Internet savvy students come to advising sessions armed with new tools and a broader information base. In many cases, the students’ technological savvy and information base may exceed that of their advisers. For example, how many faculty advisers are aware of the grade distributions of their colleagues or of variations in grading patterns among different sections of classes offered by other departments?

The website RateMyProfessors.com discussed by Duberstein (2010) in The Mentor has significant implications for advising. Originally founded in 1999 by John Swapceinski as TeacherRatings.com, this site became RateMyProfessors.com in 2001. It is likely the most widely used website of its kind. The student ratings on RateMyProfessors.com are reasonably critiqued by Duberstein as “subjective” (2010, ¶ 2). The ratings are not representative because of the self-selection of student raters (i.e., students most and least satisfied with an instructor are more likely to provide ratings). Accordingly, Duberstein urges advisers to “respond with tools that promote critical thinking” and to emphasize the subjective nature of the ratings to advisees (2010, ¶ 1). However, it is noted that as subjective as the RateMyPofessor.com site may be, their ratings strongly correlate with formal student evaluations of teaching (SET) conducted by universities (Coladarci & Kornfield, 2007).

Other websites, such as Students Review, Know Your Professor and ProfessorPerformance.com, offer similar information but are not as well know as RateMyProfessor and, therefore, contain fewer student reviews. While advisees are correctly urged by Duberstein (and by websites aimed at students such as CollegeExperience.net) to utilize a variety of sources in choosing teachers (e.g., friends, teacher interviews, etc.), students are likely no guiltier than college administrators in using relatively subjective input by students to evaluate instructors. Students would probably agree with Time magazine’s assessment in 2008 of RateMyProfessors.com as one of the best websites on the Internet (Hamilton, 2009). Accordingly, some schools are considering placing faculty Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) on their university websites in an effort to provide a more complete information base than RateMyProfessors.com (Coladarci & Kornfield, 2007).

For the technologically inclined student or even for the casual Facebook user, web resources that aid in course selection and scheduling are proliferating. Content offered by these sites has moved beyond RateMyProfessors. The newer websites can be more difficult for advisers to address than RateMyProfessors. Using the Freedom of Information Act, some websites have obtained and published grade distributions for courses, class sections, and teachers. Sites such as myEdu (formerly known as Pick-A-Prof) now offer grade distributions as standard fare. According to its Facebook fan page, MyEdu is the “largest academic repository of course, grade history and degree information in the United States” (MyEdu, General Information, 2011). MyEdu Chief Marketing Officer Cheri Bergeron stated, “We believe that MyEdu's services provide a nice complement to a student's interaction with their advisers and are by no means intended to be a replacement for the valuable counsel that they provide. In fact, MyEdu enables advisers to support their students more efficiently since their degree plan, course schedule and academic history is all in one place and readily available online" (Grafman, 2010, ¶ 15).

CampusBuddy is a site that offers more than grade distributions and professor reviews. It includes access to Cramsters’ class notes, old test questions, and answers to homework questions from the text, as well as a list of Facebook users enrolled in specific class sections. CampusBuddy publicizes a promotional video extolling the reduction in study time required for class success when using its resources to find the easiest teachers and avoid homework (campusbuddyTV, 2010). Enterprising students at individual campuses have started specific online services that spread quickly. UniversityTools.com, which can be accessed through Facebook and as an independent website offers reviews of Louisiana State University (LSU) professors, grade distributions, a scheduling tool, and campus maps. NoteSwap.com also began at LSU following hurricane Katrina when students had trouble getting to class. Students upload their notes and download those of other students. NoteSwap began as an extracurricular experiment and became an expanding business. NoteSwap grew to accommodate more than 30,000 users and several universities across the South in a year’s time and continues to develop. Students may have a preference for a class if the professor receives good reviews on one site and has classnotes posted on NoteSwap or CampusBuddy.Similar college-specific local and regional sites appear to be focused on other areas of the United States, such as CourseRank for University of California, Berkeley, in California. Another such site linked only through Facebook is Veechi.com, which offers grade distributions, professor reviews, and a number of career and job seeking tools. Another site, focused solely on scheduling issues is Schedulizer. Like myEdu, Schedulizer covers a large number of schools throughout the United States. However, unlike myEdu, Schedulizer is specifically a scheduling application.

Interactive web applications, such as Schedulizer, that assist students in scheduling their classes would seem at first blush to be harmless enough and perhaps helpful both to students and advisers. These scheduling sites use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information about class offerings and times. The sites integrate that information with an interactive scheduling tool. They allow students to select courses by discipline and time and in some cases by campus location. For instance, if you need an English class and have a 9:30 a.m. time slot open, the scheduling tool will tell you what English classes are available at that time. If an English class is not available, the tool will help you find another course or time. While this web application could be helpful, registrars, school officials, and advisers may be concerned about a lack of updated information, meaning a failure to reflect ongoing alterations, such as changes in faculty and meeting times as well as cancellations/additions to class offerings. Advisers should caution students to be cognizant of possible changes and help their advisees obtain the most recent information. It is likely that universities will soon incorporate similar interactive scheduling applications linked to up-to-the-minute course data, probably making these external scheduling sites obsolete and short lived.

The sites that publish grade distributions may have greater impact on the advising process than do sites that offer scheduling tools. Whatever one’s view of such grade-based online course-selection sites, it behooves the adviser to stay abreast of these developments just as it benefits a teacher to be aware which of their test items, lecture note-packs, and text homework item solutions are available on websites such as Koofers, Cramster, Noteswap, and Course Hero. Just as these course material sharing websites have caused many professors to devalue homework (Foderaro, 2009), the public display of grade distributions likely will have an impact. The effect of public grade distributions on grade inflation has yet to be determined. Some professors will likely court student enrollment numbers by issuing higher grades; others may move in the opposite direction and change distributions to impress colleagues and administrators with their higher standards. In addition, knowledge of grade distributions will likely influence students’ perceptions of their own grades (Hindman, Livingston, & Carter, 2011), as well as the ratings they give professors. To illustrate, a grade of B and the professor who “gave” the B may not seem as impressive when a student realizes a large percentage of classmates received A’s. The public nature of these grade-distribution sites extends beyond students and faculty in their availability to others, such as parents and legislators, again with a multiplicity of possible consequences. Beyond long-term educational implications, the more pressing and immediate problem for the adviser is to consider how these websites affect the advising process and how to best address them when advising students.

The websites that provide grade distributions along with their ratings of professors pose more of an advising dilemma than those offering scheduling tools and professorial ratings. The grade distribution for a class section taught by a particular teacher cannot easily be dismissed as subjective, particularly when the data base spans several semesters or years. A student seeking a course such as introductory English or mathematics can determine which instructor is likely to yield a higher grade based on historical data. If the course’s exams are standardized (e.g., created by the department rather than by the teacher), the student may tend to select the teacher who covers the material most effectively. Alternatively, in courses with teacher-generated tests, students will probably select the professor perceived to be the easiest grader or thought to offer the least difficult exams.

How should an adviser respond to a student who selects a particular section (professor) based on the grade distribution history? Is there any reason to encourage a student to ignore this data or to select a section in which he or she stands a probable chance of getting a lower grade? Is the choice of a section by grade distribution any more unreasonable than selecting a section based on time of day? Selecting a course section by grade distribution is probably no more significant than selecting a section at a particular time.

A student who selects a course on the basis of professor ratings rather than merely considering it as a preference will likely be of greater concern to the adviser. Is this course required, needed, or even applicable to the student’s curriculum? Is the student selecting an elective class promising a higher grade and failing to take a required course offered in the same time slot? These and other standard advising considerations are clearly relevant. Advisers should caution students that filling their schedules with courses selected as potential grade enhancers may result in slower progress toward graduation, costing them both time and money. The adviser can play an important role in helping the student understand that course selections might be based on more substantial educational reasons than likelihood of earning an A. The adviser can also help the academically naive student to interpret grade distributions. Students who have strong backgrounds or particular abilities tend to select some courses, such as upper-division and specialized courses. For instance, it is likely that students who are talented writers choose to take and are successful in upper-level English courses, such as advanced creative writing. Students with strong backgrounds in psychology take more specialized psychology courses, resulting in grade distributions reflecting a preponderance of higher grades in these classes.

Could information about grade distribution ever be useful to an adviser in recommending a class? This question relates to a discussion in the The Mentor (Livingston, Carter, & Thomas, 2008; Church & Robinson, 2006) concerning whether it is legitimate to use easier courses to help a student balance his or her schedule when it already contains rigorous or difficult courses. While some advisers such as Church and Robinson (2006) might object, we contend this may be a time to consider grade distribution data. A student at risk for suspension due to a low grade-point average may benefit from postponing a class with a clear history of a low grade distribution. Some advisers and students may wish to include grade distributions with other considerations when creating a prospective homework-load schedule. Such other considerations might include the student’s commitment to outside employment, academic background, interests and talents. It may be useful to balance difficulty of the course with the ability, achievement, and confidence of the student.

Fisher (2005) describes academic advisers as “strong student advocates, neutral mediators, moral role models, and conscientious staff representatives” (¶ 17). Fidelity and respect for people demand that we consider the needs of our individual advisees. Common sense suggests we stay abreast of the information students are using. Perhaps most significant, the availability of web-based information can provide an additional channel for meaningful adviser-student dialogue, not only for issues related to course selection but for discussion about both life values and academic-related values. Further, the modeling of appropriate and effective use of web-based information by the adviser may provide a lesson on effective decision making for the student, not only in the course-selection process but in the entire consumer domain.