Evaluating the course evaluations
We’re about a week into classes, which means some of you are probably considering whether or not to drop out of that fourth, fifth, or sixth course. And based on last semester’s course evaluations (available now on SCORE), odds are I can bet what those courses are—or at least, what department they may be in.Comparing the aggregates for both quality of course and quality of lecture, it becomes pretty clear which students are truly enjoying their college years and which are reluctantly trudging through the mire. Coming dead last in both categories, for example, was the Economics department, registering a very questionable 3.3 (on a 5.0 scale) for both metrics.
The department’s poor performance is no doubt exacerbated by two notorious courses, which seem consistently to register low scores coupled with high enrollment, namely: Introduction to Microeconomics (ECO 100), which nailed a 2.8 and 2.4 in quality of course and lecture, respectively; and Microeconomic Theory: A Math Approach (ECO 310), which came in at an astoundingly low 2.0-1.8 split, again with quality of course followed by lecture. Unfortunately, many students seem dragged into these courses with the aim of fulfilling requirements: as one morose reviewer put it, "There is no good reason to take this class other than to satisfy departmental or certificate requirements."A few other departments worthy of an unfortunate callout: Physics (3.4 quality of course, 3.6 lecture), Sociology (3.5, 3.5), and Woodrow Wilson School (3.7, 3.4). In addition, watch out for: Energy Solutions for the Next Century (MAE 228), which scored an underwhelming 2.1-2.0 (to quote one reviewer: “The class needs some serious restructuring before I would recommend it to another student.”); and, another sadistic requirement, Matrix Structural Analysis and Introduction to Finite-Element Methods (CEE 361), which scored 2.1-1.9 (“It's too bad you probably have to take this class. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to understand the material, because it isn't taught well and nobody else understands it, either.”).Now, to give credit where credit is due. Creative Writing (4.5, 4.4) and East Asian Studies (4.5, 4.4) recorded the joint-most impressive figures for overall departments, a result that is perhaps linked to their sizes (a trend made all the more noticeable when juxtaposed against that of the Economics department). In terms of individual courses, Data Structures & Algorithms (COS 226) hit 4.4-4.6, while Plato and His Predecessors (PHI 300) finished with an impressive 4.9-4.6 (“It shows you the importance of simple things such as the word ‘because’.”).The above statistics are, of course, just a taste of the student body’s feedback regarding last semester. There are literally hundreds more courses worth mentioning, so by all means go do some of your own digging (a caveat: beware of the system’s clunky and single-minded interface)!