SBP Candidates Aim to Bring Back Course Reviews

The Carolina Course Review, a publication that listed students' course and professor evaluations after every semester, used to be available on the Internet. In 1998, the faculty temporarily shut it down, with plans to revise the system and restore it at a later date.

Sue Estroff, faculty council chairwoman, said the publication wasn't producing reliable results at the time.

"You have to be really careful with these kinds of broad-based instruments, and we wanted to make sure this was fair and reliable for students and faculty alike," she said. "I think we'd known for a while that it wasn't the best way of assessing classroom performance."

Economics Professor Boone Turchi, who was a member of the Educational Policy Committee that was asked to review the CCR, did not like the direction it was taking.

"This institution, which was designed to be a student's consumer guide, had been unilaterally turned into a professorial evaluation mechanism -- a purpose for which it had never been intended," he said.

Turchi also explained that the committee's study concluded that the CCR was an inadequate measure of the quality of teaching. He cited three variables which skewed the system: size of class, difficulty of material and a student's grade in the class. Once these three factors were corrected for, he said all the classes seemed to be on a level playing field.

For example, Turchi explained that professors from the math department had consistently received the worst reviews on the CCR.

But when Turchi did an empirical study in which he corrected for the three factors, he found that the math professors in fact were some of the most respected faculty on campus. "If you correct for grades, difficulty of material and class size, students are astute at knowing who the good professors are," Turchi said.

Another committee was set up to revise the old CCR. Committee member and business Professor Bob Adler said that after working for more than a year, the committee completed a new system.

"We did a nationwide survey of instruments that are used around the country and came up with basic questions," he said.

The newly developed review is based on a small core of questions asked in all University departments. It also includes specific questions designed to give tailored feedback to individual professors from their students, as well as a set of questions asked by student government.

But Adler said this revised instrument has not yet been implemented, the biggest obstacle being lack of faculty "inertia," or little motivation to utilize the resource.

Larry Rowan, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, said that lack of funding also was a major difficulty to overcome. "I think there is a group within the faculty who opposes the posting of evaluations, but I think the majority supports it," he said.

Adler said he is delighted that some student body president candidates have included the course review in their platform. He believes that if the students do not voice strong support for the review, then it will be difficult to convince faculty that it's a necessary tool.

"If the student body were fairly vocal and called for it, I think the faculty would be responsive," he said.

Three of the student body president candidates -- Eric Johnson, Caleb Ritter and Warren Watts -- have included the course review issue in their platforms.

Johnson said he'd like to model the new CCR after the University of Michigan's system, and have it only available on Student Central. This would limit access only to UNC students, a major point of contention surrounding the original course review.

Ritter agreed, saying that he hoped to publicize the course review better.

"I want to give students something that all the students can take advantage of so that they'll see student government is doing something for them," he said.

Estroff is optimistic that a new evaluation tool will soon be available to students.

"Part of the genius of the University is you evaluate us, we evaluate you, and that's the way we all learn."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.