New one-stop application among discussed items at Tuesday's Academic Senate meeting
Next semester a new Central Michigan University application could be a one-stop location for students to see their course selections, pre-requisite information and even view professor ratings, among other services.
“One of these services is the SOS (student opinion survey) results of professor ratings and how a student may actually be able to see that information,” said John Rathje, director of application support and development, during Tuesday afternoon’s Academic Senate meeting.
The application idea was given to Information Technology by the provost office. The Academic Senate approved a committee to look into the creation of such an application.
“It is a framework we are using," Rathje said. "I know those services exist in other ways like ratemyprofessor.com, but this isn’t quite the same thing."
The application would be automatically applied to all student accounts. When students sign in to course search and registration they will be able to manage their classes, course search and registration, Rathje said.
“It allows students to do a lot better job of planning and taking a look at what courses they are interested in,” he said. “And what the SOS does is, it helps inform them about that course and the professor potentially teaching that course,” he added.
Among the other topics discussed was a proposal to create a committee on Academic Service Learning. During the meeting, a vote was passed to approve the committee, after some disagreements on whether the committee should take place.
Laura Frey, associate professor of counseling and special education, said she is very supportive of ASL having been involved with informal meetings about the service.
“I think the opportunity to have a university-wide committee better helps the entity to help service learning,” Frey said. “The university, by having a committee, shows its support and that academic service learning can have a systemic input and systemic longterm benefits for the entire campus,” she said.
