A new Web site allows students to review their classes and professors.

At an informative session recently, the Pick-A-Prof Web site received positive reviews from students and faculty, said Amanda Crawford, director of public relations for the Government of Student Body and sophomore in journalism and mass communication.

Christopher Deal, GSB vice president and senior in mechanical engineering, said GSB has been working with Pick-A-Prof for about a year now and has been working to customize the Web site for Iowa State’s needs, and the next step is to get students and faculty to use the Web site.

“The biggest challenge we are going to face is getting this out and pushing it as a legitimate source,” Deal said.

Susan Yager, associate director for the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, agrees.

“Right now is it has received little use,” she said. “To be successful we need a broad use of it.”

GSB is hoping the site will be another tool for students to decide what classes to take in addition to word of mouth.

“We hope that it helps them to find specific courses for a specific professor, so they can get the most out of their classes,” Crawford said.

Mark Redmond, associate professor of English, said he thinks the site could be helpful when advising students on what courses to take.

“All students have now is two or three lines in a catalog, and that doesn’t give students much information,” he said.

The Web site also has an edge over similar sites, such as Ratemyprofessors.com, Yager said.

“The advantage of Pick-A-Prof over something like Ratemyprofessor.com is that faculty have an opportunity to add to the site,” she said. “I think this would both personalize the site and make it a community site.”

Yager said another strong point of the Web site is that students must register to use it. Other sites allow students to just “type away,” she said. Registration will make students more accountable for the comments they post.

Richard Carter, professor and chairman of finance, thinks the Web site is a good idea because students are often unwilling to talk to professors in person.

“I think that [the site] was a great idea, because students are often reluctant to come to your office, and you don’t know that students aren’t getting something until the test,” he said.

Crawford said it would be a great way for professors to gain input from students in addition to the evaluations at the end of the semester. Professors will be able to post surveys any time and read reviews about themselves and the courses they teach.

Carter said a concern he has is that the site would be used for personal attacks on professors, which has been done on other Web sites.

“If they want a professor to look at it, they need to get away from personal attacks and be something constructive,” Carter said.

The management of the Pick-A-Prof Web site has solved that problem by saying it will not post reviews that include profanity, personal attacks on professors or references to other reviews or professors. The Web site also rates and allows other users to rate the usefulness of a review.

Another faculty concern is the grade histories given about a course, Yager said. The grade histories are gathered from the university, according to the Web site, and displayed as a bar graph showing grade distributions. The site also shows what percentage of students dropped the course.

Yager’s concern is that other aspects of student learning aren’t indicated. She said she thinks if students could be asked questions at the end of the course, in addition to just rating the course and professor, the rating would be more useful. She said questions would be based more on the National Survey of Student Engagement benchmarks, which Iowa State uses.

These benchmarks would include level of academic challenge, student interactions with the faculty member, active and collaborative learning, enriching educational experiences and supportive campus environment, Yager said.

Redmond hopes the grade distribution won’t be utilized just to find courses that are not demanding.

“Hopefully it won’t be used to shop around to find the easiest courses available or where [students] can get the highest grade,” Redmond said. “The As and Bs are not what we should be about in terms of education.”

Some other features available on the Pick-a-Prof Web site are:

a schedule planner

lectures

a study buddy service that includes discussion boards and live chats

textbook exchanges available from fellow students, as well as from online retailers Resources available to faculty include:

professor information

course information

student feedback

Students and faculty can find more information and register for free at www.pickaprof.com.