By Julie Yoshioka
Daily Bruin Contributor
With warnings such as “Avoid this professor like the
plague” and “Don’t cross his path, you may be
accused of anything,” students may think twice about
enrolling in some professors’ classes.
On the other hand, praises such as “He makes organic
chemistry doable, if not tolerable” and “He truly is a
teacher,” could sway students the other way.
These comments, however, don’t come from friendly advice,
but rather from online evaluation sites that rival
school-distributed professor evaluations.
“The Internet is a perfect way to share
information,” said Jaysen Gillespie, founder of
StudentInfo.org. “It lets you learn information from
everyone. The whole campus is your friend.”
To complete an online evaluation, students judge professors on
criteria such as speaking skills, types of examinations, amount of
homework, availability and overall performance.
“We looked at official review forms from different schools
and asked students what they wanted to know,” Gillespie said.
“We think these are factors that students have enough
information to judge on.”
After entering a minimum number of reviews at Web sites such as
RatingsOnline and StudentInfo.org, students are then granted access
to a database of professor evaluations.
Many of the sites also allow students to choose from a
pre-selected list of adjectives describing the professor as well as
utilize a comment box to enter additional notes.
These reviews are then added to a database of reviews for each
school that students can then access for information on
professors.
“I’ve tried using the site before,” said
Kanako Asakura, a second-year political science student.
“It’s really helpful to find out about your professors
before actually taking classes. This way you could find out things
not only from your friends, but other people too.”
What makes these sites different from evaluations distributed by
schools is that they are operated independently of universities and
colleges, so they aren’t subject to school policies.
The university mandates evaluations, and the Evaluation of
Instruction Program aids in this process by providing evaluation
forms for department coordinators who distribute and then return
the forms for processing.
The EIP then takes departmental averages of the students’
numerical ratings and sends the data back to the department.
“From there it is up to the department,” said Larry
Loeher, director for Instructional Development. “We recommend
departments to keep statistic records, and most departments look at
quarterly data in reviewing promotions.”
There is currently a subcommittee within the Undergraduate
Council of the Academic Senate that is looking to post these
evaluations online next year.
Academic Affairs Commissioner Ana Lynn Rocio cited the growing
number of non-school affiliated professor review sites as one of
the reasons she raised the issue during Undergraduate Students
Association Council meetings.
“They’re starting to understand that it’s
necessary and we might as well participate (in online evaluations)
so that we have accurate sources of information rather than outside
entities,” Rocio said.
She also noted that course reviews which compiled student
evaluations containing average scores and additional comments for
professors have been published in the past.
Rocio said the online format is “financially more sound
and effective.”
As far as the current school evaluations go, not all students
feel they are a useful way to provide information for
professors.
“There’s no point; what’s it going to
do?” said Juan Flores, a second-year economics student.
“Do the professors even read them? Do they even
care?”
Although some students may feel this way, Loeher said,
“Students need to know that (department) chairs don’t
always look at what one person said, but what students overall
said.”
He also described how departments often use the data to make
personnel decisions as well as determine the need for faculty
improvement.
StudentInfo.org encourages professors to use their Web site to
see what students actually have to say about them. They will set up
accounts for professors and allow them to read comments.
“We’re perfectly happy to allow professors access to
the database,” Gillespie said. “We’re not trying
to be “˜students only.'”
An additional concern of the evaluations given by schools is
that results aren’t available to the public, so students may
not see how others feel about a particular class or professor.
By using Web sites, though, students may view majority ratings
of an individual professor.
A major setback right now, however, seems to lie in gathering
enough students to contribute evaluations.
StudentInfo.org features a database of more than 500 reviews for
UCLA and Profreview has about 70, but many other sites have only a
few reviews listed for UCLA.
Still, most of these Web sites are fairly recent creations and
are in the process of building a larger compilation of reviews.
In addition, many students said they weren’t aware of the
Web sites, and some schools aren’t included on some of the
Web sites.
“I didn’t even know you could do that,” Flores
said. “I had never even heard about (Internet
evaluations).”
Gillespie said he hopes to fix this dilemma by offering
incentives for students who refer the site to their friends.
One such example is a current referral contest where members can
earn points based on the number of reviews entered and the number
of friends whom they convince to join. Those with the most points
will receive cash prizes.
In the initial start-up of the company, StudentInfo.org also
offered cash incentives to members of a survey Web site as a way to
encourage students to write reviews. Cash was awarded based on the
number of reviews entered.
Other sites, however, just promise the availability of a free
forum to express opinions. This hasn’t gone unnoticed as some
professors, such as Professor Daniel Curson-Brown of City College
of San Francisco, have opposed such Web sites.
In a recent suit against a former student who set up an
evaluation site, Curson-Brown called it a “hate site”
and said that the anonymous aspect of the submitting reviews
created an “extortion of grades.”
“You can’t grade honestly because someone can go
after you,” Curson-Brown told the Los Angeles Times last
month.
Even with the controversy concerning such Web sites, Gillespie
still hopes to expand the database to include more schools.
“We hope to eventually create a mechanism to compare the
quality of teaching across colleges in the nation where people
could see the average ratings for professors from each
school,” Gillespie said. “I think we’re only at
one-tenth of what we could have.”