In response to the many debates on ugrad quality

[eudean]

<p>

I still think its a waste of money and time for the same reasons that I typed ^. But not only that, this “class rating” would ALSO target specific professors. You don’t seem to realize that, but it’s pretty obvious. After all, faculty members in all departments are hired because they bring scholarly diversity to the department. What does that mean in terms of teaching? Well, say you have two political science professors. One is the leading scholar of transracial Muslim nationalism. Another is an expert on post-industrial Mexican labor systems. Both professors probably could teach an upper division class in each other’s fields, but they way the poli sci (and every other) department does it is by having professors only teach in their principal field. That means that if you take that course on post-industrial Mexican labor systems and you think it sucks and you grade it as such, there is no way to not know that you think that that class/professor, sucks.

</p>

<p>Say I’m an EECS student. There’s something like 30 upper division classes I could presumably take (105, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 128, 130, 140, 141, 142, 143, 150, 152, 160, 162, 164, 169, 170, 172, 174, 182, 184, 186, 188, 192).</p>

<p>Now, I don’t know which class is good–I know I want to take a EE class, though. I go over to this site: <a href=“http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/student/CourseSurvey/courses/EE/?recent=1[/url]”>http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/student/CourseSurvey/courses/EE/?recent=1&lt;/a&gt; and get an immediate idea of what thousands of other students have viewed as good classes in the past. Probably don’t want to take 117, 118, 122, or 129.</p>

<p>Okay, so I want to take 120, 130, and 140. All pretty typical for a EE student. Who should I take them with? Let me check 120: <a href=“http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/student/CourseSurvey/courses/EE/120/[/url]”>http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/student/CourseSurvey/courses/EE/120/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Looks like Gastpar, Ramchandran, Fearing, and Lau are top picks. Varaiya and Kahn maybe a little lower. Avoid Anatharam like the plague. That takes about 20 seconds for a class. I can even get more in-depth ratings, like how hard a class is given the unit load, how good the lectures are, etc., if I really want.</p>

<p>Say I was looking up that info for Physics courses. I know professor Crommie is teaching physics 110A next semester. Let’s say I don’t know if he’s a good professor (I in fact do know, and he is quite good). So I go to ratemyprofessors.com and look it up. I see there is ONE rating for him. How useful. Gastpar has hundreds of ratings on HKN’s site. Both are relatively new, but for one I have data averaged over many students, while for the other I have one person’s opinion. Which do you think would be more useful?</p>

<p>I mean, the Berkeley professor with the most ratings at ratemyprofessors.com has 105 ratings. Professor Ayazifar, who has two semesters listed at HKN’s site, has 200 ratings. There difference in reliability is immense.</p>

<p>Yes, it’s possible to get this information elsewhere. Ask your friends. Say you’ve got 3 friends that’ve taken the course. They can give you one opinion on each of three different professors, or maybe 3 opinions on one professor. That’s still not nearly as useful as HKN’s service.</p>

<p>Anyway, I don’t think you realize the quality and quantity of information coming from HKN. It’s one of the best things about the EECS department.</p>