Press Release Summary: StudentDude.com, a website that offers free services for college students, launches this fall. It lets students view the grading history of their potential professors from previous semesters before they register for classes. Students can compare professors based on grading histories, ratings, and reviews.
Press Release Body: StudentDude.com is a website that offers free services for college students launches this fall. It lets students view the grading history of their potential professors from previous semesters before they register for classes. Students can compare professors based on grading histories, ratings, and reviews.
Studentdude.com receives all professor grade histories as Public Records, and it offers similar services to Pick-a-Prof that displays professor grade histories and reviews written by students. The process of acquiring data from official university records does not come as an easy task. "Some universities took two to three months to provide the grade histories, while some universities charged hundreds of dollars," said Walid Nachar, the web site founder.
The main services offered are grade histories and professor ratings and reviews. Students also have a schedule upload option that helps them communicate with other students in the same class, and it lets them find out in which classes their friends are enrolled at. "It is a great new tool that facilitates homework discussions, online study groups, and random questions or answers between students," said Mr. Nachar.
The website started its service this fall covering ten universities from different states: The University of Texas at Austin (UT), Texas Tech University (TTU), University of North Texas (UNT), University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), Eastern Michigan University (EMICH), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Michigan State University (MSU).
"I plan to cover more universities and add more services depending on students' requests. Some students asked me if the website covers their universities, but I won't cover some universities until I get enough requests or support from student governments," said Mr. Nachar.
"I used Pick-a-Prof to compare UT Austin professors until they started charging a service fee of $5. Some of my friends and I agreed that the service is not worth $5 only to be used once or twice a semester. I searched for a similar website, but I couldn't find it. I then started thinking about building a similar but free service," said Mr. Nachar.
Now students can choose their professors based on grades they gave in previous semesters and students ratings at no charge.
"I plan to make the web site use instructive, unlike other websites that let students make fun of their professors or use profane language. All reviews will be screened for profanity. As I am student, my goal is to find the right professor for me whose teaching style matches my learning behaviour," said Mr. Nachar.
2012
