Where can I find publicly available course ratings from Computer Science departments?

October 26, 2007 11:45 AM

What computer science departments make their faculty or course evaluation scores available online? Most places I have found require a password to view the scores. I would also be happy with averages or aggregate data, if anyone has a source for that.

I am trying to find teaching scores between from computer science departments. I am at a predominately liberal arts school, and want to make an argument that scores in CS in general are lower than those in the liberal arts, and am seeking data to support it.

I am looking for publicly available data about course evaluations in other computer science departments. Data from top-rated programs or engineering schools would be outstanding.

You can reach me at [e-mail] with leads, questions, or actual data. I would keep any donors anonymous.

Thanks!

posted by procrastination to education (10 comments total)

Not official evals, but you can find out what students are saying about profs at RateMyProfessors.com. You can sort by school.
posted by rmless at 11:56 AM on October 26, 2007

Oh and also dept within school. But it is not comprehensive and all tend to skew negative.
posted by rmless at 11:57 AM on October 26, 2007

Course evaluations for the Berkeley EECS department are publicly available.
posted by panic at 12:26 PM on October 26, 2007

Normally formal course evaluations are used for internal university purposes only. Personnel information like this (performance measures that can be used in tenure decisions and the like) is sensitive. I would be very surprised to find such information publicly available. You might have better success contacting departments directly and discussing your project with them, and explaining what safeguards you will take with the data.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:27 PM on October 26, 2007

Wow -- ok, I stand corrected.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:28 PM on October 26, 2007

Columbia University
NYU
UC Boulder
GWU
posted by event at 1:46 PM on October 26, 2007

U of T's undergraduate student association published their "Anti-Calendar" online. All the evaluations are there.
posted by greatgefilte at 1:48 PM on October 26, 2007

I probably don't have to say this, but the data on RateMyProfessors.com is pretty useless---you tend only to get really cranky or really excited students. (I'm pretty sure I was reviewed by a student who reviewed me for a course I wasn't teaching.)

I also teach at a liberal arts college in a scientific major. You might have a better case to make if you compare your department's scores to the rest of the college, and also compare the sciences to the overall college numbers.

I'm sure I heard somewhere of a study that showed that evaluation numbers are lower overall in the sciences than in the rest of the majors. I wish I could give you a reference! (Since I'd like to be able to cite that data to my dean, who says at my school that of course there's no difference).

Looking at things from the point of view of the administration, I would be suspicious of an argument made by comparing evaluation data for Big Research University to evaluation data from Cool Liberal Arts College; there's a bit too much room for saying that the research insititutions just don't do things like the liberal arts college, and that explains the difference in evaluations.

Have you done research on already-available studies, instead of trying to find and analyze data yourself? I imagine there are lots of studies; you might find
this .pdf on evaluation ratings and women faculty interesting, for example.
posted by leahwrenn at 3:11 PM on October 26, 2007

There is a standardised National Student Survey in England&Wales, results for last year at Teaching Quality Information.
posted by Jabberwocky at 3:34 PM on October 26, 2007

UCSD posts professor ratings for every class. The method of collection for the data on that website is extremely standardized and about as complete as you can get; CAPE sends students to every class above a certain size on campus near the end of every quarter and students fill in the forms during the first ten minutes of class (ie it's not at the end of class so people actually do stay to fill them out). They also announce that the ratings are used to make decisions about tenure, pay, awards, and promotions, so students generally take them pretty seriously.

It used to be the case that these were all published in a huge book that was available for like 5 dollars at the beginning of the year, and they'd include snippets from the backside of the evaluation sheet, where people would write hilarious comments. Those days are gone, but I think CAPE has been around of and on since the 1980s so if you wanted to delve back in time you could probably get older evaluations from UCSD too.
posted by crinklebat at 6:27 PM on October 26, 2007