TopProfessors - Roberto Júnior

TopProfessors:
A Worldwide Platform to Evaluate Teaching Quality
Through Student’s Feedback
TopProfessors: Uma plataforma mundial para avaliar a qualidade de ensino através do
feedback de estudantes
Roberto Oliveira da Silva Júnior
CENTRO DE INFORMÁTICA
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARAÍBA
João Pessoa, 2016
Roberto Oliveira da Silva Júnior
TopProfessors
Monograph presented in the Computer Science undergraduate
program at the Informatics Center of the Federal University of Paraı́ba
as a requirement to obtain the degree of Bachelor of Computer Science.
Advisor: Eudisley Gomes Dos Anjos
Monografia apresentada ao curso Ciência da Computação
do Centro de Informática, da Universidade Federal da Paraı́ba,
como requisito para a obtenção do grau de Bacharel em Ciência da Computação
Orientador: Eudisley Gomes Dos Anjos
June of 2016
For library catalog.
Ficha catalográfica: elaborada pela biblioteca do CI.
Será impressa no verso da folha de rosto e não deverá ser contada.
Se não houver biblioteca, deixar em branco.
CENTRO DE INFORMÁTICA
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARAÍBA
Computer Science Monograph titled TopProfessors whose author is Roberto
Oliveira da Silva Júnior, approved by the examination board composed of the following
professors:
Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso de Ciência da Computação intitulado TopProfessors de autoria de Roberto Oliveira da Silva Júnior, aprovado pela banca examinadora
constituı́da pelos seguintes professores:
Prof. Me. Eudisley Gomes Dos Anjos
Universidade Federal da Paraı́ba
Prof. Dr. Danielle Rousy Dias Da Silva
Universidade Federal da Paraı́ba
Prof. Dr. Fernando Menezes Matos
Universidade Federal da Paraı́ba
Coordinator of the Computer Science program
Daniela Coelho Batista Guedes Pereira
CI/UFPB
João Pessoa, 20 de junho de 2016
Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal da Paraı́ba
Rua dos Escoteiros, Mangabeira VII, João Pessoa, Paraı́ba, Brasil CEP: 58058-600
Fone: +55 (83) 3216 7093 / Fax: +55 (83) 3216 7117
I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
(Helen Keller)
DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to everybody that might not be a genius or a super hero, but
that throughout hard work, organization, determination, persistence and passion chases
after their dreams. This work is also dedicated to professors who believe in fighting for
better equality education for their students and sharing their passion for learning.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am ever grateful to God, my Guider, my Breath, my Creator, my Guardian, my
Hope and to whom I live and owe my very existence, for all His mercy, blessings and love
for me.
I am thankful to my mother, Walderı́sia Bulhões, who always motivates and helps
me overcome difficulties, stand firm and see the bright side of everything, her dedication
and effort are outstanding. I also would like to express gratefulness to my father, Roberto
Oliveira, who teaches me life lessons and encourages me to be brave. He is the most
enthusiastic and dedicated person I have seen and I am still trying to learn from him
about how to put forward my best in everything I do.
My advisor and professor Eudisley Anjos for believing in this project and providing
invaluable feedback patiently.
I also would like to thank Madrilena Feitosa, a remarkable journalist at the Federal
University of Paraı́ba, for promoting this project with utmost enthusiasm.
ABSTRACT
Current web resources rank the best universities across the world according to
certain limited criteria. However, they do not focus on the overall teaching quality of
specific courses and while there are some platforms assessing teaching quality on the
internet, they are limited to a few countries and universities. This makes it difficult for
local students who are looking for useful academic courses in foreign universities. This
work describes the creation of the platform that is used to evaluate teaching quality and
reach out to students worldwide. TopProfessors emerges as a proposal for an evaluation
platform allowing students from around the world to assess professors, regardless country
or language. It is a common and central repository for students feedback. Topprofessors
seeks to provide both students and professors with useful information about classroom
learning experience and to direct students to seek courses that would best support their
development.
Key-words: teaching, professors, quality, evaluation, feedback
RESUMO
Atualmente, alguns sites da Web classificam as melhores universidades em todo o
mundo de acordo com alguns critérios. No entanto, eles não focam na qualidade geral de
ensino de cursos especı́ficos e enquanto há algumas plataforma na Internet que avaliam
a qualidade de ensino, elas são restritas para alguns poucos paı́ses e universidades. Isto
torna difı́cil para estudantes locais que estejam procurando por bons cursos acadêmicos
em universidades estrangeiras. Este trabalho descreve a criação da plataforma que é usada
para avaliar a qualidade de ensino de professores. TopProfessors surge como uma proposta
de uma plataforma de avaliação que permite estudantes de todo o mundo a avaliarem seus
professores, independentemente do paı́s ou idioma. É um repositório central e comum para
o feedback dos estudantes. TopProfessors procura fornecer tanto para professores como
estudantes informações utéis sobre a experiência de aprendizado em sala de aula e ainda
a direcioná-los para cursos que melhor suportem seu desenvolvimento.
Palavras-chave: ensino, professores, qualidade, avaliação, feedback
LIST OF FIGURES
1
States flow of a requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2
Entity Relationship Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3
Class Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4
Prototype of a user page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5
Release plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6
Relations Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
7
TopProfessors’ Homepage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
8
Profile Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
9
Evaluation Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
10
University Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
11
Administration Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
ABBREVIATION LIST
API - Application Program Interface
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol
FTP - File Transfer Protocol
HTML – Hypertext Markup Language
MVC - Model–View–Controller
ORM - Object-Relational Mapping
PHP – Hypertext Preprocessor
QA - Quality assurance
REST - Representational State Transfer
SUMMARY
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1
1.2
16
Problem Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.1.1
General objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.1.2
Specific objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Structure of this work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2 CURRENT RELATED WORKS
19
2.1
Evaluation theory and methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2
The use of ranks and grades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3 METHODOLOGY
22
3.1
Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2
Development Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.1
Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.2
Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2.3
Methods and procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4 RESULTS
29
5 CONCLUSION
34
REFERENCES
34
APPENDIX B - TERMS OF USE
46
APPENDIX C - PRIVACY
51
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1
INTRODUCTION
The growing number of students pursuing tertiary studies require more professors
to teach the subjects. Besides, it is common nowadays finding more than one professor
teaching the same course in a different classroom, day and hour. So, students have
different options to choose and picking the right professor and course can determine how
effectively they will grow intellectually through various lessons. This section introduces
the problem that will be studied and the general and specific objectives of this project.
1.1
Problem Definition
Professors have different teaching methods and students similarly have different
learning styles. According to Hativa & Birenbaum (2000), students prefer professors
who are helpful, coordinated, clear and interesting [1]. However, most universities only
inform students which professor will teach a course during a term without talking about
the professors’ teaching quality or style. Thus, there is a lack of information to help
students choose the best professors to optimize their learning. Usually, they have to rely
on feedback from colleagues, find out from social network groups and hope to make a
good decision in the process.
Although some universities require students to evaluate professors’ teaching quality
at the end of a course, this feedback is mostly used by the university workers. Thus,
students from the following term do not have access to the evaluation results and cannot
benefit from these information. There is a lack of a common discussion place where
they can reason about their classroom experiences. Moreover, students might not provide
sincere opinions since there is no anonymity in such settings. As a matter of fact, Feldman
(1979) found out that the presence of an instructor during assessment, sponsorship of the
evaluation, timing of the ratings and etc., may affect the grades given by the students [2].
We can view a typical situation in the Federal University of Paraı́ba, Brazil, where,
depending on the subject, students can choose between three or more professors for a
particular course. In the beginning of each term it is common to find questions about
teaching styles and characteristics of professors on social media pages like Facebook and
Google groups. As new posts are created, valuable feedback provided by students are
lost, leading to questions often being repeated unnecessarily.
As the access to the internet is becoming easier and cheaper, there could be a
platform on the internet where students could go to whenever they want to learn more
about different professors or know them better before signing up for their classes. The
results are not only beneficial for students from a specific university, but also for students
around the world that might be choosing to study in that university. In fact, globalization
16
has removed borders and more students have chosen to leave home and study in another
country. According to the Unesco Science Report “Towards 2030”, the number of students
studying abroad will double to eight million by 2025 [3].
A platform like this would benefit undergraduate and graduate students, exchange
students, professors and universities. For example, students can find out more about the
teaching style and expectations of a professor beforehand and allow them to plan how
to effectively utilize their time and resources to succeed in a given course. This is only
possible because they can know which courses demands more of the students than others
or which ones require many hours of study, assignments and group projects.
This platform would also be important for master’s degree students when looking
for a mentor on their area of research. In addition, it would allow exchange students who
go abroad to study in another university for summer school to better adapt to their new
learning environment and help them to study with the best professors of the university
they are going to study at.
For professors, this platform would provide a constructive feedback about their
teaching methods, identifying areas of improvement in conveying key information and
lessons they would like to impart and help them increase their effectiveness as intellectual
guides. It can also work to affirm and encourage them especially if students have been
inspired and edified through their lessons. Smith (2006) has a similar view about evaluation which says that it can serve as an ”aid to strengthen our practice, organization and
programmes”[7]. Moreover, researches have also shown that professors’ reactions to the
feedback can determine the effectiveness of the assessment process (Tuytens & Melissa,
2011) [9].
Universities can also take advantage of this kind of tool. Throughout obtaining first
hand feedback about the teaching quality of their professors, they would be able to allocate
professors to the courses that they are the most competent in teaching. Furthermore,
universities can also have better understanding about the evolving nature of the learning
experience and effectively harness new resources to improve their courses.
1.1.1
General objectives
• Put in practice all the knowledge obtained during the four years of academy.
• Create and develop a public and global platform to assess teaching quality.
1.1.2
Specific objectives
• Make use of Software Engineering, Databases, Human-computer interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Web Culture and other courses taken either at this Federal Uni17
versity of Paraı́ba or at University of Toronto during the Science without Borders
scholarship program.
• Learn the relationship between project management and development.
• Eliminate restrictions based on geolocation so that users from anyplace in the world
can gain access to the full set of features offered on the platform.
1.2
Structure of this work
This work is divided in the following sections: current work, methodology, results,
conclusion and references. The current work section compares Topprofessor.com to other
related sites and outlines the evaluation and ranking methods. The methodology section
describes all the steps, tools, technologies and methods used to develop the platform.
The section on results shows the outcome of the application of the methodology that was
presented. Conclusion defines the future works and evaluates whether the goals of this
project were successfully achieved. Finally, the references section shows all the works that
was used on this project.
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2
CURRENT RELATED WORKS
Current web resources rank the best universities across the world according to some
criteria to help students find a good place to study. However, they do not focus on the
overall teaching quality of professors. It is possible to find some platforms that allows the
assessment of professors but they are limited to a very few countries and/or universities.
Besides, they are also only available in a specific language.
Since Brazil has a new large exchange program, these limitations have narrowed
students overall ability to assess teaching quality in foreign countries. Besides, the evaluation method these platforms use might not be considered as fair.
A good example of this is that professors are rated by students according to a category called easiness and professors have their final grade, which represents their teaching
quality, affected by this rating. This category measures how easy is to successfully pass on
a course of a professor. Educators grade are decreased if students believe these professors
make hard exams or make it difficult to pass on a course. Hence, rating grades goes up
if professors make it easy to pass on a course. However, how easy a course is might not
be a good indicator of a professor’s teaching quality and should not be included as part
of the professors grade.
As examples we can mention Rate My Professors [4], Rate Your Lecturer [6] and
Students Review [5]. They are great platforms for gathering students’ evaluation and
contain many functionalities available for students. However, they have some of the
limitations explained before as example of evaluations methods that include easiness as
part of a professor grade and geolocation restriction. In this way, Brazilian and other
countries’ students cannot register their universities and their professors as they are not
covered by these platforms.
TopProfessors.com emerges as a proposal for a global platform allowing students
to assess professors, regardless country or language. It consists of a common and central
repository for students feedback. Ease of use and access, gratuity and simplicity are
the main qualities of this platform. It also encourages honesty by preserving student’s
identity and aims to achieve fair evaluation. The work presented here is the first version
of TopProfessors and we seek to to evolve it constantly to better encompass changes in
the industry.
2.1
Evaluation theory and methods
The goal of a platform to evaluate educators teaching quality is to provide professors with constructive criticism about their work. So, they can improve their teaching
skills contributing to a better educational level in our society. Smith (2006) states this
19
clearly saying that: ”basically, evaluation is either about proving something is working
or needed, or improving practice or a project”[7]. Moreover, Darling-Hammond (2000),
in a research at Stanford University, explains that teacher quality is related to students
achievements and performance [8].
In a community-based evaluation platform, the work presented in [7] shows the
following characteristics that must be present in the evaluation process:
• ”It is democratic, enabling the participation of all people.
• It is equitable, acknowledging people’s equality of worth.
• It is liberating, providing freedom from oppressive, debilitating conditions.
• It is life enhancing, enabling the expression of people’s full human potential.”[7]
TopProfessors, the platform proposed in this project, is a community-based action
research portal. It aims to help people to improve their knowledge of their environment.
Smith (2006) says that an action research has three phases: look, think and
act. The look phase is about gathering information. It is basically what TopProfessors does:gathering useful and meaningful information about professors. The think phase
is about interpreting the information and it is, in this case, not done by TopProfessors but
by the user. Students and Professors are the ones who will find out and determine what
is good or not for them, what fits or not based on their requirements and expectations.
Lastly, in the act phase users will decide what to do or how to improve, based on what
they think about the information gathered at TopProfessors.
TopProfessors works as a formative evaluation portal that helps educators improve
their teaching quality throughout feedback. According to Namaghi (2010), ”formative
evaluation aims to encourage the professional growth and development of its teachers,
shape performances by giving appropriate feedback, build new practices or alter existing
practices”[10].
2.2
The use of ranks and grades
Many people doubts the reliability of the grades or feedback giving by students.
However, researches have shown that there is a consistency in the evaluations that leads
to improvement of professors (Arubayi, 1987; Albrecht & Hoopes, 2010)[11][12].
A study presented by Albrecht & Hoopes (2010) made an empirical assessment of
the platform Rate My Professors [4] [12]. They compared the ratings given by students
on the platform to the ones given to universities evaluations that are unavailable to the
20
public. They argue that, on Rate My Professors, anyone can assess a professor from
anywhere around the world without having to prove their association with the university.
It differs from official evaluation where students have to sign in on the university website
with a login and a password. Students can be afraid of being identified by the university
and thus give a better grade than on Rate My Professors (Ardalan, Ardalan, Copage, &
Crouch, 2007) [13].
Albrecht & Hoopes (2010) also asserts that there is a possibility of students evaluate
a professor in either extremes on such sites. However, they also highlight that this problem
also happens to university’s official evaluations where rating usually vary from 20% to 87%.
Despite all of this, they found out that there is a correlation between official university assessments and Rate My Professors rankings (p<0.001). Although, students are
more likely to provide worse ratings on the platform, the order professors are ranked
does not differ. They also cite similar research that likewise concludes that there is a
correlation between the two systems (Coladarci & Kornfield, 2007; Sonntag, Bassett, and
Snyder, 2008) [14, 15].
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3
METHODOLOGY
3.1
Literature Review
The study performed on this work collected scientific bases to guide the authors
in the development of a new portal for teaching assessment. The work was divided in
two main parts: the literature analysis and the system development. For the analysis of
literature, the methodology used was a systematic review on digital libraries and search
engines such as Google Scholar, IEEE and Portal Periódicos CAPES. Among the terms
searched were teaching assessment, evaluation theory, web engineering, internationalization, and etc. The results were briefly examined to create a basic and simple project, but
consistent enough to support the system development that will be explained in the details
in the next section. These results were extremely important to understand the literature
and to know which tools and technologies were available.
3.2
Development Methodology
The system developed for this work uses Scrum as the main development methodology. Scrum was chosen due to its simplicity, organization, agility and clarity on the
goals. It also allows quick delivers, priorities and requirements changes that are essential
when developing a product for a such fast-pace environment constantly evolving as the
Web.
3.2.1
Tools
In order to apply scrum methodology, a software called Targetprocess developed
by Taucraft Limited was used [16]. This tool frees up to 1000 entities with the benefits
of providing basic support to an unlimited number of users. Managers have full control
of the process with the backlog, estimation, release and iteration plan. It also allows
easy team management and work delegation. It generates useful graphics such as the
burndown chart, bugs trend, cycle time variation and distribution, relations network and
effectively identifies problematic features.
A distributed version control system called Bitbucket was used to keep and maintain the source code during development [17]. This tool provides free private repositories
for small teams. Two branches named master and release were created. The master
branch contains the most stable version of the platform and the release branch the software under development for the weekly sprint.
Along with Bitbucket, a tool called FTPloy was used. FTPloy allows to deploy
changes from the repository directly to the server using FTP [18]. Basically, any new
22
release in the master branch of the repository goes to production automatically, thus
eliminating manuals FTP deployments.
The agile development allows four clear delivery vehicles: epics, features, user
stories and sprints. They were all created through requirement elicitation techniques such
as brainstorming and prototyping. During the development, their state could vary among
open, planned, in progress, in testing and done as it can been see in the figure 1.
It is important to highlight that all the prototypes were planned to follow web
application design patterns recommended by Vora (2009) in his book [19]. Some of the
advises includes keeping users informed about the progress of their actions and delaying
registration for as long as possible to allow users to explore the application. This last one
avoids high rates of users leaving the website without interacting with it. An example of
this can be seen in e-commerce websites. Usually, users are only asked to register when
they are about to purchase and give their credit card information. In addition, the use of
captcha is recommended to ensure that the registration is made by a real user.
In a web application with extensive amount of content, as it is the case of TopProfessors, finding one item that it is relevant to the interest of the user may be difficult.
Therefore, it is recommended that users can personalize their profile. The prototypes
include options for users to choose their universities of interest so that search results can
be improved based on the content. Another way to enhance search results and showing
professors of the user interest is through customization. User’s actions history are used
to suggest professors that the user is probably looking for. The book also explains design
patterns for primary and utility navigation, search results, pagination, control panels,
vote to promote, and many others that were considered during prototyping.
Finally, when the backlog was completed, all the epics, features and user story
cards were planned, they were carefully analyzed to understand which technologies would
help to complete them efficiently and finish the project successfully.
3.2.2
Technologies
The front-end uses some powerful technologies available to build a web platform
such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and Semantic UI. HTML5, the Hypertext Markup Language, was chosen because of its great improvement on semantic of documents
promoting web accessibility. CSS3 was the choice for styling the HTML pages and JavaScript for the user interaction with the page. However, in order to speed up the process of
building pages and creating user interaction, two frameworks were chosen: jQuery [21],
which is a JavaScript library, and Semantic UI [22], which is a front-end development framework. Both of them are lightweight and easy to use. Lastly on the front-end, Croppie
JS [23] was adopted to meet the requirements that need some image treatment.
23
Figura 1: States flow of a requirement
For the back-end, a powerful MVC framework called Codeigniter was the choice
[24]. Codeigniter runs on PHP, has a clear documentation, good performance and its
own method for implementing internationalization which is one of the requirements of
this project. Last, MySQL was adopted as the delivery system database and InnoDb as
the storage engine. Mysql with InnoDb allows foreign key constraints, transactions and
full-text search.
3.2.3
Methods and procedures
Some features and user stories of the platform were more demanding and should be
highlighted. The first one is the module professor recommendation. The implementation
of this module requires artificial intelligence to recommend a professor to users. The
system uses machine learning to recommends the best professors that a student should
choose to study with based on the good decisions previous users had made. The system
can also guess which professors the user had class with and ask the user to evaluate
these professors. This problem is comparable to the movie recommendation on Netflix
and the solution includes clustering and collaborative filtering [25]. Users are grouped by
similarity and an item is recommended based on the ratings of the user’s neighbors.
This machine learning problem was solved using the free open source project Easyrec [20]. It allows an easy communication between the website and the server responsible
for the prediction through a REST API 1 . User data are sent to the recommendation engine and they are periodically analyzed to generate recommendations that can be retrieve
1
REST is an alternative for heavyweight Web services and it uses HTTP for operations.
24
Figura 2: Entity Relationship Diagram
by a simple API call.
The conceptual model of the database followed by the logical and physical model
were designed based on the initial set of user stories including the requirement for internationalization. Subsequently, small modifications were done during the whole process
either to improve concepts or to attend to new requirements. The logical data model
can be seen in the Figure 2 that was generated by a great and free tool called MySQL
Workbench [26].
The class diagram, presented in the Figure 3, was then designed using a free online
tool called Draw.io [27]. It includes its own simple and functional object-relation mapping
(ORM) tool that was implemented to help maintaining the code and speed up tasks. This
diagram aided the coding process as developers could get an easy overview of how the
classes were structured and how they interacted to each other, but it was challenging to
keep it updated.
Prototypes of the screens, based on the requirements, were then created. In total,
25 prototypes were projected for 22 pages including the pages only visible to adminis25
Figura 3: Class Diagram
trators and moderators. They were created using a software called Balsamiq Mockups
that can be used for free and fully functional for 30 days. [28]. The Figure 4, shows the
prototype of the page that the user is led to after evaluating a professor. On this page the
user is prompted to evaluate other professors. The professors that are shown on this page
are based on the recommendation engine mentioned before. These prototypes aided the
development of the front-end and identification of new software requirements and were
discussed between possible users. The rest of the prototype screens can be seen in the
Appendix A.
At the end of the definitions of requirements, architecture, diagrams and prototypes, the estimation process of each user story card was started. The time to be spent
on one card varied from one hour to 21 hours according to its complexity. Afterwards, 5
releases were planned over 5 iterations.
Estimation, releases and iterations were planned and managed using the TargetProcess tool mentioned before. Figure 5 shows how user stories were organized in releases.
A card can be easily moved between the releases. It is also possible to assign a user story
to a developer and a QA engineer in the team and see the description of a user story, its
comments made by the team, tags and bugs associated with this user story that may had
appeared along the way. Requirements could also be easily tracked as shown in Figure 6.
Although many adjustments were required during the whole process, those functionalities of TargetProcess based on Scrum and so other softwares used allowed the project
to be completed successfully and within the targeted timeframe. It is important to men26
Figura 4: Prototype of a user page
tion that although all process was performed by a student monitored by the professor,
the different roles in the development were carefully accomplished. This allows a better
understanding about the different functions and development steps, leading the student
to act both as a manager and developer.
27
Figura 5: Release plan
Figura 6: Relations Network
28
4
RESULTS
This section presents the main interfaces and results obtained during this work.
A great deal of effort required in the development can be seen in the previous section:
methodology. Although many results have already been mentioned before, here it is
focused on showing the final result of the work that is most visible to end users.
TopProfessors was intended to be simple and make the user feel comfortable. The
homepage, as it can be seen in Figure 7, is similar to Google’s homepages patterns containing a search bar and two search buttons on the center. On the top right corner there
is an option to sign in and, on the left, an option to show the menu. Users can either
search for a professor or university from anywhere around the world that is registered in
TopProfessors database using the search bar.
After finding a professor, users are led to the professor profile page where they
will have access to the evaluation results for that professor (Figure 8). On this page,
they will be able to see how other users graded the professor and the comments they
made. The page displays the most frequent tags that were added to the professor and the
grades that the students got when studying with him. The professor is also compared to
other professors in the same department. Furthermore, the details of the courses that this
professor teaches, the difficult level of the courses, and the most evaluated professors in
his/her department are also shown. When a professor is registered on the platform and
has uploaded a photo, it is also shown on the page and on the search results. From this
page they can go to the university’s page, department’s page and to the evaluation page.
The evaluation page, where users can assess professors, was designed to require less
typing as from the user. Users are just allowed to make one evaluation per course. They
will grade the content mastery of a professor, his/her clarity on speaking and also to the
assistance provided during the course. They are also able to give other details about the
course that the professor taught and make an open-ended comment. Figure 9 shows this
page.
The university and department pages are similar (Figure 10). The professors considered as top in the list are shown first, followed by the ones who are last in the rank
and that can improve their skills to be top professors some day. Any professor with an
average grade greater than seven is a top professor. This page also displays the overall
grade of the professors from the university and shows the most evaluated professors and
grades to a particular department.
There is also the administration page, Figure 11, where moderators can accept
new professors, universities or departments that users added or edited. It is also possible
to accept or deny the solicitation that users can do to convert their default accounts to
29
Figura 7: TopProfessors’ Homepage
Figura 8: Profile Page
30
Figura 9: Evaluation Page
Figura 10: University Page
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Figura 11: Administration Page
a professor account. In this case, the user must provide a document to prove he/she is
a professor. On this page, any attempt of brute force login in any of the accounts is
displayed, although it is worthy to note that the system is already protected against such
intrusive attacks.
Other functionalities were also implemented. Users can add universities and professors regardless of country or language; users can integrate their account with social
networks. The machine learning algorithm provide recommendations to users about which
professors they may choose to better fit in the learning environment. Users can edit their
profile, upload photos, add universities they studied at, view their evaluation history or
convert their account into a professor account.
TopProfessors was tested with several students from the Federal University of
Paraı́ba, Brazil and they approved the platform design and usability. The test was conducted according to the criteria found on the Brazilian Federal Government Web Patterns
guidebook [29].
At the moment of this writing, more than 120,000 professors from only Brazilian
universities were listed on the website. With the platform in beta version and online
for less than one month, more than 1000 users have registered and approximately 3000
evaluations were computed.
TopProfessors has received positive feedback from students and professors from
several universities across Brazil. One says, “Congratulations! Great initiative. It’s a
great tool to have an idea about the work of our professors. I believe that the good
32
ones, regardless of the hardness of the course, will still be well evaluated”. Other says,
“Congratulations for the good work, Brazilians universities really needed to have their
professors assessed this way.” However, some professors who received low grades criticized
the platform and complained about the use of their names.
Several lawyers and judges were consulted to receive legal advice. Unanimously,
they said that the platform was running legally and that information such as the professor’s name and university are public and available for anyone to see and cannot be
considered invasion of privacy. Besides, professors from Federal Brazilian universities are
under the Transparency Law that makes public to citizens even the salary of a professor.
Even so, privacy document, terms of use and evaluation guidelines, Appendix B and C,
were reviewed in order to preserve the integrity of the platform, students and professors.
On these documents, TopProfessors elucidates to users that their content must not
be illegal neither against the law, and must not infringe rights of third parties and must not
be able to raise any legal action against TopProfessors or any third party. TopProfessors
is not responsible for the comments that users make. Besides, the site reserves the right
to remove any comment that are against the guideline or terms of use and also to notify
authorities about the account details of the malicious user.
As it was seen in [8], teaching quality and students achievements are highly related.
Therefore, it is indispensable that professors be willing to improve their teaching. A mere
grade should not matter, what is on debate is the education of this young generation that
quite depends on professors. TopProfessors aims to help professors to have on the reviews
a constructive feedback for improvement that is essential for any worker in any profession.
Improvement is something that should happen daily in everyone’s life. Albert Einstein
said that “once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.” Ernest Hemingway pointed up
that “there is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being
superior to your former self.”
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5
CONCLUSION
During this project it was possible to put in practice all the knowledge obtained
during the four years of academy. Courses like Software Engineering, Algorithms, Databases, Human-computer interaction, Artificial Intelligence, and Web Culture were essential
to create this platform professionally.
This project was really important to learn the relationship between project management and development that made possible the completion of this project successfully
and on the expected date. Although many problems were faced and many changes were
necessary, they were quickly solved with small adjustments on the timeframe. Project
management is challenging due to the many variables that need to be considered when
setting deadlines and releases dates and this experience will certainly help in future works.
TopProfessors was created and developed as a public and worldwide platform to
assess teaching quality. There is geolocation restriction so that users from anywhere in
the world can have access to the whole set of features offered by the platform. They can
register their universities and evaluate their professors, view profile pages and rankings
and receive recommendations of courses and professors.
For future work, the layout of the platform will be adjusted to better fit on mobile
devices. There will also be a natural language processing to filter comments made by
malicious users, reducing the number of reports about inappropriate comments. A.I.
algorithms will be used to show the teaching quality evolution of professors after receiving
the feedbacks from students. Moreover, evaluation process will be improved and new
evaluations types will be created for specifically for undergraduate students, master’s and
phd students.
In conclusion, Topprofessors.com provides a platform to evaluate professors’ teaching quality that intends to reach out students from all over the world. This platform
provides professors with constructive criticism about their work so that they can contribute to a better educational level in our society by improving their skills. Students will
finally be able to share their feedback in a central repository and help their fellows to
make good decisions.
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REFERENCES
[1] Hativa, N., Birenbaum, M.: Who prefers what? Disciplinary differences in students’
preferred approaches to teaching and learning styles. Research in Higher Education, 41, 209-236, 2000.
[2] Feldman, K.: The significance of circumstances for college students’ ratings of their
teachers and courses. Research in Higher Education, 10, 2, 1979.
[3] Luc S., Susan S., Deniz E.l, Baskaran A., Rajah R.: Unesco Science Report Towards
2030. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,
2015.
[4] Rate My Professors. Available at http://ratemyprofessors.com. Accessed in March
22, 2016.
[5] Students Review. Available at http://studentsreview.com. Accessed in March 22,
2016.
[6] Rate Your Lecturer. Available at http://rateyourlecturer.com. Accessed in March 22,
2016.
[7] Smith, Mark K. ‘Evaluation’ in the encyclopaedia of informal education, 2006. Available at http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-eval.htm. Accessed in April 27, 2016.
[8] Darling Hammond, Linda. Teacher Quality and Student Achievement. Education
policy analysis archives, 8, 1, 2000.
[9] Tuytens, Melissa. Stimulating professional learning through teacher evaluation: An
impossible task for the school leader? Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 5,
891-899, 2011.
[10] Namaghi, Seyyed. A Data-Driven Conceptualization of Teacher Evaluation. The
Qualitative Report, 15, 6, 1504-1522, 2010.
[11] Arubayi, Eric. Improvement of instruction and teacher effectiveness: are student
ratings reliable and valid? Higher Education, 16, 3, 267-278, 1987.
[12] Albrecht, S., Hoopes, J.: An empirical assessment of commercial web-based professor
evaluation services. Journal of accounting education, 27, 3, 125-132, 2009.
[13] Ardalan, Ali. A comparison of student feedback obtained through paper-based and
web-based surveys of faculty teaching. British journal of educational technology, 38, 6, 1085-1101, 2007.
35
[14] Sonntag, M. E., Bassett, J. F., & Snyder, T. An empirical test of the study of
student evaluations of teaching made on RateMyProfessors.com. Assessment and
Evaluation in Higher Education, 1, 6, 2008.
[15] Coladarci, T., & Kornfield, I. RateMyProfessors.com versus formal in-class student
evaluations of teaching. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 12, 6,
2007.
[16] TargetProcess. Available at http://www.targetprocess.com. Accessed in May 8, 2016.
[17] Bitbucket, Available at http://www.bitbucket.org. Accessed in May 8, 2016.
[18] FTPloy, Available at http://www.ftploy.com. Accessed in May 8, 2016.
[19] Vora, P. Web Application Design Patterns. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann,
2009.
[20] Easyrec:
Open
Source
Recommendation
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Engine.
Available
at
[21] jQuery. Available at http://www.jquery.com. Accessed in May 10, 2016.
[22] Semantic UI. Available at http://semantic-ui.com. Accessed in May 10, 2016.
[23] Croppie JS. Available at http://foliotek.github.io/Croppie. Accessed in May 10, 2016.
[24] CodeIgniter Web Framework. Available at http://www.codeigniter.com. Accessed in
May 10, 2016.
[25] Piatetsky, Gregory. Interview with Simon Funk.SIGKDD Explorations, 9, 1, 3840, 2007.
[26] MySQL Workbench. Available at http://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/. Accessed in May 10, 2016.
[27] Draw.io - Flowchart Maker & Online Diagram
http://www.draw.io. Accessed in May 10, 2016.
Software.
Available
at
[28] Balsamiq Mockups. Available at http://balsamiq.com. Accessed in May 10, 2016.
[29] Padrões Web em Governo Eletrônico:
Cartilha de
(2010),http://epwg.governoeletronico.gov.br/cartilha-usabilidade
36
Usabilidade
APPENDIX A - PROTOTYPES
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APPENDIX B - TERMS OF USE
B.1 Introdução
Estes Termos de Uso e Condições governam o uso do TopProfessors.com; por utilizar o website, você aceita automaticamente e totalmente estes Termos de Uso e Condições.
Se você não concorda com qualquer um destes Termos de Uso e Condições, você não deve
utilizar este website.
B.2 Licença para utilizar o website
Salvo disposto em contrário, TopProfessors e/ou seus licenciadores possuem direitos de propriedade intelectual do website e dos conteúdos do website. Sujeito a licença
abaixo, todos os direitos de propriedade intelectual são reservados.
Você pode visualizar, fazer download (motivos de caching) e realizar Print Screen
de páginas do website, para o seu uso próprio, sujeito as restrições dispostas abaixo e em
qualquer lugar destes Termos de Uso e Condições.
Você não deve:
Publicar material desse website (incluindo publicações em outro website); Vender,
alugar ou sub-licenciar conteúdo do website; Reproduzir, duplicar, copiar ou explorar
qualquer conteúdo do site para usos comerciais; Editar e/ou modificar qualquer conteúdo
do site; Redistribuir qualquer conteúdo do site, exceto por conteúdos especificamente e
expressamente indicado disponı́vel para distribuição.
B.3 Acesso Restrito
Acesso para áreas especı́ficas do website é restrito. TopProfessors.com reserva o
direito de restringir acesso a outras áreas do site, ou até mesmo a todo o website, de
acordo com discrição do TopProfessors.
Se o TopProfessors prover a você uma identidade (login) e senha, para acesso a
áreas restritas do site ou a conteúdos e serviços restritos, você deve garantir que sua
identidade (login) e senha são confidenciais.
TopProfessors.com pode desabilitar sua identidade (login) e senha em critério particular do TopProfessors e sem qualquer notificação prévia ou explicação.
B.4 Conteúdo do Usuário
Neste Termos de Uso e Condições, “seu conteúdo de usuário” significa (incluindo,
sem limitação, textos, imagens, áudios, vı́deos e material áudio-visual) que você submeter
46
ao site, para qualquer finalidade.
Você garante para TopProfessors, licença de uso mundial, irrevogável e não-exclusiva
e sem royalities para reprodução, adaptação, publicação, tradução e distribuição do seu
conteúdo de usuário em qualquer outra mı́dia. Você também garante para TopProfessors
o direito para sub-licenciar esses direitos, e o direito de realizar uma ação contra infrações
desses direitos.
Seu contéudo de usuário não deve ser ilegal ou contra a lei, não deve infrigir direitos
de terceiros e não deve ser capaz de levantar qualquer ação legal contra TopProfessors ou
qualquer terceiro.
Você não deve submeter nenhum conteúdo para o site que é ou já foi sujeito de
qualquer ameaça ou procedimento de ações legais ou similares.
TopProfessors reserva o direito de editar ou remover qualquer material enviado
para o site, armazenado nos servidores do TopProfessors ou hospedado ou publicado no
site.
TopProfessors não se responsabiliza por nomes de professores cadastrados por
usuários.
TopProfessors não se responsabiliza por avaliações e comentários realizados por
usuários a professores.
B.5 Termos de Uso e Condições
Ao utilizar e participar de forma ativa no TopProfessors, de qualquer das formas
que o website permite, o Utilizador declara ter lido e aceitado cumprir os presentes Termos
e Condições de uso. O TopProfessors reserva-se o direito – mas não a obrigação – de,
perante o não cumprimento destes Termos e Condições de uso, eliminar todo e qualquer
conteúdo que os infrinja, bem como restringir e/ou bloquear o acesso do Utilizador infrator
à participação no website, sem qualquer aviso prévio.
Na utilização que fizer deste website (incluindo na submissão, envio ou publicação
de conteúdos que fizer para o TopProfessors), o Utilizador está obrigado e declara aceitar e
cumprir a legislação aplicável, e concretamente o Código do Direito de Autor e dos Direitos
Conexos, o Código da Propriedade Industrial e a Lei da Criminalidade Informática.
O Utilizador está também obrigado a e declara agir de boa-fé e a fazer uma utilização do TopProfessors que não ofenda quaisquer direitos de terceiros. Particularmente,
compromete-se a não submeter qualquer conteúdo ou fazer uma participação que constitua qualquer ataque em função da raça, nacionalidade, origem étnica, religião, convicção
polı́tica ou sexo; que constitua difamação, incitação ao furto, fraude, violência, terrorismo,
sadismo, prostituição, pedofilia, bem como que empregue conteúdos de carácter obsceno,
47
indecoroso ou pornográfico.
O Utilizador apenas está autorizado a fazer uso dos conteúdos presentes no TopProfessors para fins estritamente pessoais, sendo-lhe expressamente proibido publicar, reproduzir, difundir, distribuir ou, por qualquer outra forma, tornar os conteúdos acessı́veis
a terceiros, para fins de comunicação pública ou de comercialização, como por exemplo
colocando-os disponı́veis noutro site, serviço on-line ou em cópias de papel. Está igualmente vedada qualquer transformação dos conteúdos.
Robot, webbot, scrape, spider, crawl e outros softwares automáticos e similares
são estritamente proibidos. Sendo assim vedada qualquer forma de mineração de dados
no TopProfessors, a não ser com nossa permissão prévia.
É também expressamente proibido ao Utilizador criar ou introduzir no TopProfessors tipos de vı́rus ou programas que o danifiquem, direta ou indiretamente.
O TopProfessors, e o respectivo conteúdo, tem finalidade exclusivamente lúdica,
pelo que nada neste website constitui um conselho, não dispensando o conselho profissional, nem estabelece qualquer relação contratual.
O TopProfessors não é responsável por qualquer eventual perda ou danos, diretos
ou indiretos, sofridos por qualquer Utilizador relativamente à informação contida neste
site.
O Utilizador é o único responsável pelos prejuı́zos, diretos ou indiretos, causados
a si próprio, ao TopProfessors ou a terceiros, relacionados com a utilização que fizer do
TopProfessors, comprometendo-se a proceder às indenizações necessárias, em virtude de
qualquer ação, reclamação ou condenação a que essa utilização dê origem.
O TopProfessors não garante que os serviços prestados por este website funcionem de forma contı́nua ou que se encontrem livres de erros, vı́rus ou outros elementos
prejudiciais.
O TopProfessors não é responsável pela exatidão, qualidade, segurança, legalidade
ou licitude, incluindo o cumprimento das regras respeitantes a direitos de autor e direitos
conexos, relativamente aos conteúdos, produtos ou serviços contidos neste website que
tenham sido criados ou fornecidos por membros, Utilizadores, anunciantes ou parceiros
comerciais, bem como por qualquer informação contida em sites de terceiros para os quais
este website estabeleça ligações.
O Utilizador declara autorizar, a tı́tulo gratuito, a divulgação, publicação, utilização e exploração dos conteúdos, textos, dados, imagens ou programas por si enviados
para o TopProfessors.
O Utilizador declara igualmente que:
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Tem plena legitimidade para autorizar a utilização previamente mencionada e, concretamente, que obteve e dispõe dos necessários direitos e autorizações a tı́tulo de direitos
de autor e assegurou os pagamentos eventualmente devidos a terceiros legı́timos titulares de direitos sobre os conteúdos, textos, dados, imagens ou programas por si enviados
para o TopProfessors, para efeitos da sua utilização nos termos previstos na presente declaração; sobre o direito de autorizar a utilização dos conteúdos, textos, dados, imagens
ou programas por si enviados para o TopProfessors constantes da presente declaração, não
existe qualquer reclamação ou processo instaurado ou alguma contestação relativamente
à sua titularidade por parte de terceiros; não existe nenhum compromisso nem nenhuma
condição decorrente de relações jurı́dicas eventualmente existentes entre o Utilizador e terceiros que impeça ou condicione, de algum modo, a execução total ou parcial da presente
declaração nos termos nela definidos. O TopProfessors exime-se de qualquer responsabilidade resultante da falta de veracidade do anteriormente declarado ou da violação pelo
Utilizador de quaisquer direitos ou interesses legitimamente protegidos de terceiros. O
TopProfessors reserva-se no direito de livremente (sem obrigatoriedade de invocar qualquer motivo) e em qualquer momento, remover ou não publicar, total ou parcialmente,
quaisquer conteúdos, textos, dados, imagens, aplicações ou programas, editados por si
ou pelo Utilizador, sem que por tal facto advenha qualquer direito de indemnização ou
compensação para o Utilizador ou quaisquer terceiros.
Não existe qualquer obrigação do TopProfessors em guardar os conteúdos, textos,
dados, imagens ou programas publicados neste website, podendo os mesmos ser destruı́dos
a qualquer momento, sem que por tal fato advenha qualquer direito de indenização para
o Utilizador ou quaisquer terceiros.
Este website utiliza cookies. Por utilizar o website, você consente com a utilização
de cookies pelo TopProfessors.com.
B.6 Sem garantias
Este site é provido “como é” sem nenhuma representação de garantias. TopProfessors não faz nenhuma representação ou garantia em relação a seu website ou nas informações e conteúdo provido pelo website.
B.7 Razoabilidade
Por utilizar o website, você aceita que exclusões e limitações de responsabilização
descritas no website são razoáveis. Se você não pensa que são razoáveis, você não deve
utilizar o website.
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B.8 Provisões inaplicáveis
Se qualquer provisão do website é, ou é interpretada como, lei inaplicável, que não
irá afetar a aplicabilidade de outras provisões da isenção de responsabilidade do website.
B.9 Brechas do Termos de Uso e Condições
Sem qualquer prejuı́zo aos outros direitos do TopProfessors desse Termos de Uso
e Condições, se você quebrar, de qualquer maneira, algum destes termos e condições,
TopProfessors pode tomar ações apropriadas contra a brecha, incluindo a suspensão de
acesso ao website, proibição de acesso ao website, bloqueio de computadores usando seu
endereço IP ao website, contatação do seu provedor de Internet para requisitar o bloqueio
do seu acesso ao website e/ou levando procedimentos formais à corte, contra você.
B.10 Variação
TopProfessors pode revisar esse Termos de Uso e Condições de tempos em tempos.
Termos revisados e condições irão ser aplicados no uso do website a partir da data de
publicação dos termos de uso e condições revisado do website. Por favor, cheque este
documento regularmente para garantir que você está familiarizado com a versão atual do
mesmo.
B.11 Separabilidade
Se uma provisão desse Termos de Uso e Condições é determinada por qualquer
corte ou autoridade competente como sendo ilegal e/ou inaplicável, as outras provisões
irão continuar em efeito. Se qualquer parte de uma provisão for ilegal e/ou inaplicável,
aquela parte será considerada a ser deletada, porém o restante da provisão continuará
válida.
B.12 Totalidade de Acordo
Este Termo de Uso e Condições constitui a totalidade de acordo entre você e
TopProfessors em relação ao seu uso do website, e substitui todos os acordos anteriores
em respeito a seu uso do website.
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APPENDIX C - PRIVACY
Sua privacidade é importante para o TopProfessors. Esta declaração de privacidade
visa prover informações sobre dados pessoais que TopProfessors pode coleta, e como o site
pode usufruir dessas informações.
C.1 Polı́ticas de Privacidade
Todas as suas informações pessoais recolhidas serão usadas para ajudar a tornar a
sua visita no site o mais produtivo e agradável possı́vel.
A garantia da confidencialidade dos dados pessoais dos utilizadores do site é importante para o TopProfessors. Todas as informações pessoais relativas a membros, assinantes, clientes e/ou visitantes que usem o TopProfessors serão tratadas em concordância
com a Lei da Proteção de Dados Pessoais de 26 de outubro de 1998 (Lei n.o 67/98). A
informação pessoal recolhida pode incluir o seu nome, e-mail, número de telefone e/ou
telemóvel, morada, data de nascimento e/ou outros.
O uso do TopProfessors pressupõe a aceitação deste Acordo de privacidade. A
equipe do TopProfessors reserva-se ao direito de alterar este acordo sem aviso prévio.
Deste modo, recomendamos que consulte a nossa polı́tica de privacidade com regularidade
de forma a estar sempre atualizado.
C.2 Anúncios
Tal como outros websites, coletamos e utilizamos informação contida nos anúncios.
A informação contida nos anúncios, inclui o seu endereço IP (Internet Protocol), o seu
ISP (Internet Service Provider, como o Sapo, Clix ou outro), o browser que utilizou ao
visitar o nosso website (como o Internet Explorer ou o Firefox), o tempo da sua visita e
que páginas visitou dentro do nosso website.
O Google, como fornecedor de terceiros, utiliza cookies para exibir anúncios no
nosso website; Com o cookie DART, o Google pode exibir anúncios com base nas visitas
que o leitor fez a outros websites na Internet; Os utilizadores podem desativar o cookie
DART visitando a Polı́tica de privacidade da rede de conteúdo e dos anúncios do Google.
C.3 Os Cookies e Web Beacons
Utilizamos cookies para armazenar informação, tais como as suas preferências pessoas quando visita o nosso website. Isto poderá incluir um simples popup, ou uma ligação
em vários serviços que providenciamos, tais como fóruns. Em adição também utilizamos publicidade de terceiros no nosso website para suportar os custos de manutenção.
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Alguns destes publicitários, poderão utilizar tecnologias como os cookies e/ou web beacons quando publicitam no nosso website, o que fará com que esses publicitários (como
o Google através do Google AdSense) também recebam a sua informação pessoal, como
o endereço IP, o seu ISP, o seu browser, etc. Esta função é geralmente utilizada para
geotargeting (mostrar publicidade de Lisboa apenas aos leitores oriundos de Lisboa por
ex.) ou apresentar publicidade direcionada a um tipo de utilizador (como mostrar publicidade de restaurante a um utilizador que visita sites de culinária regularmente, por ex.).
Você detém o poder de desligar os seus cookies, nas opções do seu browser, ou efetuando
alterações nas ferramentas de programas Anti-Virus, como o Norton Internet Security.
No entanto, isso poderá alterar a forma como interage com o nosso website, ou outros
websites. Isso poderá afetar ou não permitir que faça logins em programas, sites ou fóruns
da nossa e de outras redes.
C.4 Ligações a Sites de terceiros
O TopProfessors possui ligações para outros sites, os quais, a nosso ver, podem
conter informações/ferramentas úteis para os nossos visitantes. A nossa polı́tica de privacidade não é aplicada a sites de terceiros, pelo que, caso visite outro site a partir do
nosso deverá ler a polı́tica de privacidade do mesmo.
Não nos responsabilizamos pela polı́tica de privacidade ou conteúdo presente nesses
mesmos sites.
C.5 Coleção de dados pessoais
TopProfessors pode coletar e usar os seguintes tipos de coleta de dados:
Informações sobre seu uso do website (incluindo comentários e avaliações postadas); Informações que você prover durante a criação de uma conta no website (incluindo
nome, e-mail, informações acadêmicas); Qualquer outra informação que você enviar ao
TopProfessors.
C.6 Uso de informações pessoais
TopProfessors pode usar suas informações pessoais para:
Administrar o website; Personalizar o website para você; Habilitar seu acesso no
website bem como os serviços dos mesmos; Publicar informações sobre você no website;
Enviar comunicações e alertas do site. TopProfessors pode revelar seus dados pessoais
quando requerido por lei, em conexão com qualquer procedimento legal ou futuros procedimentos legais, e com objetivo de estabilizar, exercitar ou defender seus direitos legais.
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C.7 Garantindo a segurança dos seus dados
TopProfessors irá tomar precauções técnicas e organizacionais para prevenir a
perca, uso incorreto ou alteração do uso de seus dados pessoais.
TopProfessors irá armazenar todas as informações pessoais que você prover nos
servidores do website.
C.8 Transferência de dados internacional
Informações pessoais que você talvez possa submeter em postagens no website,
poderão ser publicadas na Internet e talvez possa estar disponı́vel em todo o mundo.
Você concorda com essas possı́veis transferência de dados.
C.9 Atualizações desse acordo
TopProfessors pode atualizar suas Polı́ticas de Privacidade, postando uma nova
versão no seu website.
Você deve checar este documento constantemente a fim de garantir que você está
familiar com qualquer mudança.
C.10 Outros websites
O website talvez contenha links para outros websites.
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