A new course evaluation system has arrived just in time for fall class registration, but the new online form-independent of the University-is not the one anticipated by student leaders and administrators.
Frustrated by the failures of similar projects in the past, and by delays in making University-sponsored evaluation forms public, two undergraduates created EZDevil.com in part to aid students registering for classes. The site also boasts a wide variety of links to Duke-related and national websites, as well as a search engine for digital music and video, but the site's developers said that course evaluations are the main draw.
"We originally had the idea of doing course evaluations because we knew that [Duke Student Government] has been working on it for a long time, and we felt that students really wanted a resource to help choose their courses," one of the developers said. The two spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern that their academic standing could be threatened.
The site has been up for about two weeks, and as of Tuesday evening, users had submitted about 300 evaluations of spring 2001 courses.
Visitors to the site can rate classes on factors such as interest level, difficulty, workload, knowledge gained and overall opinion. The site also includes space for comments, and so far, many evaluations contain several notes.
Comments are accompanied by the grade the student said he or she received, but there are no assurances that the student actually received that grade or even took the class.
"It is not a system that I would support in its present form," Dean of Trinity College Robert Thompson wrote in an e-mail. He is collaborating with DSG on a University-sponsored course evaluation system. "The method for assuring the authenticity and accuracy of grade reporting is not clear, and the response categories for some of the questions are unprofessional."
The site developers said those categories were created to accommodate faculty concerns, including the possibility of libeling a professor. "We really don't ask questions about the professors directly," one said. "We ask about the classroom experience in general."
The site developers screen all comments before posting them to make sure they contain exclusively opinion and no obvious falsehoods. "We've only gotten two or three that have been really negative," one said.
The website allows for comments to appease another faculty concern-that a quantitative rating system might oversimplify an evaluation. But the site developers said that such ratings can be useful, especially when supplemented by written comments. "There are some things that aren't that subjective," one said.
The site does not include advertisements, and the site developers said they financed the site with their own money. "It took relatively little time to set this up," one added. "I hope... that it will encourage organizations like DSG or the administration to get the ball rolling on their own system."
Senior Jason Bergsman, DSG vice president for academic affairs, has been coordinating with Thompson on a course evaluation system. But Bergsman said EZDevil.com will not change his approach. If anything, the student interest demonstrated by the site could boost parallel efforts, he said.
Thompson agreed that the site will not usurp other efforts, adding that a sanctioned evaluation system is progressing.
"I think that DSG and the administration have been moving forward in a genuine collaborative process to formulate a system that is informative and accurate, and that addresses faculty and student concerns," Thompson wrote. "Currently, we are addressing the need for administrative support, and corresponding funding sources, for the DSG endeavor."
A similar course evaluation form to EZDevil.com's used to exist on one of its current rivals-DevilNet.duke.edu-but the former editors removed evaluations because of libel concerns. DevilNet and The Chronicle are both owned by Duke Student Publishing Company.
Joshua Spielman, current co-editor of DevilNet, hopes to bring the service back to compete with EZDevil.com. "We ultimately want to do it," he said, adding that plans have been complicated because the site shares programmers with The Chronicle and DSG. DevilNet also would edit any comments, Spielman said.
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