RateMyProfessors.com
Encyclopedia
RateMyProfessors.com is a review site
, founded in May 1999 by John Swapceinski, a software engineer from Menlo Park
, California
, which allows college and university students to assign ratings to professor
s and campuses of American
, Canadian
, and United Kingdom
institutions. The site was originally launched as TeacherRatings.com and converted to RateMyProfessors in 2001. In 2007, RateMyProfessors was acquired by mtvU, MTV’s College channel.
RateMyProfessors.com is the largest online destination for professor ratings. The site has 7,500+ schools and over 13,000,000 entirely student-generated comments and ratings, RateMyProfessors.com is the highest trafficked free site for researching and rating 1,500,000+ professors from colleges and universities across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. RateMyProfessors also has an iPhone app.
According to the website’s FAQ page, "The Overall Quality rating [that the professor ends up with] is the average of a teacher's Helpfulness and Clarity ratings...." It’s the professor’s Overall Quality rating that determines whether his/her name, on the list of professors, is accompanied by a little smiley face (meaning "Good Quality"), a frowny face ("Poor Quality"), or an in-between, expressionless face ("Average Quality"). A professor's name is accompanied by a chili pepper icon if the sum of his or her "HOT" ratings is greater than zero (one "hot" rating equals +1, one "not hot" equals −1).
" e-mail address, in order to make their rebuttals. The site also has a feature called "Professors Strike Back" which features videos of professors responding to specific ratings that they received on RateMyProfessors.
Student evaluations of Professors from Ratemyprofessors.com actually accounts for 25% of a schools rating in Forbes
annual “America’s Best Colleges Listing.”
The two primary RMP indices correlate substantively and significantly with their respective SET items: RMP overall quality correlates r = .68 with SET item,
Overall, how would you rate the instructor?; and RMP ease correlates r = .44 with SET item, How did the work load for this course compare to that of others of equal credit? Further, RMP overall quality and RMP ease each correlates with its corresponding SET factor derived from a principal components analysis of all 29 SET items: r = .57 and .51, respectively.
The main criticism of RMP is that there is little reason to think that the ratings accurately reflect the quality of the professors rated. Also, "easiness", "clarity" and "helpfulness" are the only components taken into consideration. Edward Nuhfer says that both Pickaprof.com and RMP "are transparently obvious in their advocacy that describes a 'good teacher' as an easy grader. ... Presenter Phil Abrami...rated the latter as 'The worst evaluation I've seen' during a panel discussion on student evaluations at the 2005 annual AERA
meeting." A study of RMP ratings conducted by James Felton found that "the hotter and easier professors are, the more likely they’ll get rated as a good teacher." Edward Nuhfer has argued, "Pseudo-evaluation damages the credibility of legitimate evaluation
and victimizes individuals by irresponsibly publishing comments about them derived from anonymous sources. This is voyeurism passed off as 'evaluation' and examples lie at http://www.pickaprof.com/ and http://ratemyprofessors.com/index.jsp. Neither site provides evaluation of faculty through criteria that might be valuable to a student seeking a professor who is conducive to their learning, thinking or intellectual growth."
Single individuals are able to make multiple separate ratings of a single professor on RMP. RMP admits that while it does not allow such multiple ratings from any one IP address
, it has no control over raters who use several different computers, or those that "spoof" IP addresses. Also, there is no way of knowing that those who rate a professor's course have actually taken the course in question, making it possible for professors to rate themselves and each other, As recently as May 2006, the FAQ page on RMP itself said:
Critics state that a number of the ratings focus on qualities they see as irrelevant to teaching, such as physical appearance.
It is common at universities and colleges for faculty (especially junior faculty) to be called on by their departments to teach courses on topics that are not within their area(s) of expertise, which can earn them poor ratings at RMP that do not reflect the ability of those professors to teach courses on subjects that they are much more qualified to teach. RMP, though it lets the student identify the course that they took with the professor, lumps together the ratings for all courses taught by each professor, instead of providing separate ratings averages for each course taught.
Review site
A review site is a website on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site...
, founded in May 1999 by John Swapceinski, a software engineer from Menlo Park
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, which allows college and university students to assign ratings to professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
s and campuses of American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
institutions. The site was originally launched as TeacherRatings.com and converted to RateMyProfessors in 2001. In 2007, RateMyProfessors was acquired by mtvU, MTV’s College channel.
RateMyProfessors.com is the largest online destination for professor ratings. The site has 7,500+ schools and over 13,000,000 entirely student-generated comments and ratings, RateMyProfessors.com is the highest trafficked free site for researching and rating 1,500,000+ professors from colleges and universities across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. RateMyProfessors also has an iPhone app.
Ratings and reviews on RateMyProfessors
Users who have or are currently taking a particular professor’s course, may post a rating and review of any professor already listed on the site. Furthermore, users may create a listing for any individual not already listed. To be posted, a rater must rate the course and/or professor on a 1-5 scale in the following categories: "easiness", "helpfulness", "clarity", the rater's "interest" in the class prior to taking it, and the degree of "textbook use" in the course. The rater may also rate the professor on their hotness, and may include comments of up to max 350 characters in length.According to the website’s FAQ page, "The Overall Quality rating [that the professor ends up with] is the average of a teacher's Helpfulness and Clarity ratings...." It’s the professor’s Overall Quality rating that determines whether his/her name, on the list of professors, is accompanied by a little smiley face (meaning "Good Quality"), a frowny face ("Poor Quality"), or an in-between, expressionless face ("Average Quality"). A professor's name is accompanied by a chili pepper icon if the sum of his or her "HOT" ratings is greater than zero (one "hot" rating equals +1, one "not hot" equals −1).
RateMyProfessors Top Lists
Each year, RateMyProfessors.com compiles Top Lists of the Highest Rated Professors, Hottest Professors, and Top Schools in the U.S. based on ratings and comments from students.Professor Rebuttals
Since mtvU took over the website, RateMyProfessors.com has added a rebuttal feature which allows professors to rebut students' comments. Professors must register with the website, using an ".edu.edu
The domain name edu is a sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The "domain is intended for accredited post-secondary educational U.S. institutions" and this intention is strictly enforced....
" e-mail address, in order to make their rebuttals. The site also has a feature called "Professors Strike Back" which features videos of professors responding to specific ratings that they received on RateMyProfessors.
School Ratings
Students can also comment on and rate their school as well, by visiting their school's RateMyProfessors.com school page. School Ratings categories include Academic Reputation, Location, Campus, School Library, Food, Clubs & Activities, Social Events, and Happiness.Recognition
In 2008 ratemyprofessors.com was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 50 best websites of 2008.Student evaluations of Professors from Ratemyprofessors.com actually accounts for 25% of a schools rating in Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
annual “America’s Best Colleges Listing.”
RateMyProfessors.com versus formal in-class student evaluations
Using data for 426 instructors at the University of Maine, [researchers] examined the relationship between RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) indices and formal in-class student evaluations of teaching (SET).The two primary RMP indices correlate substantively and significantly with their respective SET items: RMP overall quality correlates r = .68 with SET item,
Overall, how would you rate the instructor?; and RMP ease correlates r = .44 with SET item, How did the work load for this course compare to that of others of equal credit? Further, RMP overall quality and RMP ease each correlates with its corresponding SET factor derived from a principal components analysis of all 29 SET items: r = .57 and .51, respectively.
Evaluation bias
The main criticism of RMP is that there is little reason to think that the ratings accurately reflect the quality of the professors rated. Also, "easiness", "clarity" and "helpfulness" are the only components taken into consideration. Edward Nuhfer says that both Pickaprof.com and RMP "are transparently obvious in their advocacy that describes a 'good teacher' as an easy grader. ... Presenter Phil Abrami...rated the latter as 'The worst evaluation I've seen' during a panel discussion on student evaluations at the 2005 annual AERA
American Educational Research Association
The American Educational Research Association, or AERA, was founded in 1916 as a professional organization representing educational researchers in the United States and around the world....
meeting." A study of RMP ratings conducted by James Felton found that "the hotter and easier professors are, the more likely they’ll get rated as a good teacher." Edward Nuhfer has argued, "Pseudo-evaluation damages the credibility of legitimate evaluation
Course evaluation
A course evaluation is a paper or electronic questionnaire, which requires a written or selected response answer to a series of questions in order to evaluate the instruction of a given course...
and victimizes individuals by irresponsibly publishing comments about them derived from anonymous sources. This is voyeurism passed off as 'evaluation' and examples lie at http://www.pickaprof.com/ and http://ratemyprofessors.com/index.jsp. Neither site provides evaluation of faculty through criteria that might be valuable to a student seeking a professor who is conducive to their learning, thinking or intellectual growth."
Multiple ratings per person
Single individuals are able to make multiple separate ratings of a single professor on RMP. RMP admits that while it does not allow such multiple ratings from any one IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
, it has no control over raters who use several different computers, or those that "spoof" IP addresses. Also, there is no way of knowing that those who rate a professor's course have actually taken the course in question, making it possible for professors to rate themselves and each other, As recently as May 2006, the FAQ page on RMP itself said:
Rating relevancy
Critics state that a number of the ratings focus on qualities they see as irrelevant to teaching, such as physical appearance.
It is common at universities and colleges for faculty (especially junior faculty) to be called on by their departments to teach courses on topics that are not within their area(s) of expertise, which can earn them poor ratings at RMP that do not reflect the ability of those professors to teach courses on subjects that they are much more qualified to teach. RMP, though it lets the student identify the course that they took with the professor, lumps together the ratings for all courses taught by each professor, instead of providing separate ratings averages for each course taught.
Permanent vs part-time faculty
Part time (also known as adjunct) faculty are not always readily identifiable nor verifiable, as part-time professors often work at multiple schools or maintain employment outside the school.See Also
- RateMyTeachersRateMyTeachersRateMyTeachers, abbreviated as RMT, is a controversial review site used to rate elementary and secondary school teachers' performance . Participants give numerical ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 in four different categories to their current or former elementary and secondary school teachers...
– Student-generated ratings for high school teachers.
- Rate Your StudentsRate Your StudentsRate Your Students was a weblog that ran from November 2005 to June 2010. It was started by a "tenured humanities professor from the South," but was run for most of its five years by a rotating group of anonymous academics...
– Instructor generated student-reviews.
- MyFaveTeacher.com - Indian Colleges only. Founded by software designer Rahul Agarwal and Anshika Chaudhary.
- HeyCampus.com - Rate My Course.
- MyEvilProfessor.com - Site for students and postdocs to review their research advisers/P.I.s
External links
- Professors Strike Back – videos of professors responding to ratings from RateMyProfessors.com