ISU students soon may have an additional tool to assist them with academic planning, and the Government of the Student Body is supporting the prospect.

GSB voted unanimously 32-0 Wednesday night in favor of a senate resolution endorsing the Student Evaluation of Teaching Task Force Report. Along the lines of the recommendations in the study, the teaching evaluation system will be completely restructured in a year or two, said T.J. Schneider, GSB director of academic affairs.

“We have to make the evaluations more valuable for both students and professors,” Schneider said. He said very few students and staff take the teaching evaluations seriously.

“The No. 1 problem is students don’t care about it,” said Matt McKee, off-campus. “Students don’t see anything good out of it, so they don’t put any good information down.”

Schneider served on a task force made of students, faculty and administrators who have worked together for a year and a half to improve the current system.

“We came up with some clear problems,” he said.

The key one is a lack of uniformity among the evaluations throughout campus, Schneider said.

In the future, he said, all teaching evaluations should have 10 to 15 uniform questions, and the remainder of the questions should be department-sensitive.

Another problem with the current system included surveys that were teacher-centered, not student-centered, Schneider said.

“Students have the right to receive some information on courses to help with academic planning,” he said.

In the future, course information will be available online with feedback from students who have taken the class a previous semester, Schneider said. There also may be links to professors’ Web pages and syllabi, he said.

“Right now, the evaluations just disappear into a black box, and [students] never see them again,” McKee said. “I think that having the information out there and available will help students.”

Some Web links might be available as early as spring semester, Schneider said.

“We want to get the ball moving on this right away,” he said.

“Students need information.”

Some professors might be cautious about changing the current evaluation system because it affects promotion and tenure, Schneider said.

“There are some professors who are interested in it, and there are some professors who are scared of it,” he said. “Students can get aggravated if they are not receiving the grade they want in the class, and professors don’t want their careers in jeopardy because of the opinions of a few.”

The new teaching evaluation system would present the entire ISU community with many benefits, Schneider said. Students would evaluate the course at mid-semester in addition to the regular evaluations at the conclusion of the class, he said.

Professors would be able to gauge class progress and adapt lessons to students.

The new system also would recognize the different learning styles of students, he said.

Students could even read about different sections of a class online and sign up for the course that best fits their learning styles, he said.

“This isn’t just a move to help one section of campus,” Schneider said.

“It’s going to affect everyone.”