<p>We found this website this summer when our son was picking his classes. You locate your college on the website and then look up various profs - not all profs are on there - but many are. We found the website to be very helpful. We really only considered the reviews when there were several - we ignored when a prof only had one review because we weren't getting "a trend." We didn't want to be influenced by one or two students who might have just been lazy or rude students. We also took note of the dates the reviews were posted because sometimes a prof will get a poor review when he was "new" but his reviews greatly improved after he/she had been teaching for a bit. (note the dates the reviews were posted). We also noted for which course the prof was being reviewed. Some profs got great reviews for teaching one type of course, but got lesser reviews when they taught another type of course (weaknesses and strengths are revealed.)</p>
<p>So far, for my son, using the website paid off. He loves his profs and his friends who are taking classes from the more "poorly rated" profs are not as happy.</p>
<p>I think it's a great source while picking classes, but some of it just is baloney. I had one prof who I thought was totally awesome, but he got horrible reviews on there because a lot of other people didn't like him (and his 25 page accounting paper). For the most part though I think it was fairly accurate, you just have to remember that different people like different kinds of things in a prof.</p>
<p>Rateyourprofessors.com is a great website. At a large university
you can't always talk to other students informally about the quality
of different instructors - there's just too many of them. However,
you are not likely to see a lot of neutral descriptions of professors.
Students will only post if they have a strong reaction, either
positive or negative. Still "boring and reads from his notes" is not
hard to interpret. </p>
<p>My son's favorite professor so far had reviews like this:
his tests are insanely hard...
85% of my class was failing...
only take him if you are extremely confident...
tough, european style...
Intimidating, but not mean....
Tough as nails. No mercy.
Pushes material to the limit.</p>
<p>Run through a filter, though, this meant: teaches the material
and more, and expects you to learn it. My son thought he was
an exciting teacher, and learned a lot. Go figure.</p>
<p>My son has also found this to be a helpful website and used it when he was picking his classes. I agree about only relying on the information if there were several reviews.</p>
<p>Y'all do know it is "Ratemyprofessors.com", right? Other than that I agree with the posts above. D found it effective it selecting first term classes at her small college but certainly not as effective as talking to her similarly motivated and equipped friends who had first hand knowledge.</p>
<p>My son has found the site very helpful, and used it the same way that OP's son used it. My son has found trends to be fairly accurate. He has also taken 2 classes with new professors, who obviously were not listed. He felt he was taking a risk, but needed to take those classes, and they have worked out well too. I guess that he was fortunate.</p>
<p>As with any kind of review, you have to be willing to read between the lines... If a teacher is rated with a low "easiness" rating, it may just mean that the reviewer was looking for an "easy A" and didn't get one. </p>
<p>When my son used it, he was looking for such comments as:</p>
<p>explains concepts well
doesn't speak English well (a big problem sometimes)
vague or ambiguous lectures or assignments
doesn't want to hear others' opinions or thoughts
interesting class
learned a lot
tests on lecture material
tests on book material only
hates tardiness
attendance is mandatory
meaningful homework
busywork homework
funny
obviously loves to teach</p>
<p>Comments such as those above let him know who to choose, who to avoid, and what the class expectations are.</p>
<p>As much as some profs don't like the website (because a vindictive student could be unfair), I think most people are bright enough to notice if a teacher gets several good reviews and one lousy review then it probably was the student's fault for not doing well in the class.</p>
<p>My H teaches part-time at a local university. He gets consistently high ratings from students on the evaluation form that they have to fill out at the end of the course--so much so that the department and administration always congratulate him. I've read the evaluations and am pretty impressed. There's nothing in it for them when they give him a good rating, because 99.9% never have him as a teacher again, and he's not a regular faculty member.</p>
<p>I checked him on ratemyprofessor once and found some snide comments. Oops--could those have been the students who were caught cheating? Never came to class and then wanted extra credit assignments to bring up their low test scores? I'd be wary of that site.</p>
<p>I think it's a weird construct: you can believe the positive ratings but need to be skeptical of some of the negative ones. People are less motivated to make positive comments than to complain, so negatives are going to be overrepresented. Moreover, the underlying basis of why a student is negative--didn't want to work as hard, etc.--make it difficult to tease out what are legitimate negative reviews and what are merely pique, though a detailed, thoughtful negative review can be done in such a way as to inspire confidence. </p>
<p>D has had great classes with some profs who were very negatively rated because some students thought they made students work too hard. Unreasonable prof or lazy student? Sometimes hard to tell. D always tries to cross-check by word-of-mouth from other students whose values and sensibilities are known to her.</p>
<p>TheDad: You give me the context to post here. I have assiduously avoiding checking on myself on this site, like actors who can't watch their rushes. Last night, however, students were in a chatty mood and felt they needed to tell me my reviews. They said kids loved me or hated me. Who hated me? Religious fundamentalists because my mythology class (hence screen name) challenged fundamentalist views. They accused me of starting "long and pointless debates", which, of course, they did. Grades and workload, fairness etc. not issues. </p>
<p>At first this made me feel very self-conscious, but I am trying to adopt Emerson's attitude, that if some people, at least, don't hate you you're doing something wrong.</p>
<p>I should say, despite these dissenting views, I have a packed class.</p>
<p>In the dark ages when I went to college, we relied on campus scuttlebut to :rate our professors". I often found that I didn't like classes with profs with great reputations (they got those reps by being easy and I felt I didn't learn much) and LOVED classes with profs others avoided like the plague (because they actually made you think - imagine that!)</p>
<p>I think most of the posts are on the money - take what you read with a large grain of salt. There is some useful info there but be a wary customer!</p>
<p>One of the rating scales is how "hot" the teacher is which is kind of funny.
S uses the site a lot too. I think he knows enough to read between the lines, but has found it very useful.</p>
<p>This is one of those on-line ratings systems which really needs to be looked at long and hard before you believe what you are seeing. Since it's a self-selecting survey you tend towards a bimodal distribution of the deleriously happy and terribly angry students, with the great majority not reporting in. For those profs who have a low number of postings and a low rating, you have to question who responded. I have a SIL who teaches and she suddenly had a host of poor ratings show up a week after she failed three students in an intro level class.<br>
It gives a good general feel for a teacher if you take it with a really open mind. Sort of like squinting through one eye to try to get a feel for what a room is going to look like after you remodel it.....it may look like that or it may end up totally different than you expected.</p>
<p>As with any kind of review, you have to be willing to read between the lines... If a teacher is rated with a low "easiness" rating, it may just mean that the reviewer was looking for an "easy A" and didn't get one. </p>
<p>When my son used it, he was looking for such comments as:</p>
<p>explains concepts well
doesn't speak English well (a big problem sometimes)
vague or ambiguous lectures or assignments
doesn't want to hear others' opinions or thoughts
interesting class
learned a lot
tests on lecture material
tests on book material only
hates tardiness
attendance is mandatory
meaningful homework
busywork homework
funny
obviously loves to teach</p>
<p>Comments such as those above let him know who to choose, who to avoid, and what the class expectations are.</p>
<p>As much as some profs don't like the website (because a vindictive student could be unfair), I think most people are bright enough to notice if a teacher gets several good reviews and one lousy review then it probably was the student's fault for not doing well in the class.</p>
<p>It may be true that those who are very happy or unhappy with a prof are more likely to post. However, once a person posts for one prof (either pro or con), he is likely to also post for his other profs that he doesn't have strong (pro or con) feelings about. So, there should be posts that aren't just "bimodal."</p>
<p>It may seem to be an "odd construct" to more likely believe the positive reviews and be skeptical about the negative ones, but isn't that how it is with a lot of opinions about such things? </p>
<p>People are more likely to be honest when giving a positive review about someone's work performance - especially when they give specifics (cuz why would they lie?). </p>
<p>However, people are more likely to be in denial" about their own fault about not doing well in a class (didn't study, missed classes, etc), so their reviews are more likely to be "suspect". That's why I told my son to look for a "trend" in bad reviews - especially over a period of time. </p>
<p>However, any reviews that indicated that the teacher had problems speaking clearly in English were taken seriously. Don't want to get stuck with a teacher that may be "smart" but hasn't mastered English pronunciation.</p>