With only nine days left to make final winter course selections, students are still trying to learn more about courses they might like to take. Course information databases are the most convenient way to become informed. Sadly, due to the insufficiency of the Student Assembly's guide and the College's online course assessment, many students will be unable to find enough information to choose wisely.
Class choices have a significant impact on a student's future academic career as well as his or her lifestyle during the term (think of what havoc taking organic chemistry instead of "Engines 3" would wreak on your summer term). Therefore, the College should strive to provide students with better course information by improving existing resources as well as establishing new ones.
A first step in the right direction, the Assembly's online course guide lacks exhaustiveness and quality. Fall 2006 courses Mathematics 3 and Psychology 1, each with about 150 students, garnered only eight reviews. No reviews have been posted for a significant number of courses.
The quality of most reviews is not commendable. Vague multiple-choice questions such as "was [the course] interesting?" are of little descriptive value. The free-response section is often filled with generalities such as "good prof," or "decent, not great." More substantive questions addressing the specific nature of assignments or the professor's expectations combined with additional opportunities for write-in comments would make for a more comprehensive reference. Incentives should also be created to increase participation. For instance, after their first term at Dartmouth, students could be required to post reviews to gain access to the database.
The already paltry participation in the Assembly's guide suffered another blow with the introduction of the College's online course assessment. According to the registrar's website, the College's assessment is "designed to give us more complete, accurate and confidential information about the quality of the courses and instruction being offered at Dartmouth."
I expected the project to be a successful response to the deficiencies of the Assembly's guide. However, I later learned from the office that the somewhat Orwellian "us" in the program's description does not include students. Instead, the data are only "made available to course instructors, and the appropriate department chairs and academic deans." However, since the students are equally deserving of such information, it should be made accessible to us.
Since the existing databases fail to meet the needs of the Dartmouth community, establishing new references should be considered. A simple approach would involve making syllabi, more extensive class descriptions and other course documents available to all students through Blackboard. A fuller one would be creating an entirely new database, perhaps a collaborative, Wikipedia-like one that would combine course data with opinions of students and faculty. Such an approach would enable students to access information gathered by the College and professors to respond to potentially slanderous comments in the Assembly's guide.
Until the College addresses the need for better, publicly accessible course information, I hope not too many unsuspecting incoming freshmen will sign up for that one introductory biology class in search of a science distributive.
