Finding On-line Course Information at Haverford College
Doug Davis
11/21/2000

On-line Course Information. Having promised myself and several of the principals that I would understand how Haverford’s Web-fronted on-line course information system came to be unable to meet one faculty member’s needs, I first sought to ascertain what syllabi were in fact linked to the searchable Web portal. My first discovery was that there are infact two such databases; my second finding was that the College’s Web resources concerning catalogue information, departmental offerings and requirements, and specific courses can indeed be confusing to a typical Ph.D.

One reason faculty do not know what information about their courses is on-line is that they cannot find the appropriate Web resource. The TriCollege Course Guide (http://www.trico.haverford.edu/cgi-bin/courseguide/cgi-bin/search.cgi) and the Course Information Lookup page (http://adm-cgi.haverford.edu/courseinfo/infosearch.cgi) both present course information from the Administrative Computing database. Each is, IMO, quite straightforward in design and user interface, but the former is more complex and, if its search options are not carefully selected, it can seem to produce different results (or even no results at all) on successive searches. Both resources are linked to the Registrar’s page as http://www.haverford.edu/deptinfo/acaddepts.html, but few of us use that route and one can easily forget how one got to a different set of results on previous browsing. My first recommendation: put clear, adjacent, informative links on the Registrar’s main page and on the Course Information, Student, and Faculty buttons thereon. I’d also suggest that all academic departments also add a link to these two search engines in a fairly standard way. Many of our staff and clients will now expect to find course information on departmental Web pages, or in a single catalogue-like resource; but these efforts are likely to be frustrated by the existence of similar-seeming but very different resources

Course Syllabi Linked to Course Information Lookup. I undertook to discover, for a sample of ten faculty (chosen almost at random, though I tried to include junior and senior, male, and female, and non- and scientist colleagues). I entered each name into http://adm-cgi.haverford.edu/courseinfo/infosearch.cgi and got the following results:

· Amador 4/5 1/4

· Ball 0/1

· Dawson 0/2

· Finley 1/1 1/1

· Gollub 3/3 1/3

· Greene 0/3

• Hart 0/2
• Owen 0/7
• Smith (Paul) 0/3

· Sternberg 0/4

The first numbers represent how many of the listed courses have any linked information, and the second how many of those links point to actual syllabi. I infer from these sample data that we have far from complete compliance with Carol Wilkinson’s September 21, 1999, memo to faculty about the importance, and the means, of supplying online course information.

Since the two of three faculty with listings are in Physics, I compared entries for the science departments Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, with these results:

· Physics 10/10 2/10

• Chemistry 0/10
• Biology 0/10

That is, two of this semester’s Physics courses have linked syllabus material , but none of the courses in the allied departments of Chemistry and Biology do. Inference: even scientists do not use this system with aplomb.

I then become obsessed with the question of who actually had managed produce one or more syllabi linked to the on-line system. Here are the results, for Fall 2000, using the departmental listings produced by http://adm-cgi.haverford.edu/courseinfo/infosearch.cgi:

• Amador
• Arauco
• Boughn
• Caccioppo
• Compton
• Dixon
• Freedman
• Glickman
• Gollub
• Graham
• Isaacs
• McInerney
• Partridge
• Penn
• Roberts
• Santer
• Williams

So, several years after Haverford College began to provide Web-accessible data on courses, 17 faculty were found to have supplied syllabus text files to be linked to that database. No wonder most faculty feel guilty about failure to comply with yet another College policy, and most students find it hard to plan an academic career with the on-line resources available. On the basis of this data-gathering, I submit that we do not have a viable resource here for student course selection. The resource works well to list courses being offered, with time and location; but detailed descriptions and syllabi must mostly be found elsewhere. Carol has done a fine job with the materials supplied her in a timely fashion, but she has not had even nearly adequate compliance.

Departmental Information on the Haverford College Website. On the other hand, many faculty do have syllabus materials linked to the various departmental Web pages, and most of these Web pages now convey some of the range and quality of our offerings in each academic field. These Web pages, in turn, are accessible in a variety of ways from the College's main pages – but finding that link, too, can be difficult; and the existence of an similar-looking link to the College's printed catalog in Web form creates real potential for confusion.

Browsing Haverford departmental Web pages reveals the following:

• Astronomy shares a Web page with Physics. This page includes a link to the Haverford Web catalog, with its boilerplate material, and a link to the online database listing for physics and astronomy, with its semi-complete listing of links to material about courses. This is a well-designed and remarkably complete Web page, showing the ongoing attention of faculty and staff. It provides a great deal of course information (though not to some of the course in question), and links to it from the online guide might serve students and faculty as well as linked text in the online guide.
• Biology also has a sophisticated and apparently well maintained web page. It to links to the college catalog page, but its own linked syllabus materials are more convenient and complete than anything we are likely to achieve an an institutional level with acceptable effort. A model to be discussed.
• Chemistry's departmental page offers a "Courses" link that loads a table with all of the department courses, including a link that provides the short boilerplate catalog description as well as a "Homepage" link to the full syllabus. This was slow to load on my browser, but it is the most elegant solution I have seen yet.
• The Mathematics Department page links courses by semester, and the Fall 2000 link loads a table of course information populated with data from the tri-college course guide. This is a nice visual summary of information many students and advisers probably do not routinely get to from the tri-co guide itself, but the individual links are, in most cases, empty of syllabus detail.
• Anthropology's web page has a link for a list of courses, consisting apparently of the boilerplate descriptions from the college catalog. Two of these are linked to full syllabi, although these happen to be for courses not being offered this year.
• The Economics page links to a simple list of short descriptions of courses, with no apparent full syllabi.
• History, too, provides a simple link to brief text description of courses, with no linked syllabi.
• Political Science adopts the frames solution to the course listing problem, with links in the left-hand column to short description, and some full text syllabi in the main window. Several of these links did not work, however. The separate "Current Courses" link provides a table for both Fall and spring semesters, including short text descriptions and some links to fuller syllabi. An interesting approach.
• Psychology's "courses" link provides catalog descriptions of each course, with syllabus links for almost all courses. These are in a variety of formats, and some are to course Web sets. An oldie but goodie.
• The Sociology Department Web page is a short text listing of department faculty and courses, with brief descriptions of each. No syllabi.
• The Chinese Department page links to a list of course descriptions, with one full syllabus. It also includes a link to East Asian Studies.
• The Classics page, like Sociology, is a short list of department staff and courses, with no syllabi.
• The Comparative Literature page, which serves a bi-college department, lists courses without describing their content and includes two linked syllabi.
• East Asian Studies lists courses without describing them and includes one linked syllabus.
• Selecting "Courses" from the English page loads a frame with links to courses by level. Individual courses are then described briefly, with links to syllabi. There is a separate link for "Courses with Active Web Sites" with four entries. A fine beginning.
• Fine Arts is another simple text page with short descriptions of courses, and no syllabi.
• French, too, is a simple text page. No syllabi.
• The bi-college German Department page link to "Courses" loads tables for each semester's offerings, with one linked syllabus.
• Italian, too, is a simple text page. No syllabi.
• The Japanese department page consists of the statement "We offer a full undergraduate curriculum of courses in modern Japanese," and of a link to student projects. No syllabi.
• The Music Department's link "Complete Listing of Music Courses" loads short text descriptions of each course and links to one syllabus.
• Philosophy, too, is a simple text page. No syllabi.
• The Religion page "Courses" link loads a table of course times and titles, with several links to full syllabi. There is also a link to a table of previously offered courses.
• The Spanish Department's link "The Courses" loads a full list of course descriptions, one with a (broken) link to a course Web resource.

The CIO group is now at a point where, having spent collectively dozens of hours on issues related to on-line course information in recent weeks, we should try both to make what changes suggest themselves to the College's Web resources and to the course database Web resource itself, and we should consider both possible revision of the policy of soliciting faculty syllabi for linking to the database and a clear articulation of that policy in writing (and on the Website) so that it can be submitted to the faculty and they can be aided to compliance.