Dive Brief:
- The University of Minnesota Senate is considering making some student feedback about its courses public, at least to students, Inside Higher Ed reports.
- Student responses specifically related to professors would stay under wraps, as required by state privacy laws for employees.
- The idea is to provide information to students to help them decide which courses to take, and to offer information that is more comprehensive and relevant than RateMyProfessors.com and similar student feedback websites.
Dive Insight:
The proposal calls for an 11-question evaluation, with students rating professors specifically on about half of the questionnaire. Those ratings would remain private, as part of the personnel files, and the second half of the questions would be about the courses, with answers feeding into a live university database available for students to see starting in the fall. The hope is that the university-led ratings will have a higher response rate than student feedback websites do because low turnout tends to give more weight to the students with complaints. And unlike RateMyProfessors.com, Minnesota won’t ask about a professor’s “hotness.”