Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
The University of Maryland’s course evaluation system is outdated and in dire need of an overhaul. The system offers very few benefits for students and impedes their access to information with pointless restrictions.
Student feedback is vital to improving a class and can influence important factors affecting student performance, such as amount of homework and lecture format. However, in this university’s system, there is little incentive to fill out the tedious end-of-semester survey. Before my final exams, the last thing I want to do is take 10 minutes to select an endless number of circles reflecting my “satisfaction” in various categories.
Due to the excessive number of questions, it’s highly unlikely students who complete the survey are sincere with their answers. It’s easy to just pick the middle circle or highlight in a repeating pattern to simply finish the survey. On top of that, students may give up on answering truthfully at some point. The format is monotonous, and a large portion of the questions are too ambiguous to generate any meaningful response.
The university’s course evaluation system also suffers from only making these evaluations available at the end of the semester. From a student’s perspective, course evaluations are essential to navigating the intricacies of their schedule and helping them determine which professors or classes they prefer. However, by the end of the semester, most students have already completed registration. It’s too late for them to change classes or sections as most alternatives are no longer available.
I am an avid lurker on PlanetTerp and Reddit, two resources that I have found indispensable in finalizing my schedule for the upcoming semester. PlanetTerp is an all-encompassing resource that not only allows students to view grade distribution for a class, but also to view various reviews based on “star” ratings. Reddit is a more informal marketplace of information where I can usually find specific answers regarding potential classes.
The beauty of PlanetTerp’s system comes from its simplicity. For each course, they have a graphical distribution of reported grades — even accounting for pluses and minuses. While it may be somewhat controversial to publicize those details, the hard truth is that grades are important to every college student. If a student is unsure about a class, and already has a difficult workload, it may not be beneficial for them to take a class that could negatively impact their academic standing.
PlanetTerp’s use of a “star”-based system allows people to rate not only a class, but a professor. This allows for a significantly greater degree of insight into how the class is taught, for example, and the format of homework. More often than not, the advice I’ve gotten from these reviews was monumentally more helpful than what I’ve tried to glean from the university’s in-house system.
Reddit, while formatted differently than PlanetTerp, has been similarly useful when choosing my future classes. The university’s subreddit is very active, and within hours of posting a question there is often a multitude of responses. Questions can range from general — concerning the content of the class — to more specific ones that deal with exam formats, curves and other important considerations.
Ideally, the university’s CourseEvalUM system should benefit students as much as it benefits professors. Professors are able to receive feedback on their performance, while students are able to view a large database of feedback to help them choose classes.
However, the current system offers very few incentives for students to meaningfully reflect on and contribute their experiences. Changing the format of the survey — through adding more response-based questions with targeted prompts — will simplify the process of offering feedback on a class. In addition, a clearer ranking system and additional information about the class, such as grade distribution, may be an answer to low participation rates.
Kevin Hu is a freshman physiology and neurobiology major. He can be reached at kevxhu@gmail.com.
