With online grade distributions available through PackPortal , students can get access to previous semester grades look at as they decide which classes they want to register for.
Before choosing a class, it helps to know what to expect, whether it be how interesting the professor is, expected workload or average grades. While this can be done by word of mouth from friends and fellow students, easy access to technology on campuses has given students new ways of learning and sharing their thoughts.
Some students use the grade distributions to help choose classes when they register. Clare Smith, a senior in design and psychology, uses the distribution to check for classes outside her major.
”I don’t think my design classes usually post grades, they’re too small, but I’ll check the site for bigger classes,” Clare Smith, senior in design and psychology, said.
According to Louis Hunt, vice provost and university registrar, classes with less than 20 students are not posted on the website.
“A high percentage of A’s doesn’t always mean the class is easy, but it usually means the work load will be manageable,” Smith said.
For other students, the grade distributions are less useful and have little influence on which classes they choose.
“I always felt that those don’t accurately depict a professor’s ability to teach a class. Some curve classes to fit the bell curve. I had several who told us this directly, some classes are just easy,” William Dibble, a recent graduate in technology education, said.
In addition to the distributions provided by the University, some students use third-party websites, such as RateMyProfessors.com , which provide peer reviews, before choosing a class.
RateMyProfessors has over one million professor reviews from over 6,500 universities. Our University alone has 1,406 reviews.
Hunt said these websites requested access to the grade distributions. At first Hunt was apprehensive about how the sites would use the data, but grades are considered public information. It is listed in University regulations that grades may be released as long as they are not personally identifiable.
“It’s interesting to me that students will go out to those sites and put that information on there,” Hunt said.
Andrea Mensch , a professor in the film department, said she had visited the site, but does not believe it provides useful information for professors. Many of her comments were outdated by a few semesters, and she suspects that some rude comments on any professor’s page may be inaccurate if coming from an angry student who received a bad grade. However, she said she believes it is still fun to look at what people say, pointing out the “hotness” points RateMyProfessors provides as being particularly amusing.
Dibble said he believes the website should be used with discretion.
“I don’t trust them, personally. I knew too many people in college who would rate professors poorly on the difficulty or amount of work given. In my opinion, you should rate them on effectiveness. They do have their uses, and I imagine the majority of the people rating professors were honest, but it just wasn’t a big important part of my choosing classes,” Dibble said.
Hunt said the release of grade distributions started as a student request and simply continued. Although he was unable to provide a number of visitors to the grade distribution site, he said he thinks the students use it a fair amount. He hopes to improve upon the data available at the campus level and said they may incorporate some ideas from the third-party websites into what is currently offered.