By
Jose Ceja
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Student bias might creep into Web site, professor says
A new Web site allowing students to search for class evaluations - along with comments about instructors - wants the University of Arizona to be its newest member.
Pickaprof.com - which already has information on file for the University of Texas and Texas A&M University - recently requested UA student course evaluations and grade distributions since 1996, under the Freedom of Information Act of 1966.
The UA likely will not withhold such information, but wants to charge the Austin, Texas-based company for printing the records. The request is still pending, said Jerry Hogle, English professor and chair of the faculty senate, where the request has been discussed.
Hogle would not elaborate on the amount, but said it may prove to be substantial.
"It won't be an exorbitant amount but it could still be quite a few copies," Hogle said. "To compute the average grades for a whole class and to do that for every class at the university, for the past couple of years, is going to take an enormous amount of paper."
Hogle said he is concerned the Web site will contain unreliable information about instructors and courses.
"(The comments) might not be based on very much evidence and Pickaprof.com has no way of checking the information," he said.
Logging on to Student Link, UA students can access evaluations on UA instructors completed at the end of the semester.
Pickaprof.com "specializes in matching students with professors that meet their educational needs," according to the Web page.
The site offers free memberships and earns its profits through advertising and by providing students the opportunity to buy textbooks, class notes and tutoring services.
On Pickaprof.com, students who have not yet completed the courses can submit evaluations - leading to unreliable information, Hogle said.
Pickaprof.com also offers cumulative grade point averages for classes, a course evaluation database and a professor evaluation system.
Armand Navabi, a pre-computer science freshman, said worry over the Web site's influence may be exaggerated.
Navabi, who said he would be interested in visiting the Web site, said it is just another resource for students and will not be taken definitively.
"Nothing makes it absolute," he said.
Richard Hallick, UA professor of molecular and cellular biology and biochemistry, said he already provides information similar to what Pickaprof.com offers. The Web page Hallick maintains for his biology courses includes grade distributions for past semesters.
Hallick added that the university could provide such information online itself to combat Pickaprof.com's possible unreliability.
However, Hallick said Web sites such as Pickaprof.com were bound to appear.
"If the objective of the student is to look for easy grades, they will do that anyway," he said. "Whether professors like it or not, these kinds of Web sites are probably inevitable."
