Thousands of students fill out SOOT (Student Opinion of Teaching) surveys each semester. With this kind of information available, there’s no reason why we should have to rely on Ratemyprofessors.com when registering for classes.
The Binghamton University Faculty Senate will vote Tuesday to pass, fail or put off till next year a resolution calling for the SOOT surveys to be made available to students.
There are, as Senate chair H. Richard Naslund pointed out, important issues at stake: The surveys don’t offer a full evaluation of courses, electives and required classes would be rated on the same scale, student estimates of their final grades could impact their responses and the potential to increase grade inflation by pointing out which classes are “easy As” exists. In addition, faculty could stop using these voluntary surveys if they’re made public.
Nevertheless, this information is something we deserve to have. Information on various teachers and classes is already widely available, both by word of mouth and formal sources. We should have access to surveys we fill out ourselves, which could give a more comprehensive and accurate evaluation of the professors who will determine our grades and our GPA — not to mention our learning experience.