81–86 of 86 posts
Original post for context: http://haufler.org/2014/01/19/i-hope-i-dont-get-kicked-out-o...
Just this weekend, we learned of a tool that replicates YBB+'s efforts without violating Yale’s appropriate use policy, and that leapfrogs over the hardest questions before us.
As much as I would love to sit here carrying on about how Information Wants to be Free, I do appreciate where she's coming from. YBB forced to students to actually read course evals and apply critical thinking to their class selection. YBB+ wrongly suggests that the quality of a class can be reduced to a scalar value. We've complained about this bitterly going the other way. How many app developers are frustrated whe…
If the performance of the professor in a class cannot be reduced to a scalar value, then it seems probable that the performance of a student in a class also cannot be reduced to a scalar value, and professors should be required to write paragraph evaluations of students instead of just assigning them something from an A to an F. In other words, if reduction of complex performance to a scalar value is invalid, then th…
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I am pretty sure this isn't going to set Yale back in the slightest.
What makes you so sure? You think the sort of students who could get into Yale don't have other options?
Because Yale has options too - if a few students decide to make a principled stand, there are others waiting in line just as good who care slightly less.
I wish my university even had all those reviews we do at the end of the year available for all to see. They don't do sh*t with it. I once wasted my time by suggesting my university create an API for students to easily get any data about the school. B/c then we would all see how 'great' some of our professors are and what we each think about them.
Sure 3rd party website like 'ratemyprofessor' are good, but they don't have the ease of acquiring rating data like schools do that pass out reviews to each student at the end of a semester. They have to protect the 'wizard of oz' lest we all see who really is behind the curtain.
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That would be the definition of "freedom of speech" in many western countries. (or at-least i believe it is similar in similar countries other than my own, i have not fact checked that.) For example in Sweden we have laws that provide "freedom of speech". It means that one can ALMOST say what one wants to anyone. One may however not say/or behave in a way that is intended to offend a group of people. Saying such a th…
Freedom of expression and freedom of speech are synonymous, but I think the former is a clearer phrase. Freedom of expression is generally never absolute (e.g. the US has libel and incitement laws ruled consistent with the Constitution), but for what it's worth, I believe European laws against offensive speech are absurd and make a mockery of free expression. It's not really free if people liking it is a criteria for…
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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...
The advantage of having the data come from Yale is that they can mandate that every faculty member must take class time to conduct the student evaluation. This ensures that [nearly] every student's experience in every class will be considered in the final results, which gives much more legitimacy to the results.