Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ratemyprofessors.com Actually Not Too Far Off the Mark

A scholarly article was just published comparing the student evaluations on Ratemyprofessors.com and those administered by universities.
Here is a snippet:
'You’ve heard the reasons why professors don’t trust RateMyProfessors.com, the Web site to which students flock. Students who don’t do the work have equal say with those who do. The best way to get good ratings is to be relatively easy on grades, good looking or both, and so forth. But what if the much derided Web site’s rankings have a high correlation with markers that are more widely accepted as measures of faculty performance? Last year, a scholarly study found a high correlation between RateMyProfessors.com and a university’s own system of student evaluations.'
And, like Tyler over at MR, I say, "go, Web 2.0!"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think they would have to compare pretty well to university evals. there might be some who are entering odd things but for the most part students seem to report their experience accurately. and the study said that too....

Anonymous said...

i buy the argument.

Unknown said...

As in most things, I guess, if the majority of the reviews are made in a similar tone, then there must be sth to that.