CC Launches Class Comments, Syllabi Forum

By Rupsha Basu News Editor

The 59th College Council (CC) launched a platform for course syllabi catalogues and reviews of past classes this past Monday (Oct. 27) – the first day of course registration for seniors – called "Class Forum."

The forum will be available to students to access and upload course syllabi and provide comments about past courses they have taken, as well as read other students' comments.

The platform operates through Blackboard, the online education software Emory uses, under the "Organizations" tab. The website is accessible only to Emory College students with their personal logins. Professors and administrators do not have access to it.

According to CC President and College senior Adam Chan, CC introduced the new platform because of the need for a consolidated place for academic conversations had "not been met over the last two years."

In the past, a class comments section run by CC existed in the email client First Class, more commonly known as LearnLink. However, when the University decided in 2012 to phase out LearnLink over the last few years, the class comments section was no longer updated.

Chan said that CC now decided to use Blackboard so that the content of the forum could be contained within the Emory community.

The launch of the platform purposely coincided with registration, according to CC Vice President of Student Affairs and College junior Sheena Desai, who added that the hope behind the launch was that registration would bring "good traffic" to the website.

Students were sent an email about Class Forum last week and the day of its launch, but Chan said CC did not want to inundate the Emory community with information or too many emails.

The Class Forum currently has around 300 course syllabi, according to CC Sophomore Legislator and College sophomore Molly Zhu, who encouraged students to upload as many syllabi as possible.

"The more people give, the more people can take from it," Zhu said.

The class comments section, however, has not received much student traffic, according to Zhu.

Desai said the existing comments were acquired from what remained on LearnLink or taken from the website ratemyprofessor.com. She added that Class Forum is meant to cover more than just standard information about classes, such as major and minor requirements and academic scholarships.

Both Desai and Zhu agreed that their hope for the Forum is that it resembles programs like University of Pennsylvania's Penn Course Review and Yale University's Bluebook.

The existing syllabi on the website were compiled from CC members' and other students' previous courses and submitted by professors and department heads.

However, Chan noted that the development of the program involved paying close attention to professors' intellectual property.

This involved receiving permission from professors to use their syllabi and giving them the choice of opting out. This means every syllabus submitted to the website must be cross-referenced with the list of professors who permitted their use, Chan said.

He added that the current repertoire of syllabi is still "patchy" because it encompasses some academic departments better than others. Some departments, such as Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, have many syllabi uploaded, while others, such as Classics, do not.

As CC developed the program over the summer, they devoted some time to ensuring the system would adhere to the University's Honor Code, according to Chan.

The Committee on Academic Integrity established a subcommittee to draft a code of ethics, which requires class comments to be approved and bans the posting of exams or test questions.

Chan said CC is planning to expand the website in the future with the help of the Office of Undergraduate Education. Spring 2015's online course evaluations may be moved online to the Class Forum, Chan said.

CC will also pursue statistics trackers on the website to ascertain traffic and student use, Zhu said.

In the future, there is also the possibility the Class Forum will not be housed in Blackboard once it is an established student resource, Chan said.

"Blackboard is a challenge," he said. "It's not that user friendly."

Some CC members were also concerned that the website would crash due to excess traffic because this is the Blackboard forum with the most students. The previous record-breaker was the first-year Pre-Major Advising Connections at Emory (PACE) program.

However, Desai said she is no longer worried about the website crashing.

"Not everyone will look at it at the same time," Desai said.

Some students have already utilized the resource for registration.

"It's organized well, and I found syllabi for around half the classes I was considering, which was really helpful in solidifying what I wanted to take next semester," College junior Ashley Marquardt said.

She added, however, that some departments such as Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies have very few syllabi.

Others like College senior Rohan Prabhu said they did not know about the existence of Class Forum, adding that he did not receive an email, and there could have been more social media advertisement.

Similarly, College senior Grace Ubersax, who like Prabhu just finished enrolling for the last time, said she did not know about the resource but thinks it is a great platform for Emory students.

"I think that it will make class enrollment an easier and less stressful process, because people will have a much better idea of what they're actually signing up for," Ubersax said.

She added that the new platform is easier to use than LearnLink's class comments.

Ubersax said she plans to submit syllabi for the forum.

Zhu said students interested in submitting syllabi should email CCclassforum@gmail.com.

"I think, in time [CC], will be able to expand it so that the bank will be comprehensive enough," Marquardt said.

– By Rupsha Basu, News Editor

---