On RateMyProfessor.com students boast and vent about their teachers and some administrators.
By Sarah Carrillo
Staff Writer
Many students look forward to the teacher evaluations at the end of each semester and the opportunity to sing the praises or criticisms of their professors. Now, students can experience this thrill whenever they want with the Web site www.RateMyProfessors.com.
The site, which went online in 1999, was started by Silicon Valley engineer John Swapeceinski. He spends about 20 hours a week administering the site, in addition to the responsibilities of a full time job.
“I got the idea for the site in December of 1998 after taking a class with a particularly dastardly professor who routinely left students in tears and genuinely seemed to enjoy it,” Swapeceinski wrote on his Web site. “None of my friends warned me about her ahead of time and later I thought to myself, ‘If only there was a Web site.’ ”
Swapeceinski’s dream of such a Web site has now become a reality embraced by students all over the country. As of Wednesday about 2,337 schools were registered on the site and there have been more than 449,000 ratings posted, with about 2,000 new ratings posted each day. Pepperdine currently has 123 professors posted.
Students, or any other curious people, can go to the site and choose a school to see the list of professors and view their individual ratings.
Professors are rated on a scale of one to five in categories of easiness, helpfulness, clarity. There is also an option where students can indicate whether the professor is “hot.”
An overall quality rating is derived from combining the helpfulness and clarity ratings. According to the site, easiness is not included in the average rating because: “an easiness of five may actually mean the teacher is too easy.”
Students can also add comments about the professors. These are screened for inappropriate language and professors can request that inaccurate or libelous comments be removed.
The ratings, however, will not be changed by the operators by the site. The only way ratings can be changed is if an individual sets up an account and wishes to edit the ratings he or she made.
RateMyProfessors.com is completely anonymous, but the site does log IP addresses so that the same computer cannot rate the same professor more than once in the same day. In addition, anyone can rate a professor from any school regardless of whether or not they know the person. This has caused some concern in professors and students at Pepperdine.
“As for accuracy, it is a real problem because there are not checks and balances,” Markus McDowell, a visiting lecturer in the Religion Division, said. “A student could post multiple times; people who were never students can post. For instance, I could have all my friends and relatives post 100 comments. Or one disgruntled student could do the same. I know for a fact that other professors or friends often post comments as jokes on their fellow colleagues.”
Pepperdine sophomore Stefanie Cruz said that the site does not give her enough information to form a complete opinion.
“Some professors are only rated by one or two people, that’s just not enough to base anything on,” she said. “The comments also seemed extreme, either they love the professor or hate them.”
Despite the potential for inaccuracy, some Pepperdine professors say the site still has the potential to help students and faculty.
“Even though the site is anonymous and students can be malicious if they chose, the site does reflect students’ feelings towards certain professors, whether warranted or not,” Bob Cargill, technology liaison for the Religion and Social Science Divisions and Religion 101 professor, said. “I have found that the rankings, with some exceptions, tend to accurately reflect a professor’s favorability, notice I did not say ability, in the classroom. It is also good feedback for me as a professor. If my numbers are down and the students continually say the same thing, like I lecture too fast or I could use a shower, I tend to pay attention; perhaps I’ll slow down and begin bathing regularly.”
Several other schools, including UCLA, have systems similar to this Web site. The schools post teacher evaluations online, and students and professors can add comments.
These types of sites are more secure than RateMyProfessors.com, because only registered students and professors can post comments.
The University of San Diego has a similar Web Site being created for students. USD sophomore Renee Provencher said that she plans to use the site when making her schedule.
“It will be nice to have a site where I can learn about all the teachers on campus,” Provencher said. “Right now the sororities and fraternities have an underground-type site that they use to rate teachers, but it will be nice to have one where everyone can share their opinions.”
Currently, Pepperdine students do not have access to the teacher evaluations that are conducted at the end of each semester. However, there have been discussions to change this system possibly through PepXpress.
“The next version of Campus Pipeline will be out next year and we’re looking into integrating more and more online applications,” Matthew Midura, director of Web and Multimedia services, said. “I’m not making any promises, but there have been discussions on making the teacher evaluations available online.”
Associate Dean of Seaver College Dr. Don Thompson revealed a similar sentiment.
“I think it may be helpful to release the teacher evaluations,” he said. “However, it would also be important to consider the way the information was presented.”
Thompson also said that if the Student Government Association put together a proposal to release the teacher evaluation information, that the administration would value and consider it.
“We have nothing to hide here,” Thompson said.
January 16, 2003