Course evaluation site needs a change

When choosing classes, it’s easy to see an interesting description and think it’s going to make for a good semester.

This thought process, however, is flawed.

An apathetic, unqualified or downright rude teacher can ruin an enticing subject, whereas a dull field of study can become a passion with the right support.

Max Rubin | Daily Trojan

I, for example, had never considered economics as a major until an effective high school teacher showed me just how interesting supply and demand can be.

Registering for classes is no small matter — every class has the potential to change your career trajectory. Unfortunately, less than perfect information about instructors makes it difficult to know what you’re getting yourself into.

Sure, you can check RateMyProfessors.com, but a few disgruntled students can distort the image of a professor and make the ratings useless.

USC offers its own evaluation site, but it is plagued by shortcomings that make it nearly useless.

The setup is clunky and confusing. Many classes are not published because of a lack of student responses.

The feedback is too objective: teachers are rated in a variety of vague categories on a scale from one to five.

This kind of system tends to reveal little about a professor because of its structure.

A “fun” or “nice” teacher will usually get all 5’s from lazy survey-takers who enjoyed the class. A strict or demanding teacher, even one that makes class useful and relevant, is at risk of getting straight 1’s from a resentful student. This  kind of behavior skews the numbers and leads to scores that reveal little about the class itself.

To get a subjective opinion that reveals information about the class, word of mouth seems to be the only option — and word of mouth is unreliable in its own way. Though the information might be more relevant, it is just one opinion. To truly get a feel for how a class works, it’s essential to listen to more than just one person’s experience.

USC has done a fair job providing student feedback to teachers, but what about to other students?

If there were a well-crafted, relatively unbiased survey and rating system geared toward students, we would be able to choose classes more effectively. We could even put pressure on professors to make their classes more student-friendly.

This website would include the current rating system but add responses to pointed questions that require a verbal response.

Information about homework load, attendance-taking and other such factors would be a lot more helpful than knowing that a teacher gets a 3.5/5 for “organizing course to achieve goals.”

USC students are exceptionally well-connected to their community: Sites such as MyUSC and Blackboard allow instructors and students to share information about their classes and community events.

It would be simple enough to create and to implement a system in which written student evaluations could be published to a database other students could access. With some quality control to prevent responses from students who are simply holding a grudge, the system could be incredibly useful.

USC has the means to make this a reality. A restructuring of the course evaluation site could ease the stress of registration and could improve students’ class experiences.

Burke Gibson is a freshman majoring in economics.