Econ department makes course evaluations public

In a first step toward making course evaluations public, the economics department released many of its fall 2011 course evaluations on CourseWorks Monday morning.

The Student Affairs Committee of the University Senate is planning to present a resolution this year to publish course evaluations. Students are asked to complete evaluations at the end of each semester.

The economics department is one step ahead, reverting to a practice it had started in 2003 but abandoned in recent years of posting evaluations online, according to Susan Elmes, director of undergraduate studies in the economics department. The department used to post evaluations to its website, but when it no longer had the staff to put them up in a timely manner, the practice was discontinued.

Quantitative results in three categories—effectiveness of instructors, readings and course materials, and physical classroom location—for all of the economics department’s undergraduate lecture courses and some senior seminars have been released. The published evaluations did not include any written comments.

Elmes said students often decide against taking a certain class or choosing an instructor due to outdated student-written reviews on the Columbia Underground Listing of Professor Ability, or CULPA.

“Students may be making poor choices in course selection due to incomplete or faulty information,” she said. “We hope that these evaluations will be one factor that students consider.”

In an email to economics students, department administrator Laura Yan said that evaluations were only made public if more than 50 percent of the class responded and if there were at least nine responses. Overall, 26 evaluations are available, including those for Principles of Economics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, and Intermediate Microeconomics.

Evaluations for some courses in the School of Engineering and Applied Science are available online, and while some are as recent as 2011, others are only as recent as 2004. It appears that the economics course evaluations posted Monday are the most recent Columbia College evaluations available.

A SAC subcommittee chaired by Ryan Turner, a graduate student in SEAS, and Sarah Snedeker, BC ’12, is currently working on a report and proposal to make course evaluations public across all schools and all departments at Columbia. SAC co-chair and University Senator Alex Frouman, CC ’12, said they aim to have both ready to present to the entire senate by mid-March.

“Overall quality of course evaluations for everyone increases when there is a sense among the students that the evaluations are being used for something,” he said. “Faculty members and departments do use them, but most students have no idea if anyone even reads them.”

Allan Kang, CC ’14 and a prospective financial economics major, said these evaluations would be a “good complement” to CULPA.

At the same time, he said, “I don’t think having this quantitative assessment can replace” written reviews.

Shara Mohtadi, CC ’14 and a prospective economics-political science major, agreed, saying that qualitative reviews “would be more accurate just because it’s a lot more wide-ranging.”

Justin Yang, CC ’13 and a financial economics major, said that releasing the evaluations was good for transparency.

“I think it’s definitely a step that all the departments should think about taking,” Yang said. “It would be great if every student would be able to access that regardless of their major or school.”

University Senator Kenny Durell, CC ’12, said that having the evaluations was a “nice first step,” but that CourseWorks was an inadequate platform in the long run for course evaluations.

“It’s certainly not a perfect search engine,” he said. “It’s going to get way, way muddier once more classes get added on. We need to be thinking long-term planning.”

Durell said that not being able to compare different courses and instructors side-by-side was one major flaw. “If they’re not really streamlined to help you find classes in an effective manner, then it doesn’t matter,” he said.

Having a clear presentation of evaluations is particularly important for the student of economics, Michael Riordan, chair of the economics department, said.

“As we explain in the Economics courses we teach, consumers make better choices when they have better information,” Riordan said in an email.

lillian.chen@columbiaspectator.com

An earlier version of this article misstated the year of the most recent online SEAS course evaluations. The article has been updated to reflect the correction.