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One of the principal issues raised here - and not squarely addressed in the post or the article to which it links - is the extent to which average subjective ra
by jamesk_au 13y ago
One of the principal issues raised here - and not squarely addressed in the post or the article to which it links - is the extent to which average subjective ratings of courses and professors should be permitted to dominate the decision-making processes of students.
Note that Yale's complaint included concerns over "the prominence of class and professor ratings", and the student developers' response was to remove "the option of sorting classes by ratings". Subjective five-point ratings can be useful in many contexts, but in the context of education they can also give rise to genuine pedagogical concerns about the way in which students choose their courses.
Looking at the screenshot in the post, it is not difficult to see that the pattern of enrolments might very quickly become skewed towards those classes with higher average evaluation ratings (whatever such ratings might mean). If that happens, it suggests that some students may be making decisions about the courses in which they enrol based principally on factors other than their interests, abilities and future career paths, or without critical thought. Whilst other factors are relevant, including those for which an average of subjective evaluation ratings might be a plausible heuristic, that does not mean those factors should be the primary or predominant factors.
Without seeking to defend or condone Yale's response, there is more to the story than the tale of student censorship presented in the post.
- Smudge 13y agoYale has the same student feedback/rating data available in their official online coursebook. From what I understand, ybbplus/coursetable was simply aggregating it in a way that made it easier for students to use. If there is something fundamentally wrong with subjective ratings, it seems strange that Yale would provide it in one context and censor it in another.
- khawkins 13y agoMaintaining data integrity is probably fairly important to them. By allowing a separate service which is used by a significant portion of the students, the system is open to serious exploitation. Professors can get black-balled by disgruntled system administrators or hackers, just by screwing with the numbers. Yale owning both the data and the interface is understandably important to them, though this might be an opportunity for the creators to work with the administration to reform the current system.
- Crito 13y agoBlackmail is illegal, and intentionally screwing with ratings is almost certainly libel. Both of those hypothetical can be dealt with by the law already; I don' think there is much sense in warping copyright law to protect you from the possibility of those things happening.
- domdip 13y agoWhile there's potentially a debate to have over that topic (I'm sure the creators and some users of this site disagree with those concerns), the University's decision to censor the site strikes me as far less defensible than the existence of the site itself. So respectfully the fact that there's "more to the story" on that basis alone isn't terribly salient.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoI don't think that "protecting adults from themselves" is sufficient justification for restricting free access to information.
- dkural 13y agoHow are the students interests, abilities, and future career paths served by taking bad courses from professors with no interest in teaching, because they're too busy giving interviews / doing research? Perhaps Yale should let the students balance all factors, including what their peers thought of the class. It's not as if the website casts a spell on their feeble brains and removes any consideration of critical thought. Is it Yale's duty to protect its customers from truths they "cannot handle"? Would you say Yale should ban Amazon book rankings, in case the student doesn't know how to handle a one-star ranking and decides to burn the book? Many rankings are indeed subjective (books.. classes.. movies) - in fact that's rather the point: to render ones opinion.