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March 08, 2005
Website gives humorous alternative to professor evaluation
Students' falling compliance with online evaluations is troubling to the Hamline administration.
But they might consider revising the system, because it isn’t that most Hamline students aren’t reviewing their professors’ performance č it's just that they've gone to a more entertaining forum.
Ratemyprofessor.com is a website where students from schools across the nation, including Hamline, rant and rave about the strengths and weaknesses of their professors.
The website provides an easy way to rate an instructor’s teaching performance, among other attributes.
The ratings are unlike the evaluations that students fill out at the end of each semester. They provide a new approach for students to share their opinions and responses to a class.
Currently, 112 Hamline professors have been graded by students.
The site has been around for a few years, but it is just now beginning to garner interest on campus. Users remain nameless unless they register, so the majority of comments are anonymous.
Established in 1999, ratemyprofessor.com now contains over 200,000 ratings for professors from 1,700 different schools nationwide. It is the largest listing of college professor ratings where students do the grading.
The rating system is fairly basic. Students grade professors on a scale of one to five in four categories: easiness, helpfulness, clarity, and user interest.
Then, “just for fun,” the site says, there’s one more grade: “hot or not.” Professors considered “hot” get a red chili icon next to their name.
Among Hamline faculty, religion professor Earl Schwartz has the highest number of ratings, with 11. One comment states that he is “an amazing professor! Extremely engaging, challenging, and helpful.”
And yes, Schwartz has a red chili next to his name.
Another of the many professors rated on the site is anthropology professor David Davies. Five students have rated his performance and commented on his class.
One anonymous comment said: “David rocks. He has a sense of humor, he makes things interesting, and you will learn from him. Plus, he took us to his grandmother’s house to eat pie!”
John Swapenski, president and founder of the site, said that “students are customers of professors,” and therefore “students do the grading.”
The site does provide assistance to students who choose to learn about what professors students should avoid or take, but, of course, the opinions may or may not accurately reflect a professor or their teaching style.
According to the website’s statistics, 65 percent of the ratings are positive.
The website also says that it’s “not just for students to get even with their professors.”
Though the site makes relying on word-of-mouth to judge an instructor’s performance easier, relying solely on the website when choosing among professors is a concern, since a number of the ratings for professors are not high.
So take the advice given for what it is: subjective and potentially useful.
Posted by msveum at March 8, 2005 04:12 PM
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