Northridge : CSUN Project Rates Courses, Professors

Aiming to give students more options in choosing their classes, a pilot program begun a few weeks ago at Cal State Northridge is allowing them to rate their courses and instructors via the Internet.

Marc Levine, CSUN’s student body president, said the project is still in its infancy but that he hopes eventually to publish the results online or in a printed form.

“It’s not a witch hunt,” he stressed. “It’s a way for students to register whether they truly enjoy a course they’re taking, or a professor.”

Accessible through Associated Students’ home page on the World Wide Web at https://www.csun.edu/ ~hfoao135/evalform.html, the online survey asks students to evaluate a course’s workload, tests and grading, as well as the instructor.

Levine said that although only a few dozen students have responded so far he hopes to make their answers available by the end of the month.

The survey asks for students’ identification numbers but Levine explained that they are not required and that any published results will be completely anonymous. Levine said the information is requested to prevent “ballot-stuffing” and to limit participants to currently enrolled students.

Nancy J. Owens, CSUN’s faculty president, said she believes that it’s useful for students to have information about their classes before registering but said results from a computer survey may be skewed by too few respondents.

“I think that’s one of the concerns of the faculty,” she said.

The idea came out of a meeting of student body presidents from several California State University campuses with the goal of eventually making such a system available at each college, Levine said.

“It will have an impact and that’s why it’s important.”