By Lou Boot
The lack of open and honest feedback about courses has often been cause for frustration amongst the student body. In an effort to create more insights into what courses are like, a new website named “AUSee” was launched on 20 November 2023. Created by a group of anonymous AUC students, the platform’s objective was to provide sincere evaluations of classes and professors. It was meant to assist students in making informed decisions about their course selections, but it did not take long for strong criticism and legal trouble to transpire.
AUSee was initially created by an AUC student, who wishes to stay anonymous, as a side project to practise coding. Realising the potential of the project, the founder quickly developed AUSee into a fully-functioning website. At first, this was done with the help from other students before eventually expanding into a full team. “While it was running in the last term, especially nearing course selection, we had a team of people always going online every six hours checking what was put up and reviewing it as well,” the founder says.
After the website went live, the team focused their attention on marketing efforts. Students awoke on 20 November to posters surrounding the Academic Building sporting the logo “AUSee” with the catchphrase “Student insights – beyond the syllabus”. The posters immediately garnered attention from students and teachers alike. The head of AUSee claims their efforts were effective. “I think right now there’s 550 registered users,” they say.
According to their founder, the goal of AUSee was to help students make more educated choices during course selection. “In my personal experience, I can say that there have been consecutive similar complaints from the same course, [and] same teacher through the years,” they emphasise. These complaints have fallen on deaf ears according to the founder, which motivated them to initiate AUSee.
However, not all reactions to AUSee were positive. The founder of AUSee explains that numerous students have reported instances where lecturers have vocally opposed the website during their classes. The site was also temporarily shut down when the creators received an aggressive email from an anonymous professor threatening legal action against AUSee. Mickey Luzzatto, the visibility officer of Student Council, says that the professor did not provide an explanation as to why they wanted AUSee to be taken down.
Thijs Etty, an AUC lecturer, contends that when students engage more with each other in discussions about classes on social media, the self-moderating effect is more effective in its own way, unlike AUSee. He explains that on platforms like Facebook, individuals can comment on courses, and fellow students can further engage by replying to those posts, creating a self-moderating dynamic that is not possible on AUSee.
At the same time, Etty acknowledges the effort that is put in to prevent harmful content. “I do get the impression that the site is moderated,” he says. Nevertheless, he expresses some apprehension, emphasising that “moderation is risky, of course, because who decides what’s appropriate and what’s not?”
Despite these concerns, Etty expresses support for student initiatives, citing AUC’s portal as an example of successful student-driven projects. However, he advises caution of an over-reliance on platforms like AUSee. Plenty of long-standing research shows that all sorts of biases play a role in student evaluations, according to Etty. “Female lecturers, for example, tend to get lower scores than male lecturers, and biases like that play a role,” he says.
Dr. Marianne Riphagen, the Director of Education, highlights the concerns about AUSee possibly fostering a negative environment due to the anonymity of the users. “Whilst constructive criticism can help all of us — students and staff alike — grow, we all know that opportunities to provide anonymous feedback about others online can also lead to harmful excesses.”
Dr. Riphagen also emphasises that younger lecturers who have just started teaching at AUC, and who are still developing their teaching skills, can be especially vulnerable to anonymous criticisms. “Such online critiques might cause them to stop teaching at AUC, negatively impact their teaching, or impede opportunities for growth.” Whilst Dr. Riphagen does believe in the importance of student feedback, she believes that this is why “such feedback is more constructively addressed through other channels.”
During discussions between the Student Council and AUC’s management team, the concerns around the impact on faculty morale were highlighted. “There was a general feeling of anxiousness amongst the faculty that was being expressed [to us] that we heard both through teachers telling students, or also just teachers telling us directly,” Luzzatto says.
Luzzatto facilitated conversations between AUSee and AUC’s management team to address such concerns. They discussed and highlighted changes implemented by AUSee such as the removal of certain features, including the removal of features like professor ratings and restriction of access to AUC email addresses only to aid data reliability and privacy issues.
Despite these improvements, Dr. Riphagen does not support AUSee, expressing reservations regarding its approach. In particular, concerns arose from the language used in promotional materials distributed across the academic building. Dr. Riphagen explains that, “[she] found the text on these AUSee posters, and the invitation they extended to students, disconcerting and problematic,” mainly due to concerns for the faculty.
However, Dr. Riphagen has encountered different posters that use more neutral language and did not explicitly focus on students’ negative experiences with AUC courses, she states. “Whilst these posters extended a different kind of invitation to students, they still were cause for concern,” Dr. Riphagen said.
Adding to the concerns, Dr. Riphagen believes that current feedback mechanisms are integral to the university’s quality assurance practices. “First of all, I was concerned that AUSee would take students’ attention away from AUC’s existing feedback procedures.” She also emphasises the need for structured processes to ensure reliability and privacy.
Ultimately, Dr. Riphagen does acknowledge that there are still things to improve on. “AUSee has made it clear to me that AUC must undertake more work to close the so-called feedback loop. That is to say, students require more insight into what happens to the feedback they share as part of course evaluations.”
The Herring 