Students enrolling in classes for next semester will have a more comprehensive way of finding out their peers' opinions of courses and professors through an improved version of the Associated Students of Madison's course evaluation Web site.
This semester, ASM's Academic Affairs Campaign has been working to get each academic department to disclose information based on course evaluations students fill out at the end of each semester. According to Dylan Rath, Academic Affairs Campaign intern and UW-Madison freshman, the committee has collected a record high of approximately 107 of 112 departments and has added several new features, including the ability to see how classes are ranked based on instructor, how stimulating the material was, professor availability and course organization.
\The computer will automatically arrange the classes according to their ratings,"" Rath said. ""You can see how the professors score from top to bottom in each of [the four] categories.""
Stephanie Kern, chair of the academic affairs campaign and UW-Madison junior, said the Web site now carefully explains what each ranking means.
Kern said the site is now easier to use because ASM switched from a PDF format to HTML, which is more accessible to many students.
She also said ASM added a standard deviation component this year.
""The larger [the deviation number is], the more varied our responses were,"" Kern said. ""If you have a really small number that means most of the results were right around [the ranking].""
Kern said more UW-Madison students are relying on ASM course evaluations since the recent improvements. She added ASM is targeting publicity at UW-Madison freshmen, who often do not realize the site exists. This semester, ASM is circulating dorm door mailers, putting up posters and handing out suckers with information attached to increase awareness.
""I think it's been getting more and more popular, especially as we're getting more results from more departments,"" Kern said.
Course evaluations are available at
