One of the top
stories in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week focused on the web
site, www.RateMyProfessors.com. This site has been around for approximately
10 years, and allows students to rate their professors based on factors like
helpfulness, clarity, easiness, and overall effectiveness. Additionally, the site allows students to
provide a chili pepper icon to students who may find physically attractive, or “hot”.
Anecdotally, the site has been controversial since its
inception. Criticisms of the site
include that it is not comprehensive.
There is a distinction between clarity and easiness and teaching
effectiveness. However I scanned the
site for an old professor of mine and found that students were quite honest,
acknowledging when she was very hard but effective.
Through my undergrad and master’s programs, I have had
conversations with my professors about how they felt about being portrayed on
the site. Professors with good ratings
and chili peppers did not mind at all.
In fact they felt honored and amused by the ratings and feedback they
got from the site, whereas the professors I spoke with who had more
constructive ratings did not really care about what the site had to say. I am not sure whether not I believe that, or
if they were initiating a personal defense mechanism. Either way, none of the professors I spoke
with took the site particularly seriously.
According to the article in the Chronicle, some professors
are highly concerned about how their rating on the site may or may not impact
their very real career prospects. One
even went so far as to say that this website will potentially impact a professor’s
ability to gain tenure at a particular institution as a result of the ratings. While the article does not cite an example of
this actually happening, it does outline the level of fear that exists amongst
the academic community.
Another criticism is that the site is incredibly reactionary,
drawing those who have either had extraordinarily positive or extraordinarily
negative experiences with any given professor.
The argument is that the sample is self selected, and therefore likely
inaccurate. To investigate this, two research articles have been
published on this exact topic. The
researchers found that while the language may be cruder than what might be
found on a traditional course evaluation, the general sentiment by students on
a particular instructor directly reflects what is found on their course
evaluations facilitated by their institutions.
This pattern held to be true, even with a sample as small as 10 ratings
and did not change with a sample of up to 50 ratings.
This has very interesting implications, especially since UNC has gone to online course evaluations. Matt mentioned in class that the response rate for course evaluations has plummeted, but I wonder if the overall quality of responses will change much. I believe that this new online course evaluation may allow students to feel less inhibited and therefore more honest about their experiences. At the same time, why even bother with online evals if a third party is already doing it for us? (did you get that neo liberal jab J)
What an interesting post! Thanks! Honestly I am not surprised by the research findings that the website yielded similar results as course evaluations. I believe that students who take the time to utilize Rate My Professor probably have strong feelings about their professor(s). I believe those students who REALLY enjoyed their experiences and those who HATED their experiences want to share their thoughts with other students. I'm sure these students took the time to share these thoughts on course evaluations as well.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that professors may not achieve tenure due to various websites is absurd to me (ooops, maybe I shouldn't have made that statement, who knows, we may be evaluated on our blogging abilities next). It's no mystery why so many of our youth struggle with objectification (seeing women/men as sex objects). This site encourages students to pay particular attention to their professors physical appearence??? Gross!!! Maybe I'll start a website called Rate Their Moms where professors can log on and rate the physical appearence of each of their student's mothers. I'm sure they would be thrilled to know that someone they loved and cared about was a victim of objectification. Professors are mothers, sisters, brothers, and fathers. Maybe they should take that into consideration the next time they log on and rate someone based on their appearence.
I enjoyed this post. I think that this site, just like any other rating for a product, service, restaurant, etc. has to be taken with a grain of salt. I 100% agree with Aaron - think about when you're going to fill out a survey, provide feedback, etc.; chances are you've only done this when you're either incredibly happy with the product/service/etc. or you're really pissed off. I don't believe this is any different when filling out a course evaluation or rating a professor in some other manner.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't beleive evaluations or a web site like this should be the sole thing taken into consideration for tenure (which I think we've learned there is a lot that goes into tenure so this seems pretty unrealistic), I don't really have a problem with this information being looked at. If a professor time and time again has an F grade, it seems to me there is a problem. Now on the other hand, if the field is at least split and a professor gets a C, then that's probably pretty realistic. If you've got someone who only gets A's, then they're a rock star! :)
I think for me it boils down to the fact that sites like this are incredibly objective (that's not a deep thought) and the fact of the matter is you're never going to please everyone!
This is an interesting post. We tell students all of the time that their facebook and other social media accounts are fair game as they attempt to find employment. We warn them that their may be people googling them and that they need to be concerned about, but I think this is a bit different.
ReplyDeleteWhat if professors started making websites that rated their students? We put the students name in and then people who work with them can rate them by subject, or particular skills, or we can classify them as deved or college level. I think this will be great, then we would have a clearer picture of whether or not we should be admitting to graduate programs or internships, for example. I'm obviously being ironic.
I think the student/instructor relationship is crucial in learning process and too often students are unwilling to work with their instructor to solve problems. This website also leaves open the possibility for very skewed reviews.
I used ratemyprofessor.com in college and thought it was really helpful. I somewhat agree that students will rate people they really liked and really didn't, but it also becomes a cultural thing at a school that students talk about this site and genuinely want to be helpful to other students. I'm not sure they see it as a way to "get back" at professors as much as help their peers. In that regard, I'm all for it.
ReplyDeleteI think there's something else at play with this site. Malcolm Gladwell writes quite a bit about first reactions in "Blink." If peaches are sold in a glass jar, we're more likely to think they taste good than if the same peaches are sold in a can. We're affected by our biases. If I read that 98 other students thought that professor Super-hot was an amazing teacher, I may be more likely to go in expecting for them to be awesome. I may then pay more attention, take what they say with more authority, and therefore get more out of the class. Does this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy help students? Maybe so. I'm all for students going into a class jazzed about how great others have said the professor is. Maybe they and the professor both benefit.
Of course, on the other side, a professor may legitimately challenge students (like say, with the socratic method) and those students hate the professor even though they were actually challenged. Then, the opposite happens.
For my students, I encourage them to use it. They are paying for classes, so they should take the professor they think they will learn best from. More often than not, they sign up for those professors that are rated as more difficult but from whom you learned a bit.
Thanks Jill for posting this. I remember we were talking about this in class, and I was able to pull up my "rates" from my students. It is funny to see the comments they make. It seems as Beau points out that it is a way for students to "get back" at teachers for a poor grade they received or for a poor performance they put together. What I have found is that the students who do poorly find all reasons to blame the teacher for their bad grades and not the real reason why. What is interesting is that the "positive" comments come in to play more in defense to the teacher based on the negative comments made by others. As Beau points out, there may be a few that post bad comments, but they are usually in the minority, but are also the ones that are the most vocal.
ReplyDeleteI have not seen the physical characteristics part of this site, that to me is uncalled for and opens up the door for some very hurtful things to be said there. I do think it would be horribly wrong, but also quite humorous, if instructors could rate their students in return! It is a morbid thought, but one that could get a chuckle out of it. As Jill points out, with the online teacher reviews that are taking place now, and the decline of students filling them out, how else do instructors get feedback? The scary thing in my world is there is talk about students and parents having feedback in determining how "good" you are as a teacher in accordance to this new pay for performance deal. If a students doesn't do well in class, they will not give you a positive review which could potentially cost you money...Fair?