Taking advantage of the College's computer resources, the Student Assembly and the Golden Key Honor Society have put together an on-line version of the Assembly's Course Guide.
Meanwhile, in the bowels of the Kiewit Computation Center, the College is working to translate the Organization, Regulations, and Courses book into a computer medium.
The Assembly's guide is an evaluation of 56 classes at the College that discusses specific courses and features approval ratings of different aspects of the courses based on student surveys.
Costing the Assembly 17 percent of the price of its printed counterpart, the guide is scheduled to appear on the College's World Wide Web page on Jan. 23.
While the printed guides cost the Assembly $12,000, Assembly President Jim Rich '96 said, the on-line version costs only $200.
"The $200 was mainly for copying evaluations to be handed out in classes and for the purchase of an HTML instructional book," said Assembly member Dominic LaValle '99. HTML, or Hyper-Text Markup Language, is the programming language used for writing Web pages.
"The main advantage of placing the course guide on the World Wide Web is that it is then more accessible and easier to update," Rich said.
LaValle said the on-line version makes the information more accessible and is expandable with little added cost.
"There will ... be a searching index to allow students to choose courses based on criterion like professors," LaValle said. "And the web page will allow [electronic-mail] to the Student Assembly and Golden Key members in charge of the page."
LaValle said the only problem has been a low response rate from professors.
"The biggest problem was that many of the professors didn't hand out the Student Assembly evaluations last term," he said. "Out of the 180 courses that we printed evaluations for, we got 60 back. And for many of those, there were low return rates.
"Only 40 to 45 percent of the class would return the evaluation. In the Math department, not a single course evaluation was returned," LaValle said.
Assembly Vice President of Communications Jonah Sonnenborn said the Assembly began working on the Web page in October.
The College has also been hard at work computerizing its course listings in the ORC.
Computer technicians in Kiewit have begun putting the ORC on an electronic database to make updating and editing the ORC easier for the Registrar's office.
"We will be starting translation of the tapes that currently store the ORC into a computer this term," said Malcolm Brown, director of Academic Computing. "We have just about finished discussion over the way in which we will be organizing this information."
The ORC will not be on-line anytime soon according to Brown.
"The ORC is immensely complex," Brown said. "The O and R parts are fine. The organizations and regulations are merely text listings. However, the C part, the courses section, is a challenge."
The Registrar currently does all work and updating of the ORC on paper, but the computer listings would allow for more efficient updating of the ORC, Associate Registrar Nancy Broadhead said.
"We send out copies of the statement regarding courses, and get back marked up pages," Broadhead said. "The Registrar would like to be able to have all the information keyed in by computer."
The new database storage will allow for searching and organization based on options like class requirements, professors and prerequisites fulfilled by the course.
"After the information is in the database, it will be given to the Registrar," Brown said. "They can use the database for updating courses, administration, and transfer to DCIS medium." DCIS is the Dartmouth College Information Service.
Brown said eventually the on-line ORC may be available for student access.
