April 22, 6:29 p.m.
It's time for students to tell professors how they really feel about them - and now they can do it online.
The Provost's Office has shifted the entire Penn course evaluation system online, and all students will have to either complete or opt out of the evaluations by May 15 in order to receive their final grades.
"The decision to go online was made last summer," Rob Nelson, the director of undergraduate education, said, "and the faculty-student committee received policy questions last fall."
Nelson explained that there were several reasons for the change, but the three "official" reasons were that this system would be less expensive, more environmentally friendly and more efficient.
Because the course evaluations directly feed the popular Penn Course Review system, going online was an easier way to go about the process, College senior and committee member Aaron Werner said.
Like in most of the Provost's Office initiatives, students were a driving force in this digitization process, through both the faculty-student committee and the partnership with the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education.
Last fall, the faculty-student committee met three times over the course of five to six weeks to discuss the various aspects of how the new system would be implemented, Werner explained.
SCUE's online initiative working group partnered with the Provost's Office as a way to get student perspective, SCUE chairwoman and College junior Alex Berger said. The group's main focus was on the Penn Course Review, which "completely depends on the success of the course evaluations," Berger said.
See Thursday's Daily Pennsylvanian for more information.
