Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 128 posts

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#91

Post by swombat »

gjm11 wrote: post #55
swombat wrote: post #46

Ah, embracing innovation the British way. I recall that 6 months before one of those "date the person right next to me" sites picked up in the US, something similar was launched by some students in a UK university (a pretty high-profile one, though I can't remember which one... LSE? Imperial?). Anyway, long story short, the university IT department shut it down on the grounds that it was not appropriate use of IT fac…

So this is "the British way" even though it's being done at Yale, because you have one anecdote about something semi-similar happening at a university in the UK? (Only semi-similar, because I think you can make a better case for shutting down a dating site using university IT facilities than for shutting down a course-info site not using university IT facilities.)

I'm just taking a pot shot at Britain for this. Clearly, as this example shows, it's not just a British habit.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#92

Post by genericuser »

thetwiceler wrote: post #80

Let's not blow this out of proportion. They scraped private data (that required a Yale login) without permission and accidentally made it available to a wider audience than intended. Yale has historically been very supportive of these things. A couple of years ago, they acquired another very slick course catalog website, Yale Bluebook, for a good chunk of money [1]. [1] http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/08/01/univer…

I don't feel like you read the article.

They state that this site required a Yale login, and Yale is quoted as saying "all the information on the website remains remains available to students on the Yale site" therefore making the information available to the same audience.

Also the article discusses Bluebook, it having been developed by students, acquired by Yale, and it being the tool which they found less than ideal to use. It even links to the very same article you link to when talking about it.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#93

Post by DiggityDug7 »

acangiano wrote: post #2

My money is on a professor being pissed off about poor reviews received.

I do webdev for a big hospital and when we brought up the possibility of patients reviewing their doctors, the doctors got really defensive.

Turns out professionals don't want to be held accountable for the quality of their work. Too bad for them public rating systems are inevitable.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#94

Post by toomuchtodo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #59
toomuchtodo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hair on my neck was raising up until I got to the /s Well played.

If he wrote a few lines more before getting to /s, could the sudden electrostatic discharge fry your computer? ;).

Goodbye Macbook Air as I throw it across the room :)

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#95

Post by trop »

DiggityDug7 wrote: post #93
acangiano wrote: post #2

My money is on a professor being pissed off about poor reviews received.

I do webdev for a big hospital and when we brought up the possibility of patients reviewing their doctors, the doctors got really defensive. Turns out professionals don't want to be held accountable for the quality of their work. Too bad for them public rating systems are inevitable.

Some of the defensiveness may come from professional pride... Teaching (and medicine?) is not as easy to rate as, say, a product on Amazon or an Ebay seller. Speaking as a sometime adjunct instructor at a research university, the "course evaluations" represent to me bringing corporate management theory to a theoretically more high-minded institution. As others have commented here, the pressure to publish lowers the priority of teaching for full-time faculty. Bringing in low-paid part-timers to teach is not a healthy response to this, and publicly rating/berating teachers is a band-aid on a situation already lacking in trust and respect.

In a healthy college of Yale's quality, course choices should come from competent individual advising of the students and student-to-student discussion, rather than from ratings and a scheduling algorithm.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#96

Post by williamsharkey »

trop wrote: post #95
DiggityDug7 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do webdev for a big hospital and when we brought up the possibility of patients reviewing their doctors, the doctors got really defensive. Turns out professionals don't want to be held accountable for the quality of their work. Too bad for them public rating systems are inevitable.

Some of the defensiveness may come from professional pride... Teaching (and medicine?) is not as easy to rate as, say, a product on Amazon or an Ebay seller. Speaking as a sometime adjunct instructor at a research university, the "course evaluations" represent to me bringing corporate management theory to a theoretically more high-minded institution. As others have commented here, the pressure to publish lowers the p…

Bad algorithms are bad and misused feedback is misused and competent advisers are competent.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#98

Post by hangonhn »

obblekk wrote: post #3

Academia, and the Ivy League in particular, prides itself on being rigorously open, on providing broad access to all knowledge to advance intellectualism. In this regard, academic institutions often attack governments and corporations that intend to limit its free speech, but on the rare chance that this spirit of openness works against the institution, they take a hard liner approach to censoring it. The basic reaso…

I am confused to why Yale behaved this way. It is a big organization so one part may not behave consistently with the rest. From my experience at Yale, I would disagree with the notion that Yale professors are brilliant researchers and lousy teachers. I've had 1 of those out of almost 50 professors in my 4 years there. I don't know why they made this terrible decision but I don't think teacher quality is the reason.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#99

Post by bonemachine »

Officials also expressed concerns that the site was making course evaluation information available to individuals not authorized to view the information.

Sounds like they have perfectly valid concerns, actually.

When it comes to protecting restricted (and potentially rather damaging information) -- which also happens to be the University's property, anyway -- it's generally prudent to suppress the source, and ask questions later. Taken out of context, even a single vindictive or poorly composed review can be fatal to an instructor's career. Failing to take action to suppress their unauthorized distribution can also invite nasty lawsuits.

So this doesn't seem to be about "the man" stepping in and quashing student creativity and initiative (as much as some may prefer that narrative). If anything it seems that Yale did the right thing, in this case.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#100

Post by [deleted] »

bonemachine wrote: post #99

Officials also expressed concerns that the site was making course evaluation information available to individuals not authorized to view the information. Sounds like they have perfectly valid concerns, actually. When it comes to protecting restricted (and potentially rather damaging information) -- which also happens to be the University's property, anyway -- it's generally prudent to suppress the source, and ask que…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN