an average of session time of nine-and-a-half minutes.
And these numbers, Whitlow said, are only increasing.
Some professors have embraced theCourseForum, creating accounts to read their own reviews, which can serve as a supplement to formalized course evaluations. Whitlow said not all professors appreciate the review system, however.
“There are professors who do not agree with our philosophy for unfiltered reviews,” Whitlow said. “We believe in unfiltered, unbiased reviews so we don’t require people to write reviews nor do we monitor reviews.”
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