Through the efforts of the Student Government Association, students at Saint Louis University can soon view course ratings by fellow students online.

Students evaluated courses online through the SGA Web site. All had been e-mailed the site’s address in December as an attempt to encourage. Through the efforts of several SGA members, the site was a success, according to Becky Shelby, SGA academic vice president.

“We had more than 1,400 responses, which was a good number of student participation,” Shelby said.

Parks Senator Matt Love is called the “architect” behind this project by fellow committee members.

The number of responses to the paper evaluations used in the past has increased each year. Following that trend, Love said he expected at the most 1,000 responses. He was surprised to exceed that number by 400. “This is a great start,” Love said.

The course evaluation consisted of six straightforward and simple questions, according to Shelby. “The purpose of this was to aid students in registration.”

The objective is to give students an idea of what the tests, teaching styles and other elements in a certain course were like. “It’s whether or not students would recommend this teacher and course,” Shelby clarified.

A lot of teachers were against publishing faculty course ratings, but Shelby is confident that now professors will realize it’s not aimed at slandering the name of any teacher. Instead, it is to help students.

“We kept it simple so teachers could see it was to help students, not rate the professors,” Shelby said.

Shelby and her committee are currently in the process of compiling information so that students can view these responses online. “They should be posted soon; definitely before the registration for next fall begins,” Shelby said.

“We just officially established this idea that has been around a long time,” Shelby said. “Hopefully, in the future we’ll have the instructors supporting this, as they can see it will only benefit the students in the long run.”

“I’m very proud of the success of this project. It’s a new twist on an old idea and will only improve with time,” Shelby continued.

Due to the success of the online course ratings, Shelby mentioned another online rating system in the works: “We’re working on a similar rating of advisers to help students when choosing his or her academic adviser.”