In Other Schools: Course Evaluations and Pro-Life Poster Ban
February 6, 2008
Course evaluations go online
MONTREAL (CUP) – After five years of student lobbying, McGill University has allowed students to see their course evaluation information online. However, an opt-out clause in the policy means many professors are holding back.
Mercury, the online course evaluation system in place at McGill, will be used to disseminate the results of course evaluations completed by students, replacing previously popular web sites like ratemyprofessor.com.
“This is big,” said Adrian Angus, vice president of university affairs at the Students’ Society of McGill University. “Now students are getting something they’ve never seen before.”
Course evaluations went online during last school year and the results were made available online last semester for classes with response rates above 40 per cent.
The new system has a sliding scale of required response rates before any data can be released online. It ranges from 40 per cent for small classes, to 25 per cent for classes with more than 200 students.
Professors still have the choice of opting out of having their courses’ evaluation data being posted online – and according to Weston’s data, opt-out rates last semester were high.
Course evaluations help instructors improve future offerings of courses, inform students about courses and instructors, and act as one indicator of teaching effectiveness.
Pro-Life posters banned from city buses
FREDERICTON (CUP) – Fredericton, along with two other Canadian cities, has banned pro-life advertisements from bus terminals and shelters.
Peter Ryan, executive director of the Fredericton-based New Brunswick Right to Life, said the group made an application to the city about a month ago to place pro-life posters inside bus shelters. It was declined.
“We were surprised because we’ve run ads in the bus shelters before without any problem including up around the university area, so we didn’t see what the problem was,” said Ryan.
Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside said the ads were rejected because of a city policy against political messages.
“It is a policy that is with the city, with respect to the ads that deems them to be of a political nature,” he said. Woodside said that personal beliefs and the subject of the ad did not enter the decision-making process. He said that a pro-choice advertisement of the same nature would also have been banned.
Ryan isn’t prepared to accept that argument.
“Mainly it’s an educational campaign,” he said. “It’s surprising and we thought it was kind of intolerant and repressive of free speech on the part of the city.”
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