Besides the to-d
o list, students like me also carry the “wait list”. This list tells me when the financial aid check will be available in my bank account; when the last date to drop a course is, and when the Registrar’s office would send the email about eligibility of enrollment for next semester.
By mid-semester, we are all waiting for the Registrar’s email with the subject of “Registration is open” or “Early Registration Dates”. The minute I receive this email—which is my favorite—the next thing I do is create a ‘Whatsapp’ chat group to inform all my friends to hurry and register together.
This is what usually happens: as soon as we receive an email, we are running to the nearest computer to add classes to our schedules. Now adding classes is not as easy as it sounds. First, we have to match timings, check the professor’s rating, and then get to clicking on “add to cart”. The bitter truth is that when I try to register for my major courses with the best professors, a minute before enrollment, the green spot turned to blue, which means that the section has closed and I cannot register for it!
Once the sections are closed, there is a whole new struggle to enroll again. In my case, all the professors available for finance and management classes were drowning in the deep pool of bad ratings by students according to available online platforms. Upon disappointment, I ran to my friends, where one presented his philosophy that, which professor is teaching a course doesn’t matter because, grades depend on coursework and coursework depends on student. My other friend said that next semester will be “GPA gambling” either you win or lose your GPA. According to this view, if I am lucky enough to have to have professors who are not strict with attendance and assignment deadlines, I will win. However, if professors are strict with their rules of assignments then my GPA will rest in peace.
It would be easy to manipulate the ratings on the commercial evaluations sites by submitting unjust scores, and therefore they are not reliable. If someone can alter the ratings negatively then professors can boost their ratings too. However, there is still a demand of reliable source of instructor rating. To help myself and my fellow Baruch students, I started exploring different forums to provide authentic and dependable ratings.
And once again, Baruch College won the marathon of improvements. Remember the course evaluations from previous semesters – coloring bubble sheets and providing comments that we have the best professor on planet? Just because, we were afraid of hurting our grades or because, professor might recognize our handwritings. But now the story is different and technology is taking over day by d
ay.
At the end of last semester, Baruch College geared up to provide online evaluations through the use of SmartEvals. SmartEvals is the online platform available to all Baruch students at the end of each course to evaluate their courses and instructors. The best part of online evaluations is that all the responses from us are collected anonymously, which makes it safer to be honest and will provide constructive feedback.
You might have noticed the posters hanging around campus and might have received emails from the Office of Testing and Evaluation and Starr Career Development Center reminding us to fill out the questionnaires as soon as possible.
Besides being honest, another benefit of this system is that all the results are available at the Student Life website. Yes, that’s right! We have our own rating system, restricted to genuine students, enrolled in the courses they are evaluating and being taught by the instructors they are rating. The professor with overall rating of 2.8 out of 5.0 and negative comments on the online forum would have good stats at SmartEvals results. Now whom do we believe? Obviously, the online results available at Student Life website because Baruch administrators have no access to system in order to modify results, and all the feedback is from our fellow Baruch students.
The questionnaire asks for 18 multiple choice questions divided into two categories: teacher evaluation and course evaluation. The room for additional comments is also available, but it is optional.
According to Office of Testing and Evaluation, this step taken by Baruch College is also a part of the “Go Green” strategy, as it helps save 220,000 sheets of paper, plus 15,000 envelopes and a whole lot of space to save this huge stack of files annually. In contrast today, SmartEvals collects all the data, compiles the data, and forwards it to the Office of Testing and Evaluations which also shares it publicly.
Now I don’t need to shout in class for an extra lead pencil to color the bubble sheet or have to fill out evaluations with the whole class. SmartEvals can be accessed from smartphones and tablets. Just in case, someone does not receive an email with the evaluations link from the Office of Testing and Evaluation, they can CLICK HERE to login to their course evaluation account. All you need is your Baruch username, password, and a few minutes.
