When selecting classes, anxiety is a common feeling among many students who are trying to pick the courses that are "right" for them. Now there is a new way to know beforehand whether or not a course is suitable for a student, designed to alleviate some of the tension and stress associated with course registration.
The Student Confederation recently proposed a solution to help students make informed decisions concerning class - post teacher and course evaluations on the my.american.edu Web portal. Yesterday, the Faculty Senate unanimously approved the motion to post the processed data online.
Anthony DeAngelo, the Academic Affairs Director of the SC, said that students have been talking about the prospect of posting the evaluations online for a number of years.
When DeAngelo assumed the Academic Affairs position in May, the issue was brought to his attention by students, as well as Provost Neil Kerwin and President Benjamin Ladner, who are both proponents of the process. Since then, DeAngelo, along with other members of the SC, has been campaigning for the Faculty Senate to approve the motion of online access to evaluations. DeAngelo noted that the course evaluations would be only one of several items in what he calls an "information suite," which would assist students in making registration decisions.
Some of the other items included in this compilation would include course syllabi, reading lists and the possibility of communication with professors beforehand. DeAngelo also stressed the importance of talking with academic advisors about course selection.
"The purpose of this process is to help students make better, informed decisions about course selection, or to give them an idea of what to expect when they take a certain course," DeAngelo said.
For years, AU has had a system to evaluate courses and the professors that teach them, said Professor John Douglass, chair of the Faculty Senate. Although the evaluations were originally the instruments of the students, the administration took over the evaluations and began using them as one of the criteria to help determine whether professors would receive promotions or merit increases, he said.
Both Douglass and DeAngelo clarified that only the processed data from the evaluations would be included online.
However, Douglass noted, this does not mean that concerns over how this information is to be used have not been raised. For one thing, he noted, the survey questions are extremely subjective, asking students whether they agree or disagree (and to what degree) with a certain statement about a course.
