2008 Woodie Awards
Online service seeks data on evaluation of teachers
Grade distribution already available on Pick-a-Prof.
By Jared Solis
Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: News
Originally published: 4/19/07 at 7:15 PM CSTLast update: 7/2/07 at 9:07 AM CST
- Page 1 of 1
Course evaluation data from student surveys at this college are being requested by an online company under the Texas Public Information Act.
Pick-a-Prof is an online service that uses state open-records laws to gather official school data to provide students with information to help them choose which professors' courses they want to take.
The exact information being requested from the course evaluation data of this college are to be provided in any format with professors' names, course abbreviations and numbers, semesters and years and basic form responses from academic semesters between 2004 and 2006, according to a March 21 written request from Pick-a-Prof, read to The Ranger by college President Robert Zeigler and the district's attorney Martha McCabe.
"A lot of times, the course evaluations come from standardized forms, so it's not a free response form like reviews are," Jeffrey Schwartz, Pick-a-Prof university relations, said. "This just allows for a more complete source of information for students deciding to take a class."
After conferring with McCabe, Zeigler issued an e-mail to faculty and staff for any data pertaining to this request to be sent to legal affairs in compliance with the law.
He wrote that summaries of end-of-course evaluations by students are sufficient.
The Pick-a-Prof Web site already features grade distribution data for professors at this college along with student reviews.
Zeigler said he did not know where the grade distribution information came from, but McCabe said more than one request for public information has been made by Pick-a-Prof. She did not know exactly what had been provided.
"Any document in the position of a governmental entity is public information," McCabe said. "We are a governmental entity; therefore, the presumption in the law is that anything we have in our records is public unless exceptions apply."
These exceptions include specific provisions that do not obligate the college to create a document that does not exist, and the protection of students under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of certain student records.
"It's my job, as a lawyer, that when I procure the raw material from the college, I see if any of the exceptions apply to allow us to withhold information," McCabe said. "They have said that they are not interested in things that are protected by FERPA."
Pick-a-Prof was created in 2001 by Chris Chilek and John Cunningham, two Texas A&M University students who began posting student reviews and grade distributions for students at that college and at the University of Texas at Austin.
Their initial funding came from Cunningham's father, William H. Cunningham, a former chancellor of the University of Texas System.
"Within the first couple of years, 90 percent of students on both campuses were using the site," said Karen Bragg, the Web site's university relations director.
Pick-a-Prof features more than 200 colleges and universities from around the nation.
"Historically, every campus we expand to, we find that students love it and find it invaluable," Bragg said.
"Course evaluations will answer more specific questions that will be answered by a larger population of the students."
Pick-a-Prof has set guidelines to escape the negative stigma other Web sites have garnered by posting reviews about professors, Bragg said.
"With student reviews, we'll edit them on our end before they are posted," Bragg said. "We make sure that there is no profanity or personal attacks on the professors."
"While we do post negative reviews, they need to be conservative and informative."
Bragg also said that the student reviews compared with the official data collected from colleges allow for students have a more expanded view of how the professors teach and what they can expect in their classes.
Another safeguard for professors' reputations are their actual participation in the online service.
"When we first started, we mainly thought that this was going to be a student resource," Bragg said. "Then we found that a lot of professors were using the site's reviews to tweak their teaching style based on what students were saying."
Professors now have the options of registering with the site to write their own reviews defending their teaching styles or to just introduce themselves to students online. Professors can also post their syllabuses.
While student reviews can be problematic when a student who has never taken a course from a particular professor posts a review, Pick-a-Prof allows professors to dispute any claim they believe to be false.
"Because we read them beforehand, they have to be very creative in the type of review that they write to be able to post a false review," Bragg said.
"However, if a professor contacts us to dispute it, then we sometimes contact the student or just take it down."
The online service is free to many colleges including this one, but they do charge certain schools whose expenses in serving it are not covered by advertising fees.
The cost to Pick-a-Prof for the district data it requests, however, involves a processing fee by the district under the Texas Administrative Code, which has not been determined yet.
Pick-a-Prof, like many other companies, will still make a profit by using public information, McCabe said.
"Pick-a-Prof is using the staff time and resources at this college and of the district so that they can make money," McCabe said. "Let's be blunt. That's what they are doing."
"They are socializing the cost of their doing business and privatizing the gain."
McCabe also believes that the laws for public information are uncommonly strong in Texas.
"The Legislature says that the public's right to know is so powerful that it is OK if it is commercialized because the public's right to know comes first," McCabe said.
Web sources for students to choose teachers:
• Pick-a-Prof at http://pickaprof.com
• Professor Performance at http://www.professorperformance.com
• RateMyProfessor
at http://www.ratemyprofessor.com
• StudentsReview
at http://www.studentsreview.com
Pick-a-Prof is an online service that uses state open-records laws to gather official school data to provide students with information to help them choose which professors' courses they want to take.
The exact information being requested from the course evaluation data of this college are to be provided in any format with professors' names, course abbreviations and numbers, semesters and years and basic form responses from academic semesters between 2004 and 2006, according to a March 21 written request from Pick-a-Prof, read to The Ranger by college President Robert Zeigler and the district's attorney Martha McCabe.
"A lot of times, the course evaluations come from standardized forms, so it's not a free response form like reviews are," Jeffrey Schwartz, Pick-a-Prof university relations, said. "This just allows for a more complete source of information for students deciding to take a class."
After conferring with McCabe, Zeigler issued an e-mail to faculty and staff for any data pertaining to this request to be sent to legal affairs in compliance with the law.
He wrote that summaries of end-of-course evaluations by students are sufficient.
The Pick-a-Prof Web site already features grade distribution data for professors at this college along with student reviews.
Zeigler said he did not know where the grade distribution information came from, but McCabe said more than one request for public information has been made by Pick-a-Prof. She did not know exactly what had been provided.
"Any document in the position of a governmental entity is public information," McCabe said. "We are a governmental entity; therefore, the presumption in the law is that anything we have in our records is public unless exceptions apply."
These exceptions include specific provisions that do not obligate the college to create a document that does not exist, and the protection of students under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of certain student records.
"It's my job, as a lawyer, that when I procure the raw material from the college, I see if any of the exceptions apply to allow us to withhold information," McCabe said. "They have said that they are not interested in things that are protected by FERPA."
Pick-a-Prof was created in 2001 by Chris Chilek and John Cunningham, two Texas A&M University students who began posting student reviews and grade distributions for students at that college and at the University of Texas at Austin.
Their initial funding came from Cunningham's father, William H. Cunningham, a former chancellor of the University of Texas System.
"Within the first couple of years, 90 percent of students on both campuses were using the site," said Karen Bragg, the Web site's university relations director.
Pick-a-Prof features more than 200 colleges and universities from around the nation.
"Historically, every campus we expand to, we find that students love it and find it invaluable," Bragg said.
"Course evaluations will answer more specific questions that will be answered by a larger population of the students."
Pick-a-Prof has set guidelines to escape the negative stigma other Web sites have garnered by posting reviews about professors, Bragg said.
"With student reviews, we'll edit them on our end before they are posted," Bragg said. "We make sure that there is no profanity or personal attacks on the professors."
"While we do post negative reviews, they need to be conservative and informative."
Bragg also said that the student reviews compared with the official data collected from colleges allow for students have a more expanded view of how the professors teach and what they can expect in their classes.
Another safeguard for professors' reputations are their actual participation in the online service.
"When we first started, we mainly thought that this was going to be a student resource," Bragg said. "Then we found that a lot of professors were using the site's reviews to tweak their teaching style based on what students were saying."
Professors now have the options of registering with the site to write their own reviews defending their teaching styles or to just introduce themselves to students online. Professors can also post their syllabuses.
While student reviews can be problematic when a student who has never taken a course from a particular professor posts a review, Pick-a-Prof allows professors to dispute any claim they believe to be false.
"Because we read them beforehand, they have to be very creative in the type of review that they write to be able to post a false review," Bragg said.
"However, if a professor contacts us to dispute it, then we sometimes contact the student or just take it down."
The online service is free to many colleges including this one, but they do charge certain schools whose expenses in serving it are not covered by advertising fees.
The cost to Pick-a-Prof for the district data it requests, however, involves a processing fee by the district under the Texas Administrative Code, which has not been determined yet.
Pick-a-Prof, like many other companies, will still make a profit by using public information, McCabe said.
"Pick-a-Prof is using the staff time and resources at this college and of the district so that they can make money," McCabe said. "Let's be blunt. That's what they are doing."
"They are socializing the cost of their doing business and privatizing the gain."
McCabe also believes that the laws for public information are uncommonly strong in Texas.
"The Legislature says that the public's right to know is so powerful that it is OK if it is commercialized because the public's right to know comes first," McCabe said.
Web sources for students to choose teachers:
• Pick-a-Prof at http://pickaprof.com
• Professor Performance at http://www.professorperformance.com
• RateMyProfessor
at http://www.ratemyprofessor.com
• StudentsReview
at http://www.studentsreview.com
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