Newer ways of rating professors and classes are infiltrating the Ivy League, but Penn has no plans to join the world of online academic evaluation, officials say.
Brown University registered earlier this month for Pickaprof.com, a Web site that features student reviews and grade distributions for registered classes. Brown is the first Ivy League school to use the site, whose membership stands at 180 schools across the country.
The site is professionally run and relies on student input to keep the information relevant.
But Penn Course Review, Penn's internally-run class-evaluation Web site, is not going anywhere, according to Engineering junior Gabe Kopin.
Kopin is the chairman of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, an advisory branch of student government that administers PCR.
"You don't get accurate information from the majority of people who take a course when you have to submit [evaluative information] on a voluntary basis," Kopin said.
Kopin noted that, while a site like Pickaprof.com is cheaper for a University than maintaining its own course-evaluation resource, PCR boasts uniquely positive components - like a more thorough and diverse representation from the student body - that its competitors do not.
Pickaprof, meanwhile, offers a larger potential range of information about professors and classes than Penn Course Review.
Students receive PCR-administered evaluation forms at the end of every semester and are highly encouraged to complete them. But that is not to say that PCR is perfect.
The 47-year-old program - originally a print publication - is currently undergoing some major changes in order to improve the ratings' quality and accuracy, Kopin said.
SCUE is working with administrative officials like the University's Information Security Center, the Registrar's Office and the Office of the Provost to launch a revamped site within the next couple of months, said Wharton sophomore and SCUE member Zach Fuchs.
These changes include editorial comments about a class or professor that would better explain what a numerical rating represents.
But nothing new will take effect in time for spring semester's advance-registration period, which begins in two weeks.
In the meantime, although Penn has no intention of veering from PCR, students can vent about classes and professors on other public Web-based programs.
For example, on Ratemyprofessors.com, students can register their school for free and post comments about any professor they choose.
According to the site, 481 of Penn's professors are rated. Ratings range from a yellow smiley face, indicating "good quality," to a chili pepper that means a professor is "hot."
But not all of the professors ranked on the site can decipher all of their ratings.
"I don't know what 'hot' means," said English professor Al Filreis, who received both a smiley face and a chili pepper.
Most professors rated on the site find little value in its ratings, primarily because so few students have actively ranked teachers.
Rated professors receive an average of three or five ratings on the site, and there is no way of knowing if the same student contributed more than once.
"The problem with Ratemyprofessors.com is that it is not a representative sample," said Political Science professor Avery Goldstein, who is ranked on the site.
"Chances are, you are either going to have people [ranking who are] really happy with the professor or really unhappy," he said.
