This week, many students have rushed out of their final classes, paying little or no attention to the voluntary course evaluations handed out by their professors. But what is lost when students skimp on feedback?

One year ago, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations both made the results of their end-of-semester course evaluations available online. Now, students and teachers weigh in on the vastly different response rates that the colleges' divergent approaches to conducting these evaluations have produced.

“Course evaluation is a messy thing since every college has latitude to do what they want,” said Mike Hammer, director of data management for the College of Engineering.

Many of the schools within Cornell are contemplating making their course evaluations public. We encourage each college not only to make their evaluations public, but to redesign the evaluation questionnaires so that they reflect the information that students find most useful when choosing classes.

The School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the College of Human Ecology are looking to follow in the footsteps of the College of Engineering, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the School of Hotel Administration by publicizing portions of their evaluations for students to peruse. ILR is especially commendable for considering a move to redesign evaluation questionnaires to add questions more helpful to students.

Many students see course evaluations merely as a tedious end-of-the-semester chore. However, some of Cornell’s colleges are working to turn course evaluations into a tool students can use in considering which classes they should take. Last February, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Faculty Senate voted to make the numerical component of their course evaluations available to the Cornell community.