The evaluation website will combine some data from the IDEA surveys that are distributed at the end of each semester with the ability for students to add comments on a discussion board for each course.

“This is going to be a set of objective, scientific data combined with subjective student input,” said Grand Marshal Chris Mather, who has done most of the programming for the project.

“Once this program is up and running, it’s going to be a good thing for the campus, and a lot of students will benefit from it,” said group leader Kristen Powers.

The original concept was a simple discussion board for each class. After the group met with Vice Provost Gary Gabriele earlier this semester, the possibility of using data from the IDEA surveys on the site was introduced, “particularly the information that will allow students to match their learning styles with the structure of the courses and professors,” Mather said.

Some information will not be included, however. “Examples of the information we can provide from the IDEA form are information on the teaching approaches used in the course, the course requirements, and student ratings of the effort needed to do well in the course,” Gabriele said.

“We will not be providing specific information about the instructor as this information is used in yearly evaluations and is confidential,” he said.

However, the site will feature an honor roll of professors in each school to highlight the top professors based on certain criteria. In addition, the Senate plans to post its own survey questions regarding the professors. The specific questions are still being considered—the intended focus of this survey will be how well the student learned, not just a criticism of the professor.

A few issues still remain in what will be implemented as well. The discussion board is still a high priority. Mather said students have expressed interest in this particular feature.

However, the chance for abuse of a discussion board is a major challenge. The group is caught between wanting a free forum for discussion and limiting unfounded personal attacks and obscene language.

As a result, “we have to think about whether that’s a prudent thing to do,” Mather said. “We don’t want to hurt professors’ reputations.”

The programming for the discussion board is complete, pending this decision.

Authentication presents another challenge. The current program requires users to be on campus in order to control access to the site. However, they are considering other options that would allow off-campus access and possibly allow only students who took a class to post comments about it.

From Gabriele’s point of view, sustainability is also a major issue. “The major challenge this project faces is in making sure that it is perpetuated from year to year,” he said. “The Senate will have to ensure that someone is responsible for keeping the site up to date from semester to semester.”

The group believes that most of the maintenance will be isolated to once a semester when new data needs to be imported.

“Once he [Gabriele] gives us that database, the computer program just runs a query for every semester and automatically updates,” Powers said.

However, that responsibility will fall on future Senates, and ensuring that they take care of it is another challenge.

“I’m giving thought to it,” Mather said. “We don’t have anything formal on it right now.”

The group expects to have the website online by the end of the year at the latest. “It’s been a pretty rapid thing,” Mather said.