Students have always relied on RateMyProfessors.com, word of mouth and course summaries to fill their ACES bookbags.
But now, they can take a more thorough peek at what they might face in the coming semester.
Last Tuesday, the Academic Affairs Committee relaunched the Duke Student Government's online syllabus archive, a Web site where students can access old course syllabi.
Tyler Green, Trinity '07, who served as a DSG academic affairs senator in the 2005-2006 school year, had managed the online syllabus archive Web site-which eventually fell out of use. Sophomore Ben Getson, the current DSG academic affairs senator in charge of relaunching the Web site, said he stumbled upon the Web site about two weeks ago and thought it would help students by providing them with a more thorough description of courses.
"Right now, if you want to know about a class, your only option is the course synopsis page on ACES. They're brief, not very informative and we have no control over them," he said. "[There is also] a random chance that the class will [not] even have a synopsis page on ACES."
The syllabus archive, however, is still a work-in-progress. Of the 307 syllabi currently available on the Web site, about 80 percent were uploaded when the archive was first launched in 2005, Getson said. He and junior Chelsea Goldstein, DSG vice president for academic affairs, said they want to build up the site again by having students submit old syllabi from courses they have taken.
So far, the archive has been made available to DSG members and sent out to members of the DSG Academic Affairs Committee Facebook group to test its popularity, Goldstein said. Although it has not been formally released, students can access the syllabus archive from the DSG Web site.
Goldstein added that she plans to release information about the syllabus archive to the entire student body in the weekly DSG Bulletin and a blast e-mail sometime this week.
"We're hoping it'll be self-sustaining once it starts.... [When] people find out about it, we really won't have to do much advertising anymore," she said.
They eventually hope to integrate the syllabus archive with the Duke Evals site, Getson said.
The Duke Evals Web site was created by a committee that included former DSG president Elliott Wolf, Trinity '08, and Owen Astrachan, professor of the practice of computer science, in Spring 2006 for students to leave evaluations for professors and courses. Although Getson said many students used Duke Evals when it was first launched, it "lacked staying power," and students eventually stopped visiting the site.
Getson, who was working with Astrachan earlier this year to relaunch the Duke Evals Web site, said he decided to shift his attention to the online syllabus archive because it would be faster to get off the ground. Depending on how much help he receives from Astrachan, Getson said he still hopes to relaunch the Duke Evals Web site by the end of this semester.
Although Duke administrators said they thought the archive would be helpful, many said students should use the site with discretion because professors often change their syllabi.
Ingeborg Walther, associate professor of the practice and director of the German language program, said she hoped the availability of old syllabi online would encourage students to contact professors who would generally be willing to give them updated versions of class syllabi.
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