Professor evaluations get a tech upgrade before students weigh in

Every UB student wants professors who are interesting, helpful and clear, but as many students discover each semester, top-notch faculty can be hard to find.

The release of CourseEval3, a Web-based evaluation tool, may make it easier for students to separate the wheat from the chaff of mediocre professors.

Developed by Academic Management Systems, a company located in the off-campus Baird Research Park, the new CourseEval3 program generates online questionnaires that students can fill out at the end of each semester. Many classes outside of the College of Arts and Sciences still offer students a chance to speak their minds the old-fashioned way on paper, but in recent years UB has put an emphasis on online evaluations.

"It can accommodate input from more students. It's scalable. It is more user-friendly," said John Eisner, vice president and founder of Academic Management Systems. "Students can save their responses and finish the survey in several sessions.

The version customized for UB, known as UB Course and Teacher Survey, generates ratings for both professors and course sections from the College of Arts and Sciences. Results generated by CourseEval2 for the two previous semesters are already available on the Student Association Web site.

The third version of CourseEval improves on its predecessor in several important ways, but these changes will most likely escape the notice of most students.

The survey scheduled for the end of the current semester will consist of questions similar to those used last year. There will be 10 multiple choice questions followed by a few written responses, the average response of which will be posted on the SA Web site.

"Two questions that are considered summary questions will be available to students through the SA Web site," said Peter Gold, associate dean of the College of Art and Sciences. "The average response to these questions will give future students an idea about what the course is like."

Faculty and administrators can also access a more complete summary of the survey results.

Though consistently low scores do not spell the end of a professor's career, they may prevent the professor from obtaining promotions or tenure.

Gwynn Thomas, an assistant professor in the women's studies department, said the software has both benefits as well as drawbacks.

"Student evaluations are one way to help professor to improve their courses," she said. "Of course, there could be a potential conflict of interest with students who want easy courses and rate their professors based on that criteria. Our goal is to challenge students."

John Kearns, a professor from the philosophy department, said CourseEval3 is somewhat of a mixed bag.

"Looking at the results can help professors. However, younger faculty members may feel some pressure to act one way or other, because the results of the survey have an impact on decisions to award tenures," he said.

Gold said he hopes the program will help improve the quality of courses offered at the College of Arts and Sciences.

"Of course, the course evaluations figure into the decision-making process for promotions and tenure," he said. "However, it will not be the only criteria used, and I hope that professors will not take it as pressure to teach an easier course."

Gold also emphasized the difference between the UBCATS and ratemyprofessor.com, a popular Web site for UB students looking for the best professors.

"Ratemyprofessor.com is, and I must emphasize this, entertainment. In other words, it's fake," he said. "It's often the opinion of one or two people who may be resentful toward the professor over bad grades."

Some students beg to differ. Marielle Posmik, a sophomore pharmaceutical sciences major, said the Web site actually helped her find a good professor.

"Ratemyprofessor.com helped me find a really good calc teacher, professor (James) Javor. Unlike a lot of teachers, he speaks English well, and I can understand him," she said.

Shinko Suzuki, a junior exercise science major, said she was burned by the popular Web site.

"The chem 102 teacher was supposed to be good, but he turned out to be a bastard," she said. "(Another) had a good rating on the Web site, but he turned out to be only okay."

While ratemyprofessor.com features categories such as "hotness" and "easiness" and allows students to post or read commentary on professors, the SA evaluation provides a simple two bar graphs representing the average response to the summary questions.

The current survey replaced a bubble-sheet-and-number-two-pencil system in 2004, and Eisner said that the software has many advantages over the traditional method.

"The administrative overhead with paper is tremendous," he said. "Just think of all the people it takes to push all that paper around."

"With the bubble-sheet system," said Gold, "I would estimate that the cost to be $1,200 per year, not counting staff salaries and other expenses. With CourseEval, it costs $7,500 and takes half the staff time. So, less cost, less staff, more and better data."

Eisner said CourseEval3 is the latest version of a software program that he first helped to develop as academic dean at UB Dental School.

"At first, we used it at the admissions office to consider applicants," he said. "Later, I asked if I could develop a version of the program that can be used for other settings, a program that we can sell to other schools, and it grew from there."

Academic Management Systems now offers five programs to simplify administrative functions of large institutions such as hospitals, schools, and companies.

"Out of the 55 dental schools in the U.S., 40 of them are using our software," said Eisner.

UB's Schools of Pharmacy, Public Health, Nursing, and Dentistry all use CourseEval and other programs supplied by AMS. The College of Arts and Sciences is the latest and largest UB school to sign up for the software.