How teacher-rating sites are influencing students
March 23, 2010 by Jacob HawleyPosted in: Academics, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Students are picking their college professors based on their online reputations. Which scores are most important to them?
45 percent of college students are influenced by comments from online professor-rating Web sites like RateMyProfessor.com and PickMyProf.com that say professors are “easy graders.”
That’s according to a Kaplan Test Prep survey of 1,229 students and recent grads.
Could students choosing professors with labels like “easy grader” be contributing to grade inflation? At Cornell University, for instance, the average college GPA rose from 2.93 in 1991 to 3.11 in 2006.
But that may not be the case. Kaplan’s survey ranked “easy grader” as the least influential rating, coming in behind:
- previous students’ comments (77%)
- overall quality of a professor (70%), and
- engaging teaching style of professors (66%).
How have professor-rating sites affected your faculty? Let us know in the comments section.
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Tags: Cornell University, Kaplan survey, Teacher rating Web sites
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March 24th, 2010 at 7:35 am
So 77% decide based on “previous students’ comments” about ????????????????? easy grader? sex? way they comb or don’t comb their hair? .. Gee this is so helpful!
March 24th, 2010 at 9:02 am
Most don’t care about or check those sites. They only care about the student evaluations that officially count at the college. In my opinion, that is a shame. More feedback, especially of the unfiltered kind, can be useful. I encourage my students to use ratemyprofessor to give me additional feedback. When my advisees or students ask me about a colleague (i.e., How hard is Dr. Mundo?), I tell them they should see what their peers say on ratemyprofessor.com, with a reminder that a decent sample size is important and some caution about outliers (i.e., malcontents). Referring them to the site beats me telling them that Dr. Mundo is known to be rude and very difficult. Talking honestly and directly to students (or anybody else) about one’s colleagues can be hazardous to ones tenure, and is generally unethical/unprofessional.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:26 am
An international undergrad student, using one of these websites had two comments: 1) He saw one of the professors actually on the site rating, commenting on his own course. 2) In order to keep demand low so that they could get into courses with the best professors, some students were rating those professors very low to keep others away. Interesting.