Opinion Board | Information we can use

It's that time of the year again.

As classes wrap up, thousands of students will once again fill out bubble-forms to give feedback for their professors. And although students provide a fair amount of information on these forms, key portions of this data don't make it onto Penn Course Review.

In particular, student ratings depend heavily on who's doing the grading. Students fill out their school, GPA, expected grade and year on the forms, but students can't access that information online.

Breaking down the ratings by school or year on the site would allow students to better evaluate whether or not a class is right for them. A Wharton student, for instance, might benefit from knowing that fellow Wharton students found an Engineering class extremely difficult.

Penn Course Review also suffers from design and configuration problems. Students can't compare ratings across different classes and professors. And most student comments, which are often more helpful in capturing the pros and cons of a class, don't make it onto the site.

Other institutions have taken steps to outsource course review systems to outside sites. Still, we're not suggesting that the University scrap Penn Course Review altogether.

But at the very least, administrators should expand the availability of information on the site by simply presenting data that students already provide.

Editorial | Follow Up

Three weeks ago, we encouraged Michael Nutter ("Second Chances," 11/8/07) to fulfill his campaign promise to reach out to regional universities and tap academic expertise to solve some of Philadelphia's most pressing problems.

This past week, Nutter announced the appointment of a Temple administrator and Penn alum as his chief-of-staff, and President Gutmann as co-chair of his transition committee. We're encouraged by the mayor's choices for advisors, and hopefully this represents the start of a long and productive relationship between City Hall and local universities.

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