This semester marks the debut of the new online course evaluations provided in the Course Offering Directory. Data was averaged from student responses to six questions and was posted next to the course names. The questions vary from number of hours spent working for the course to the effectiveness of the professor.
Students who utilized the evaluations had mixed reactions about its usefulness. Many said they think the course evaluations do not supply information they consider essential in selecting their courses.
Second-year College student Michael Phillips said he thinks the evaluations have significant room for improvement.
"The evaluations should be more descriptive," Phillips said. "I feel like they don't really tell me anything useful."
First-year College student Farin Alcasid agreed with Phillips.
"I looked at the course evaluations, but they don't really help because they only tell you numbers," Alcasid said. "And a lot of classes didn't even have them."
Phillips' main concern was the wording and content of the questions asked in the evaluations. He said he thinks the problem with the questions was their ambiguous nature and the manner in which they were asked.
One category Phillips said is not very functional is the average number of hours per week spent outside of class preparing for the course.
"In that category, the numbers are all very similar," Phillips said. "There needs to be a wider range in the number groups for more variation in data."
Phillips also proposed more general improvements.
"The evaluations need to include more specific questions and more detailed feedback from students," he said. "The questions really were not that good."
Rather than depending on the COD for evaluation data, students said they prefer feedback on Web sites such as rateyourprofessor.com. Phillips said he prefers the site because it provides a different type of information than the online course evaluations.
"I like rateyourprofessor.com better because it shows comments instead of just numbers, which don't have as much meaning," Phillips said.
Alcasid also said she prefers the site, but for some additional reasons other than the more detailed descriptions about the course itself.
"The Web site is the best because they tell you whether the professor is hot or not," Alcasid said.
Although students voiced many concerns with the new evaluation system on the COD, they agree its existence is of use to students.
"I think it is good that there is some sort of student feedback available on the COD," Phillips said.
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