Starting Thursday, students can begin registering for their Spring 2003 classes. Some might go to www.pickaprof.com., a site that has not been used by many SMU students.
The Web site allows students to write and read reviews on professors. Professors can post their syllabus, class descriptions and biographies. The site offers grade histories of professors, a schedule planner and includes every class and professor teaching at SMU.
The review portion of the site was posted for SMU students in the Spring of 2002, and around 300 SMU students have used the site, according to Karen Bragg, director of university relations for Pick-A-Prof.
Bragg is surprised 300 students are using the site, since Pick-A-Prof has not done any marketing or advertising on campus. The small amount of interest in the service shows on the Web site: very few professors are reviewed and there is little information on them.
Afshan Kabani, a junior political science and international relations double major, heard about the site a year ago from a friend at the University of North Texas.
Since then Kabani has gone to the site around registration periods but could not find any reviews or relative information about her classes.
Bragg says that SMU is still in the testing phase, which will last until around Jan uary 2003. She says that Pick-A-Prof normally works with the student governments at each of the 50 universities they post on their Web site to customize the site for each school.
The student governments can decide on what questions reviewers must answer for each professor. In the reviews, students can write study tips about their professors and how to perform well in the class. Bragg also adds that some schools include a book swap on the site for students to exchange textbooks.
Dustin Odham, student body president, said that he does not have enough information to comment on the site, but that he is going to call Bragg and look into the subject.
The site was started three years ago by Chris Chilek and John Cunnigham at Texas A&M University when the founders saw that college students did not have a comprehensive tool to pick their courses, Bragg said.
“Chris and John wanted to put students in charge of their educational path,” Bragg said.
Today, most users of Pick-A-Prof attend Texas A&M and the University of Texas at Austin. Bragg says the reason for such popularity at these universities is that Pick-A-Prof has been active there for two to three years.
Pick-A-Prof’s goal is to have about 80 percent of the student population at each university looking at the site. A&M and UT are large and 80 percent of their populations use the site, boosting the site’s total number of users.
Other Texas universities using the site include Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Texas A&M-Kingsville, Southwest Texas State University, Texas Tech University, University of Texas Arlington and University of Texas El Paso.
