HIUS 323 -- Rise & Fall of the Slave South; is that class worth taking? In coming semesters, students will have a new resource with which to answer that question: online course evaluations. As the system reaches completion, the six questions that it will consist of have been made public. The evaluations will be a useful tool, but students should remember to make course selections by quality, not difficulty.
The numerical ratings, which will be appended to standard online course evaluation forms, read: "1. The average number of hours per week I spent outside of class preparing for this course was; 2. I learned a great deal in this course; 3. Overall, this was a worthwhile course; 4. The course's goals and requirements were defined and adhered to by the instructor; 5. The instructor was approachable and made himself/herself available to students outside the classroom; 6. Overall, the instructor was an effective teacher."
The very first question, unfortunately, feeds into the paradigm of figuring out which courses are easy. While difficulty can reasonably be part of the course-selection equation, it should not be the determining factor. Yet fully half of the evaluation questions have nothing to do with the quality of the actual course.
In part, the system seems to have been designed with this in mind. J. Milton Adams, the vice provost for academic programs, said that "the approach was [to find] those things students wanted to know... If I were a student, I'd want to know how much work was in one course versus the other." This model of academics, however, gives primacy to everything but the actual academics.
Some of the best courses at the University require a very heavy work load. The vague and ambiguous questions "I learned a great deal" and "This was a worthwhile course" may not outweigh the negative perception given by the less-critical questions on outside work or professor availability.
There is always a temptation to seek out courses that are light on work or reputedly easy. Professors, however, do not pile on outside assignments out of spite; rather, delving into primary and secondary sources supplements the lectures and enriches the educational experience.
Daniel Young, chair of Student Council's academic affairs committee and a point man on the project, argues, "[I]t's important to keep in mind that many of the classes students take while at the University are not taken specifically because of an 'academic benefit' related to [a] specific field, but rather as electives." While students often take electives in order to broaden their horizons, this goal is not furthered by winnowing the COD for easy courses.
As to what faculty think of the evaluation questions, it's not clear -- Adams said that no survey of professors had been done.
None of these cautions should take anything away from the diligent work that went into making course evaluations a reality. This is an issue that has been on the table for half a decade, and it represents perhaps Student Council's greatest accomplishment over that span. Now that evaluations are here, however, the execution must be sound, and that means ensuring they are used correctly.
After the first round of course registration using the evaluations, a survey of students should be taken to see how they utilized the information. Acquiring data as to which questions are influencing students' decisions will shed light on where tweaks need to be made.
Of course, there is one complication mitigating whether evaluations will even be available: At least 65 percent of students must respond in a given class to trigger online posting of the results. This is crucial to evaluating the evaluations-- there is no way to test the efficacy of the questions unless a large number of classes reach the 65 percent mark. Therefore, everyone should make a concerted effort to fill out their evaluations, keeping in mind that there are department-specific questions as well. Whether the questions are skewed or not, they will still provide more resources for course selection than has ever before been available.
Access to information is almost always a positive development. In the long run, course evaluations will be helpful in combing through an otherwise dense directory. However, the questions as they stand push students in the wrong direction, towards an arena where easy trumps interesting and workload stands above educational value. As we proceed into an era of course evaluations, we must be careful that they are used to help students make quality choices.
Elliot Haspel is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at ehaspel@cavalierdaily.com.
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