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When I was at Columbia, we used an interesting website called CULPA ("Columbia Undergraduate Listing of Professor Ability"; http://culpa.info/ http://culpa.info

by leoh 12y ago

When I was at Columbia, we used an interesting website called CULPA ("Columbia Undergraduate Listing of Professor Ability"; http://culpa.info/ http://culpa.info/). The site is interesting is that unlike many other sites, students can only give written evaluations and there are no numerical scores. Reviews are generally thoughtful and, in some cases, were particularly useful in choosing a professor for a course.

ics 12y ago
Were evaluations mandatory? Did they have any required length? I've done plenty of evaluations in the past which only asked for written responses but was generally disappointed to hear from classmates that they either scribbled gibberish to make it look like they were filling it out or, if the teacher was good, just writing things like "Thanks" or "Great class" in each area.
Alex3917 12y ago
Non-numerical evaluations make much more sense. It's funny how most of the good universities in the US started out as being explicitly Christian, but over the last couple centuries the Christianity has been pretty much wholesale replaced with numerology -- student grades, teacher evaluations, impact factors, statistical significance, etc. The entire system is built upon the worship of numbers, and every phenomenon is assigned some sort of numerical value (to of course be aggregated and statistically 'analyzed') even if it's plainly non-quantitative in nature. You've got to wonder whether this is some sort of temporary societal blind spot, or whether this ideology is so toxic and so subtle and complex to refute that it will just be around forever as the endpoint of scientific history.
- vdaniuk 12y ago
  Humans are prone to generalisation, reducing complex objects or states to several numeric parameters is extremely useful. Full of errors and generalization errors, but nevertheless usefull. Humanity will just have to build more complex models to quantify complex, dynamic objects, such as courses. There is nothing special in human interaction data that inherently prevents its quantification. We just need more data and more efficient algorithms.
- jeangenie 12y ago
  Doesn't matter if it's big business or academia, shitty managers everywhere love bad metrics.
_delirium 12y ago
Yes, I used something like this as a student as well, and found it much more useful than a numerical rating. In cases where there were enough thoughtful reviews, it let me figure out (with admittedly some error) that certain professors tended to teach in a style that either was or wasn't attractive to me. Which is not the same as "good" or "bad"; the kinds of courses I find most valuable were not the ones everyone would find most valuable. Sometimes even negative comments would give me information that I should take a course. I remember one detailed negative review that complained that the lectures were generally too low on covering information needed to successfully complete the assignments, mostly referring to aspects of C++ (it was a "data structures" course using C++). Instead, the review complained, the lectures were too high-level and theoretical and not helpful in writing code. Which is exactly how I like my lectures: I want lectures to give me a map of the landscape to help orient me towards what's important, how things connect, and where I should look for more information. And I really hate the kind of class that spends all the class time belaboring details of what I should type into a C++ source file, which I can look up myself. If it had been a numerical rating, this very useful piece of positive information (for me) would've been treated negatively!
rbonvall 12y ago
In Spanish «culpa» means “guilt”. I wonder if this was intentional.
- yareally 12y ago
  I don't think it has anything to do with Spanish though, since it's really of Latin origin like many Spanish words. Culpa and words like culpable are derived from Latin (like the Latin phrase, mea culpa [my fault]).

by leoh 12y ago

ics 12y ago

Were evaluations mandatory? Did they have any required length? I've done plenty of evaluations in the past which only asked for written responses but was generally disappointed to hear from classmates that they either scribbled gibberish to make it look like they were filling it out or, if the teacher was good, just writing things like "Thanks" or "Great class" in each area.

Alex3917 12y ago

Non-numerical evaluations make much more sense. It's funny how most of the good universities in the US started out as being explicitly Christian, but over the last couple centuries the Christianity has been pretty much wholesale replaced with numerology -- student grades, teacher evaluations, impact factors, statistical significance, etc. The entire system is built upon the worship of numbers, and every phenomenon is assigned some sort of numerical value (to of course be aggregated and statistically 'analyzed') even if it's plainly non-quantitative in nature. You've got to wonder whether this is some sort of temporary societal blind spot, or whether this ideology is so toxic and so subtle and complex to refute that it will just be around forever as the endpoint of scientific history.

vdaniuk 12y ago
Humans are prone to generalisation, reducing complex objects or states to several numeric parameters is extremely useful. Full of errors and generalization errors, but nevertheless usefull. Humanity will just have to build more complex models to quantify complex, dynamic objects, such as courses. There is nothing special in human interaction data that inherently prevents its quantification. We just need more data and more efficient algorithms.
jeangenie 12y ago
Doesn't matter if it's big business or academia, shitty managers everywhere love bad metrics.

_delirium 12y ago

Yes, I used something like this as a student as well, and found it much more useful than a numerical rating. In cases where there were enough thoughtful reviews, it let me figure out (with admittedly some error) that certain professors tended to teach in a style that either was or wasn't attractive to me. Which is not the same as "good" or "bad"; the kinds of courses I find most valuable were not the ones everyone would find most valuable. Sometimes even negative comments would give me information that I should take a course. I remember one detailed negative review that complained that the lectures were generally too low on covering information needed to successfully complete the assignments, mostly referring to aspects of C++ (it was a "data structures" course using C++). Instead, the review complained, the lectures were too high-level and theoretical and not helpful in writing code. Which is exactly how I like my lectures: I want lectures to give me a map of the landscape to help orient me towards what's important, how things connect, and where I should look for more information. And I really hate the kind of class that spends all the class time belaboring details of what I should type into a C++ source file, which I can look up myself. If it had been a numerical rating, this very useful piece of positive information (for me) would've been treated negatively!

rbonvall 12y ago

In Spanish «culpa» means “guilt”. I wonder if this was intentional.

yareally 12y ago
I don't think it has anything to do with Spanish though, since it's really of Latin origin like many Spanish words. Culpa and words like culpable are derived from Latin (like the Latin phrase, mea culpa [my fault]).