Washington University’s course evaluations can warn students about the workload in a course – but if a student wants to find out if a professor is “hot” or not, ratemyprofessors.com is the place to go.
University course evaluations and ratemyprofessors.com are two leading resources students can use to offer feedback on classes and professors and to check other students’ reviews before signing up for a course.
For the third semester in a row, Arts and Sciences has had a 70 percent participation rate for online and paper course evaluations.
“I think the most important thing that is accomplished is feedback for tenure review cases, feedback to the administration to know that professors are doing a good job teaching,” said Dean Henry Biggs. “Something that is a close second is providing as much feedback to students so that they can make an accurate assessment of their classes.”
Ratemyprofessors.com is a popular public Internet grading site students can use to post comments about their professors and evaluate them on a one-to-five rating scale, scoring them on easiness, helpfulness, clarity and rater interest.
Raters can also stipulate if they believe their professor is “hot.” If so, a chili pepper will appear next to the professor’s name in the ratings. As of last night, the site has ratings for 785 University professors.
Biggs believes that course evaluations are much more reliable than ratemyprofessors.com.
“The problem [with ratemyprofessors.com] is that there is one to two percent participation. There are teachers who teach biology who have 500 students in the class, have taught for 15 years and have six comments,” said Biggs. “Also, anybody can go on there – if you didn’t take the class, or if you are the professor and you’d like to pump up your ratings.”
Mark Alford, an assistant professor of physics, also favors the University’s evaluations because they distinguish between different courses.
“A professor might do a good job on senior-level courses but be less suited to freshman classes,” said Alford. “On ratemyprofessors.com, you can’t tell why there is a mixture of good and bad comments. The University evaluations database can’t be abused in this way.”
Professor Jami Ake, a lecturer in the humanities, believes that the Web site does not provide enough substance for students at this university.
“I think actually ratemyprofessors.com kind of underestimates Wash. U. students in some ways,” said Ake. “Sure, everybody wants a really exciting, engaged professor; everybody wants clarity and wants to know how hard a grader a person is, but I think Wash. U. students actually want more than that. Wash. U. students want more than to be entertained.”
Despite the relative benefits of course evaluations over ratemyprofessors.com, Biggs also suggested that there are some perks to the site.
“The one thing that I think is attractive about ratemyprofessor is text comments,” said Biggs. “They are not given to students on course evaluations – it’s a difficult situation because it would be great if you could release the comments, but unfortunately there are a few students who really say personal, hurtful, obscene things, so the solution to that would be that we would just edit those comments. But you don’t want to be editing comments, so the comments are not available to everyone,” said Biggs.
Many students are skeptical about University course evaluations. Archna Eniasivam, a junior biology major, questions their effectiveness.
“You do the evaluations and idealistically you hope they will change the things that are wrong with the class, but in reality I’m not quite sure,” said Eniasivam. “It’s hard to know because you’re already done with the class when you fill out the evaluation.”
Emily Boardman, a freshman majoring in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, also worries about the usefulness of the evaluations.
“I would not have filled the course evaluations out had I not been given point incentives by my instructors,” said Boardman. “I don’t have very much faith that they are effective,” she said.
Nick Mulvihill, a sophomore majoring in entrepreneurship and marketing, feels that incentives offered by the professor might skew the types of comments on course evaluations.
“For courses like psychology, you will get an extra point if you fill out the evaluations whereas on ratemyprofesssors.com, everyone filling it out is doing it because they want to do it,” said Mulvihill. “It’s people’s more honest opinions, not people who are being bribed to fill out an evaluation.”
Dean Biggs responded to these worries by assuring students that their comments do in fact affect professors.
“I think the frustrating part is that the process in all universities is slow and somebody who is not good is given every chance to try and improve themselves,” said Biggs. “So when you have four years at school, and the process is going to take six to seven years, you don’t see the resolution in your time. But I can assure you that they matter,” he said.
Biggs also explained that there is a new system in place where professors can check their rating and compare them to the average in the professor’s department.
“I know that administrators are looking at those averages and it gives them a much better sense than they’ve ever had before of where professors stand relative to the whole intellectual community and relative to their department, so that they can make improvements or not,” said Biggs.
Although he is hesitant about evaluations, Mulvihill is aware that some professors do change based on student comments.
“I’ve been in a few classes where halfway through the class the teacher will give out an evaluation, look at the results and start showing more videos in class, giving less lecture, giving less homework, just doing things where they have made some changes,” said Mulvihill.
Both the University’s evaluations and ratemyprofessors.com might have something to offer, depending on a student’s expectations while looking for courses, said Ake.
“If you want a course that’s fun but you have no guarantees that anything else major is going to happen, take a look at the categories they have on ratemyprofessors.com, and that’s what you can expect,” said Ake. “If you want something that’s going to push you, challenge you, that might not always be fun but you might learn something that’s going to change you, you might want to consider the evaluations we have.”