I'm gonna bet that the advisory committee is going to be made up only or at least largely faculty and administration. If they want to do things right, any such advisory committee on the matter should be approximately 50/50 students and faculty with administrative people there to listen and figure out how to overcome and legal issues that may exist that would inhibit the solution that faculty and students come up with together.
Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
51–60 of 86 posts
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#52modify(data) != summarize(data)
Indeed. There seems to be a big disconnect here from Yale. They collected this data and made it available. However the Dean and Yale's main problem seems to be [1] that YBB+ wasn't showing all of the data. That the numerical ratings are some how strongly linked by spooky action to the detailed reviews and that you cannot show one without the other. This is, of course, crazy. From simply a UI/design position, you can'…
well you could do NLP on the reviews and sort it using some lexical grammar. if you're into sorting and all that.
mort importantly the ybb reviews are basically useless from a reality perspective due to the way the data is collected (gateway for letter grades) -- they never told you anything important no matter their format, and never will.
if you want to know what a professor is like you just ask around or drop in on the class during shopping period. ybb+ is not an improvement on that process.
digital equivalent of 'dropping in': coursera or open yale. digital equivalent of 'asking around' ... ? not ybb+
personally i think it would make sense to get each professor to record a video introducing themselves and the material. then skip that awkward first lecture. actual teaching video would be tops...
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#53Whenever these cases come up, we tend to look at it with a status-quo bias - assuming that of course this data exists, and it's a question of whether it should be "free" (whatever your interpretation of that term). But in reality, things like YBB+ can impact the existence of the data in the first place - in this particular case, the evaluations existing in as comprehensive a form as they do depends on Yale's explicit…
Widespread distribution of the data can also affect the process that the data are supposed to measure.
When I taught a college course several years ago, it was conventional wisdom that student evaluations were primarily driven by grades, thus encouraging grade inflation. A popular website called "rate my professors" included ratings for "easyness" and "hotness."
Female teachers were advised to anticipate receiving one or two rape threats in each batch of anonymous comments.
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yale students write Yale course reviews in order to see their grade. You get an email saying "a new grade has been posted," then you fill out the review form, then you see your grade.
Don't you think students already have a pretty good idea of what their grade will be before they write the review?
Nope. From Northwestern University, and I've often ended a quarter with no idea whether I'll get an A or a C.
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
You sort of have a point; the letter explicitly calls out that they're reconsidering providing this data at all. But... given an adversary's policy of "we will provide this data if and only if it goes unused", there's no reason to give that policy any weight in deciding whether to use the data. If you decide to use it, the policy will kick in and you can't. If you decide not to use it, it's not relevant that it remai…
If the university no longer provides the data this seems like a good opportunity for the application developers to manage that data themselves. They already have the students' course information so they could email them at the end of term and get their own evaluations -- removing Yale from the equation entirely.
Also worth pointing out that it's in Yale's interest to collect and provide the data. If they collect it, they can ensure a more representative sample size, even if they can't ensure how that data is ultimately presented. If students start using a third party service, not only does Yale still not have control over presentation, the data collected will probably make the faculty look worse by virtue of the fact that disgruntled students are more likely to respond than happy students.
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#56modify(data) != summarize(data)
Indeed. There seems to be a big disconnect here from Yale. They collected this data and made it available. However the Dean and Yale's main problem seems to be [1] that YBB+ wasn't showing all of the data. That the numerical ratings are some how strongly linked by spooky action to the detailed reviews and that you cannot show one without the other. This is, of course, crazy. From simply a UI/design position, you can'…
The problem is whether it was doing a good job. Sure, students may have felt they were making good decisions by looking at 1-5 average ranking, and yes, the UI was very pretty and made it look like it was providing you lots of information, but the fact is, a simple average of a single metric is not a good way to pick a course.
There are always hard, scary courses, and those classes are going to end up ranked lower because the material is harder or the professor isn't as "cool" or because a 20-year-old doesn't see the point in learning how to do proofs. Letting that become the dominant factor in course selection is not good for education (or intellectual freedom--what happens when a professor with unpopular views is ranked poorly and his/her classes become sparsely attended?)
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#57Censorship is not a valid tool for an educational institution to use. They are free to promote their version of the information, ask people to not use the other, etc. but however much they dislike it, blocking it should not even be considered.
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#58Whenever these cases come up, we tend to look at it with a status-quo bias - assuming that of course this data exists, and it's a question of whether it should be "free" (whatever your interpretation of that term). But in reality, things like YBB+ can impact the existence of the data in the first place - in this particular case, the evaluations existing in as comprehensive a form as they do depends on Yale's explicit…
That's why, if you can, you don't let hierarchical authorities generate the data in the first place. It would be much better if students generated the reviews on a trusted third party website with liberal copyrights. That would remove from the authorities the power to control the student-generated data in ways that are detrimental to the students. It would probably be helpful if Yale did stop generating this data so as to increase the incentive to generate the data outside the official channels.
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#59Whenever these cases come up, we tend to look at it with a status-quo bias - assuming that of course this data exists, and it's a question of whether it should be "free" (whatever your interpretation of that term). But in reality, things like YBB+ can impact the existence of the data in the first place - in this particular case, the evaluations existing in as comprehensive a form as they do depends on Yale's explicit…
That's why, if you can, you don't let hierarchical authorities generate the data in the first place. It would be much better if students generated the reviews on a trusted third party website with liberal copyrights. That would remove from the authorities the power to control the student-generated data in ways that are detrimental to the students. It would probably be helpful if Yale did stop generating this data so…
Except that this kind of data is already being generated outside official channels.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/SelectTeacher.jsp?the_dept=A...
Re: Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everyone acts as rational machines, professors' egos have to be stroked too. They'd like to think that they can't just be reduced to a number between 1 and 5. Besides which, I think exposing rating systems for courses creates perverse incentives. It's been well studied that students who get better grades rate courses higher. Is that really what we want to be measuring professors against?
> Not everyone acts as rational machines OK, but now you're arguing that Yale students shouldn't be exposed to free expression because they're incapable of handling its consequences. I think that's silly, but fine: it's a real argument. But let's stop pretending this kind of paternalism is consistent with even a modest notion of free expression, because it's very clearly not. It says "you can only say things we appro…
> OK, but now you're arguing that Yale students shouldn't be exposed to free expression because they're incapable of handling its consequences.
Odd, I read jsun's comment to be claiming that the professors were incapable of handling the consequences, not the students.