In order to help students find the best professors on campus, the Illinois Student Senate has posted results from the course evaluations given through the Instructor and Course Evaluation System at the end of each semester from Fall 2002 until Spring 2004 online.

“We think it can be a really useful tool for students,” said Brian Pierce, junior in LAS and chairman of the Student Senate’s Academic Affairs Committee.

This information was available to students online in the past but that service was discontinued by University administration.

Pierce said Student Senate Co-President Josh Rohrscheib, graduate student, approached him with the idea of making the evaluation data available online again.

“This is every bit as much about helping students find great professors as helping them avoid bad ones,” Rohrscheib said.

The evaluation data is collected by the Center for Teaching Excellence. There are two questions on every questionnaire asking students to rate the overall effectiveness of the instructor and the overall quality of the course. The rest of the questionnaire consists of questions selected by the instructor and the department. All questions ask students to rate the accuracy of a statement about the instructor or the course on a scale of one to five.

There are six optional questions for the evaluations written by the Student Senate, which are now available online to students. If the instructor chooses to put these questions on the evaluation, the results are made available to the Student Senate through the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Pierce said he thinks that making this information available to students will help them in registering for classes.

“Our main goal is to help students find the best professors,” Pierce said.

The Student Senate hopes to improve the information available by adding six more new questions starting next semester. They also hope to gain access to results of the two global questions asked on every evaluation.

The results are currently available at http://www.iss.uiuc.edu/

ices.asp and are searchable by course and instructor.