"The Daily Review"
Tuesday July 31, 2001

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	Front Page "Local News"	Second Page "Local News"

Web site publishes professor critiques
CSUH students read, write about faculty
By Elizabeth Schainbaum STAFF WRITER

HAYWARD -- College students pay for their educations, so why not shop for professors?

Now they can at Cal State Hayward.

Rob Ludlow and Sean Conklin, business students there, created a Web site, www.reviewum.com, so students at the commuter campus can make educated choices about their teachers.

"At the end of year, students spent a lot of time asking each other, 'Have you had this teacher, have you had that teacher?,'" said Ludlow, a Hayward resident. "Some students have a hard time coming up to students they don't know ... I thought there should be a forum so they could find out about teachers and post (reviews)."

On reviewum.com, which stands for review them or review forum, students give a professor a grade, rate the course's difficulty level and write comments.

So far there are 435 reviews of 211 Cal State Hayward courses, the majority of them in the business program. The site is now expanding to include Chabot College in Hayward and Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.

"In every school, we talk about who is good, but we did not have anything to go to," said Hadi Azimi, a business student who became friends with Ludlow in the spring. "... We rely on talking to students. Now we have a greater pool of opinions."

After all, teachers can inspire and enlighten, but, if ineffective, they also can frustrate and bore students.

"It is unfair that we are blinded by someone's agreement with the department to teach for life, and they are crappy," said Azimi, who has taken courses because of glowing evaluations that were posted on the site. "We cannot change him (or her) or change the department, but this is proactive."

Nasrina Bargzie, a business major, now selects courses based on reviewum.com's evaluations.

"All of the ratings have been true to fact," Bargzie said.

Bargzie takes five to six classes a quarter, about double the average course load, so she carefully chooses her schedule.

"I don't mind taking a difficult course, but I want to know that going into it," she said.

But the site makes some teachers uneasy because the reviews could be used in the wrong way.

"The scary thing is if a student is mad, if you give them a bad grade or something, this is one way to get revenge," said Arnold Stoper, a psychology professor who has yet to see his name on reviewum.com.

The site, with its long reach, could damage a professor's reputation like a scarlet letter.

"Your reputation could be hurt, then people will start looking for bad things in your class," Stoper said. "It could be hard to overcome."

For better or for worse, the site has gained popularity.

Since reviewum.com was launched in January, it has grown from five viewers to more than 1,200 for July.

"I'm really surprised how willing people are to post reviews," Ludlow said. "For the most part, they want to help each other. It is the golden rule type thing."

Ludlow and Conklin don't want the site to expand to other campuses too fast. They want to collect multiple reviews for each professor so that the evaluations are meaningful.

Though the pair does not profit from the site, Ludlow can be a marketer, posting fliers around campus, handing out his card and telling classmates about it.

Emily Stoper, a political science professor, said that when she checked out reviewum.com, it mainly focused on how difficult or easy a professor is.

"It would nice if students told each other which professors they learned a lot from, rather than which course will give you an easy grade," she said.

While she said the majority of comments seem positive, Stoper, who has not been reviewed yet on the site, questions the site's reliability.

"It could be unfair because it is random of who writes in and what professors (get reviewed)," she said. "It could be an atypical pool."

Stoper's husband, Arnold, said students offer valuable information, but he, too, said the evaluations can be "limited" and "biased."

"Many of them have only one evaluation," he said. Because the reviews are anonymous, there is no way to verify the students' statements.

Ludlow and his partner debated these issues while developing the site. To encourage participation, they wanted to keep the survey short, simple and anonymous, which allows students to be honest.

Reviewum.com's rules ask that students be truthful and refrain from obscenity. The site warns users to interpret reviews at their discretion.

Ludlow said he, too, feared that the site would draw more disgruntled students than satisfied ones. But, he said, "We've been impressed by how many students post positive reviews."

One time the site's founders suspected a student sought to exact revenge on a professor by writing multiple negative reviews on the same course. The site posted one.

Ludlow said everyone needs to keep the site in perspective.

"It's an additional tool" to choosing classes, he said. "Not the final say."