SMS
RSS feeds
Reddit
NewsvineA pilot version of Stanford Syllabus, an online repository for class syllabi, hit the Web last week, but students are already complaining that too few professors have posted course information, limiting the usefulness of the site.
Enlarge
Geophysics Prof. Rosemary Knight was one of the lead organizers of the site, which she was inspired to create two years ago.
“I read an article in The Daily suggesting that much of the confusion of the shopping period could be avoided if the syllabi for courses were available in advance,” she said.
Knight worked last spring with Lois Brooks, the director of Academic Computing, and junior Kat Kershner, then chair of the Undergraduate Senate’s student life, housing and education committee, to put the site online. Brooks said that 299 syllabi are already posted for fall quarter classes, and she encouraged undergraduates to press faculty to add their syllabi.
While many syllabi are available through Coursework, students must be registered through Axess to see them, making it impossible for students to look at the syllabi for the various classes that they may be shopping.
But many students were either unaware of the site’s existence, or unimpressed by the number of syllabi. Sophomore Savil Srivastava was bewildered when informed of the Stanford Syllabus.
“What is it?” he asked, a common reaction among interviewed students.
Sophomore Nicki Lui stated that she had only visited the Web site because of an email from the sophomore class presidents. Initially, she felt the site was “not necessary,” but now says that it could be helpful down the road.
“We’re already amidst the first round of midterms,” she said. “It’s just bad timing.”
However, many students expressed doubts about the site’s potential, citing that many “core” courses like Economics 50, Chemistry 31X, CS 106A, Biology 41, Psychology 1 and the primary Engineering classes do not have syllabi available.
Students are often not familiar with academic Web sites that fail to deliver. Stanford Courseguide, an ASSU site designed to pool course evaluations and information, never succeeded in achieving a critical mass of up-to-date content, and the site is no longer online.
But despite being discontent with the site, students said they were intrigued by the idea behind syllabus.stanford.edu.
Freshman Paris Georgoudis said he had used the site to scroll through the Econ1A syllabus.
“You know the books you have to buy; you know when the exams are going to be,” he said. “You practically do not have to go shopping the first week of class by having the syllabus online.”
Sophomore Pouya Fatemi is petitioning to use his credits from Computational Mathematics for Engineers (CME) to get an exemption from Math 51 — but the class of 433 students has no syllabus posted online yet. Still, Fatemi said that the site could have been useful.
“I could just go to this Web site, get the syllabus for Math 51 and compare the material with the stuff my CME classes covered last year without having to attend the actual lecture,” he said.
Students were quick to offer advice on how to improve Stanford Syllabus in order to ensure that the site does not share the fate of Stanford Courseguide. Many complained that too much information about classes is spread out between Axess, Coursework, the Bookstore Web site and now Stanford Syllabus. They argued that much of this should be incorporated into Axess. That’s not to say, however, that students are enamored with the Axess interface — many said they preferred Stanford Syllabus’ user-friendly layout.