To rate or berate?

With all the crucial aspects that go into perfecting a week’s worth of classes, the choice of professors is one that cannot be overlooked. Students refer to ratemyprofessor.com to access reviews from former students about a particular teacher. While this is a simple and convenient way to learn about a future professor, there are a few questions that must be taken into account.

Ratemyprofessors.com was created to help students choose the teachers and courses that they want based on other student opinions. As stated on the Web site, it is “built for college students, by college students.”

This underlying truth can help a student understand the emotions behind the rating. There are those times when a student does poorly in a class and wants to tell everyone at school just how terrible that teacher is.

Business major Austin Lite admits how he has taken advantage of this emotional outlet.

“I’ve graded a professor poorly,” Lite said. “But I don’t regret it because I still think they had flaws in their teaching.”

There are some philosophical standpoints when working with this controversial site. First, a student must consider how many ratings one teacher has received. The ratings come in the form of smiley faces: a yellow smiley is positive feedback and a blue frown is negative. The more ratings a professor receives, the higher the probability of accuracy.

Students are recommended to steer clear from forming opinions about a professor with one terrible score. Chances are, one student had a bad experience. Sophomore Logan Brown, an avid user of ratemyprofessors.com, keeps a level head when rummaging through the Web site.

“Of course, each student’s experience with any professor is unique, and some are bound to get along better than others,” Brown said. “With that in mind, it’s usually easy to read between the lines and average the general consensus on a professor.”

The Web site provides a variety of information ranging from the department a teacher works in, to whether or not a professor is “hot,” which is displayed by an animated chili pepper. Beyond smiley faces and chili peppers, each student has the option of writing a personal review about a teacher and even gives advice to those seeking a place on their roster for the upcoming semester.

Suggestions such as “easy grader” or “strict with attendance” can help influence a student to take the class or not. According to ratemyprofessors.com, 65 percent of the comments posted are positive feedback encouraging other students to enroll in a certain class.

Students are not the only ones cruising the Web site, however. Educators across the nation report to the social network to read up on their general popularity with students and even provide a rebuttal if desired.

Ratemyprofessors.com has recently introduced a new addition to its Web site entitled “Professors Strike Back” that contains videos of teachers willing to stand their ground on accusations made about their classes.

Other teachers like Dr. Agn?s Kim, professor of chemistry, physics and astronomy, have a more moderate opinion of the Web site.

“I think it’s fine,” Kim said. “It’s what the students think.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 13 2009. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry