I don’t care about my official class evaluations. Why should I care about RateMyProfessors.Com?
Some profs do care about their RMP ratings. Some act as though they don’t care, but they really do. I know of one professor who adds ten effusive comments for every negative one left for her. The chair of the psychology department leaves twenty positive remarks for himself every semester. You’d think that he was the most popular teacher on campus. He has more ratings than he has had students.
Years ago, profs were allowed to leave their own videos that struck back at the little snots who dinged them. That didn’t work too well for the profs who did that. The videos just left worse impressions and confirmed their negative RMP ratings.
It all comes out at a faculty party where alcohol is served. That’s when faculty members present their own “RateMyStudents” show. They talk about students that they think dinged them on both their official in-class evaluations and on RateMyProfessors.com. If students knew what their teachers said about them, they’d really strike back. They might even sue them for breaking FERPA regulations.
That’s why I don’t talk about individual students to other faculty. What goes around comes around. Besides, my grades reflect not only my biases about my students but also the unvarnished truth. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how it works in the real world.
RateMyProfessors is abused by students and professors alike. I know of one professor who has added one glowing remark about himself every week. It was pretty hard to believe that so many students liked him because before class, almost everyone had some sort of bitch about him.
ReplyDeleteNOBODY believes RMP!
ReplyDeleteFaculty talk about students BIGTIME. You may be the only one who doesn't. At my university, teachers talk about students all of the time. I hear it in the faculty lounge. I am a TA and I hear them trash students frequently, something that very well could filter back to the student via TA's. I expect to hear of a professor getting hit with a FERPA lawsuit some day.
ReplyDeleteDude, you really should pay attention to your ratings on RMP. In my college, the dean reviews them. One instructor got called up to the dean's office and got chewed out for having bad PUBLIC ratings. Where I go to school RMP is real.
ReplyDelete