Student Council announced the launching of an initiative last night to encourage student participation in completing online course evaluations for classes this semester.
Under a new plan approved by the Office of the University Provost, six questions about the course formulated by Council will accompany normal course evaluations produced by individual academic departments.
The data collected through this system will be made available to students on the Course Offering Directory if 65 percent of students enrolled in a given class fill out evaluations for the class.
"This has been a project that's been in the works for about half a decade," said Daniel Young, Council academic affairs chair. "From an academic affairs perspective, I can't think of a more effective tool than this for the course selection process."
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs J. Milton Adams said course evaluations are valuable for faculty.
Evaluations "help faculty improve courses," he said. "We want to get as much student participation as possible in order to get a reasonably balanced sample of student opinion."
Adams said some faculty have been reminding students to fill out evaluations, while some have treated course evaluations like a graded assignment on their syllabi.
In order to encourage student participation, Council plans to table on the Lawn, send out e-mails to various student groups and contact media outlets, including The Cavalier Daily, Young said.
"Council's goal is to let students know how they directly benefit from filling out evaluations," Council President Noah Sullivan said. "We get no benefit unless all of us do it. This is about student solidarity -- a thousand points of light."
If the minimum participation of 65 percent is met, data will be available on a yearly basis over the COD for each class.
In future years, students will be able to access data from past semesters for individual classes.
The program, developed by the Advanced Technology Group of ITC, will include a course collection feature that will allow students selecting classes to compare data from multiple courses simultaneously.
Council allocated approximately $16,000 in funds in previous years for this project.
"The worst thing that can happen from a student perspective is to not reach the 65 percent mark," Young said. "We need to hit this 65 percent mark this first time around in order for this to be successful."
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