Daily
Bulletin

New WatCards have colour pictures on them, replacing the old grainy black-and-whites. Among the first people to get the new-style card were 1,320 first-year students who took the opportunity to be mugged during Student Life 101 in mid-August. (That's temporary staff member Rita Kostyan working the camera in the multipurpose room of the Student Life Centre.) "We will not be replacing old pictures," says WatCard manager John Cunningham, "but if a student does want a new colour picture, we will replace it for $10."

Saturday's football result: Warriors 21 McMaster 21

Memo tells what's behind Quest

The letter comes from Jay Black, associate provost (information systems and technology), and four other top officials involved with the new system, which is being brought into use piece by piece and went public in mid-July. It thanks users for their "patience and continued support" in the face of "frustrations" as the system came into use.

The letter explains: "Our processes for almost all student-related administration have undergone dramatic and far-reaching changes. We want to make sure you're aware of what we've done, how the changes relate to Quest, what Quest is, why we chose our implementation approach, and what's coming.

"We're in the final stages of making the changes, effective for processes related to the Fall, 2001 term. As almost everyone at UW will be touched by Quest in one way or another, we need your co-operation, indulgence, and constructive feedback."

It offers several examples of how paperwork has gone electronic:

• "Students can now pay their fees like other bills: at the bank teller, the automatic teller, by phone, or over the Internet. There is now only one fee bill and therefore, only one payment or payment arrangement is required. UW scholarships and bursaries are applied automatically to the student's account. Scholarships, bursaries and OSAP show as anticipated aid, assisting the student in making a fee arrangement. Behind the scenes: changes to banking agreements, integration of tuition and residence assessments into one customer account for each student, tuition fee calculation infrastructure, financial aid and scholarship packaging, and electronic interfaces with payroll, outside agencies (banks, and Clarica for student health insurance), and a new residence management system."
• "Students, faculty, and staff can perform a number of activities online. More will be added over the next several months. Behind the scenes: revision to prerequisite and promotion rules and practices, new course and exam scheduling processes and systems, new registration processes, revision or elimination of most paper-based activities."
• "We have streamlined and improved our communications with applicants, including significant use of e-mail. Behind the scenes: new decision-support software and systems for faculty admission committees to evaluate applicants effectively and efficiently."
• "(Coming in Winter, 2002) Students will be able to request automatic 'what if?' analyses of possible program changes. Behind the scenes: automation of many routine advising processes, web access for students and advisors to student academic histories, completely new approach to marks processing and term-to-term progression."

Along the way, UW acquired hardware for a new production environment: eight server machines from Sun and IBM running Solaris and Windows NT -- adding up, says Black, to "the most technically complex production environment we've ever had".

The memo notes that "Quest is our name for all the new software and hardware systems that support our student administration processes. It includes our implementation of PeopleSoft SA, but also a number of related systems like WINQ (for decision support, based on Cognos' Impromptu Web Reports, replacing "Student Inquiry"), a new exam scheduling system, and a new room bookings system. SA is by far the largest component, consisting of seven modules, for admissions, financial aid, student financials, student records, campus community (basic biographic information), advisement (like old "marks processing" plus promotions and on-line advising), and a suite of self-service applications (what we've called studentQuest, facultyQuest, and staffQuest)."

It goes on: "Even for an organisation as large as UW, it is impossible to develop and maintain a huge software system, given the rapid pace of change in technology, the regulatory environment, and how we need to operate. The advantages of purchasing a major system like this are that we benefit from the resources that PeopleSoft brings to maintenance and product development, including system flexibility and more, richer functionality than we could afford on our own. We also belong to a community of other SA institutions that can work effectively with PeopleSoft on the future evolution of the software. We were customer number 19 when we purchased the software in December 1996; now there are well over two hundred customers, some of which are entire state university systems.

"The disadvantages are that we can't have everything our own way, and have to consider modifications very seriously, since every modification costs money to do and redo with each upgrade PeopleSoft releases."

The memo tells what's coming next: "We'll be adding more facilities to myQuest over the next months, as well as bringing the advisement module online. Other changes will be contemplated as time and resources permit . . . but we'll all be taking our time to understand and grow into the changes we've just made. If we manage Quest well over the long term, we will be making continuous adjustments and improvements to our academic processes and technical infrastructure, rather than wholesale, disruptive changes."

Teacher rating site 'not useful'

The site, RateMyProfessors, was described in the Teaching Matters newsletter from teaching resources (TRACE) by the office's retiring director, Gary Griffin. His article stressed the drawbacks of a web site where anyone who wants to post compliments -- or slams -- can do so, but also noted one of its big attractions. Although UW has an official rating system for teachers, Griffin wrote, "the ratings are not easily accessible.  For some years, there has been an interest on the part of UW students to have ratings easily available. And now they are!"

Such unofficial web ratings are "not useful", says Barbara Bulman-Fleming, who took over September 1 as TRACE director. She points out some of the site's shortcomings: a small number of ratings (just one comment, for many of the UW instructors who are listed), anonymity, the possibility of ratings coming in from people who are unqualified to have opinions or have never even taken the instructor's course.

An unreliable site like this one will just make instructors nervous about legitimate course evaluations, Bulman-Fleming said. She adds that professors are quite used to assessing other people's work, but they can be very sensitive about enduring assessments themselves -- understandably enough. "Professors are accountable for their assessments of students," she says. "The rules are laid out in advance, and students can complain to a higher authority if they are unhappy with the assessment. This is not the case with course evaluations."

She said she's had several phone calls complaining about Griffin's article, which was meant to emphasize how silly such a web site is.

The site's stated goal is "to help you get the most out of your university career by choosing only the best professors". Ratings on a five-point scale are given for "easiness", "helpfulness" and "clarity". It is also possible to indicate "physical appearance" as sexy or not sexy, to specify the course code, and to provide comments.  The site uses smiley faces -- good, neutral or bad -- to indicate an overall rating. As of late July, Griffin pointed out in his article, UW had some 1,850 ratings, eight times as many as the next most noted institution on the site, the University of Toronto.

Says Griffin's article:

It is likely that all the concerns about ratings done in class are going to be heightened by this web site.  However, by its nature, the internet is unconstrained by methodological or procedural niceties.  And, it is not going to be easily changed.  Let's hope raters are as fair-minded as most students are on course evaluations done in class.

About that $7 million proposal

Yaacov Iland, president of the Federation, says the plan is being put forward by UW's administration, and the Feds' role is to find out what students think of it.

"The Federation of Students is working closely with the administration, particularly Athletics and the Student Life Centre, to ensure that students become well-informed on the proposal and have a chance to voice their opinions," he told me by e-mail. "We agree that the suggested projects meet students' needs as identified by use surveys of Athletics and the Student Life Centre."

He said that rather than supporting the proposal, "the Federation of Students supports giving students a choice in this matter. If the initial student response is positive, we will hold a referendum in November to accurately determine how students feel about the proposal.

"The Federation of Students will support whichever side gains the majority of votes in the referendum."

Other notes as classes begin

As they do on the first day of classes each term, the staff of the co-op education and career services department will drop their usual activities today to attend professional development sessions. Things are happening in the Davis Centre this morning; the keynote speaker will be computer science professor Don Cowan, who heads the Computer Systems Group and the Waterloo Information Network project. This afternoon, a group from CECS will tour the Toyota plant in Cambridge, the region's biggest industrial employer.

With the beginning of term, the UW libraries return to their full schedule. For the next couple of months, the Dana Porter Library will be open 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Davis Centre library will open at the same hours as Porter, but stay open until midnight daily.

Athletics director Judy McCrae is saying a little, but not much, about an incident that took place late last week: "One of the Warrior football players was charged at a off campus bar for assault. I cannot be more specific than this as I am waiting until Thursday for the Regional Police to report to me. In the interim I have suspended that player until we have all the facts. The full report will come out this Friday depending on the police investigation."

An organizational meeting for a Weight Watchers group on campus is scheduled for 12 noon today in Humanities room 373. More information is available from Karen Stevenson of WW at 886-3262.

Welcome Week is under way for graduate students, with special events all week at the Grad House. Today is Info Day ("drop by and pick up campus and city info. Don't forget to pick up your pizza coupon") followed by Swing Night ("dance the night away", with a lesson starting at 8 p.m. and open dancing from 9:00 to midnight).

An information session scheduled for tomorrow -- and to be repeated on Wednesday -- is "a must for anyone graduating in December 2001 or May 2002 and looking for employment". So says Olaf Naese of the co-op education and career services department, which is sponsoring the one-hour session at 4 p.m. both days in the Humanities Theatre. CECS staff will provide information about the graduate job interview process and related paperwork (or, increasingly, the online equivalent of paperwork).

An organizational meeting for the Bike Centre will be held tomorrow (that's Tuesday) from 1:30 to 3:30 in Student Life Centre room 101A.

The coming weekend brings engineering reunions for plumbers who graduated from UW in 1966 and 1971 -- thirty-five or thirty years ago. Information is available from the engineering alumni office at ext. 6838, and I'm told that non-engineers who might want to attend, such as faculty members from other parts of the university who perhaps knew the students of that era, are also welcome.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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