Indeed. There seems to be a big disconnect here from Yale. They collected this data and made it available. However the Dean and Yale's main problem seems to be [1] that YBB+ wasn't showing all of the data. That the numerical ratings are some how strongly linked by spooky action to the detailed reviews and that you cannot show one without the other.
This is, of course, crazy.
From simply a UI/design position, you can't easily display/sort on X different professors/courses each of which has 1..N detailed reviews that are blobs of text.
From a broader perspective sometimes you need to decouple data to be able to better process it. In fact, given so many students used YBB+ it is reasonable to conclude that YBB+'s presentation of the data is doing a job informing students than Yale's own systems.
Everything is a remix
[1] From the article: "The tool created by YBB+ set aside the richer body of information available on the Yale website, including student comments, and focused on simple numerical ratings. In doing so, the developers violated Yale’s appropriate use policy by taking and modifying data without permission, but, more importantly, they encouraged students to select courses on the basis of incomplete information."
The problem is whether it was doing a good job. Sure, students may have felt they were making good decisions by looking at 1-5 average ranking, and yes, the UI was very pretty and made it look like it was providing you lots of information, but the fact is, a simple average of a single metric is not a good way to pick a course.
There are always hard, scary courses, and those classes are going to end up ranked lower because the material is harder or the professor isn't as "cool" or because a 20-year-old doesn't see the point in learning how to do proofs. Letting that become the dominant factor in course selection is not good for education (or intellectual freedom--what happens when a professor with unpopular views is ranked poorly and his/her classes become sparsely attended?)
well you could do NLP on the reviews and sort it using some lexical grammar. if you're into sorting and all that.
mort importantly the ybb reviews are basically useless from a reality perspective due to the way the data is collected (gateway for letter grades) -- they never told you anything important no matter their format, and never will.
if you want to know what a professor is like you just ask around or drop in on the class during shopping period. ybb+ is not an improvement on that process.
digital equivalent of 'dropping in': coursera or open yale. digital equivalent of 'asking around' ... ? not ybb+
personally i think it would make sense to get each professor to record a video introducing themselves and the material. then skip that awkward first lecture. actual teaching video would be tops...
This is, of course, crazy.
From simply a UI/design position, you can't easily display/sort on X different professors/courses each of which has 1..N detailed reviews that are blobs of text.
From a broader perspective sometimes you need to decouple data to be able to better process it. In fact, given so many students used YBB+ it is reasonable to conclude that YBB+'s presentation of the data is doing a job informing students than Yale's own systems.
Everything is a remix
[1] From the article: "The tool created by YBB+ set aside the richer body of information available on the Yale website, including student comments, and focused on simple numerical ratings. In doing so, the developers violated Yale’s appropriate use policy by taking and modifying data without permission, but, more importantly, they encouraged students to select courses on the basis of incomplete information."