Awesome Course Schedule, an app released last year by Japanese content provider Labit, has been rapidly gaining traction with students at Japanese universities, because it allows them to rate and review their courses.

Any student that has taken a course can give it a rating out of five stars for overall satisfaction, difficulty and various other categories. They can also let future students know things like whether attendance is taken and how frequent exams are, important considerations in choosing the most, er, appropriate schedule for your motivation level. The app also prompts users to leave advice for other students thinking of taking the class.

According to the company, “By collecting feedback from students who have completed the course, we will enable the creation of even better classes.”

Of course, while the rating function has been grabbing attention, the app also allows users to draw up and manage course schedules online and to connect with other students taking the same class, convenient features that have contributed to its popularity. At the time of writing, an impressive 226,296 courses had been registered and, at Keio University, one out of every five students uses the app.

Some students will certainly use the app to find suitable courses and get the most out of their time at university, but it’s probably equally likely that some students will use it to craft super slacker schedules or to take revenge on that professor that failed them. So, what do you think, readers? Is this app going to empower students or just reduce education to a review-driven commodity?

Via IT Media