Students making last-minute adjustments to their schedules have a few things to consider. Choosing classes based on major, interest or the curriculum can bring solid results. Or you could look for the professor most likely to ignore the occasional desktop napper.

 

Thanks to RateMyProfessors.com, students can know what to expect long before the first week of classes rolls around. Though finding out if a professor is hot (or not) can surely enrich the material, the site allows students to size up their professors’ knowledge of their subject, difficulty and effectiveness.

 

‘I have used [RateMyProfessors.com] to see what my professors will be like,’ said Jayme Thomas, a sophomore education major.

 

RateMyProfessors.com, created in 1999, allows students to choose from over one million professors from over 6,000 schools. Students can evaluate their professors on a scale of 1 to 5 based on four categories: easiness, helpfulness, clarity and the rater’s interest.

 

Students who use the website to rate professors must mention which class they took with the said instructor and when they took the class. They can then fire off any other comments they have. The website averages of the results of rating categories and ranks the professor’s overall quality as good, average, or poor.

 

Jong Kim, a junior biomedical engineering major, used RateMyProfessors.com as a tiebreaker when deciding which class to take his freshman year. Before registering for a chemistry course, he had a choice between Professor Mary Boyden, rated a 2.0 for overall quality, and Professor Teresa Freedman, rated at a 3.1.

‘It was either Boyden or (Freedman), and both had pretty low ratings on RateMyProfessors.com, and so there were no other options,’ Kim said.

 

Kim stuck with Freedman, using the website’s information as a warning about ineffective professors. However, Kim now only relies on the website for electives.

 

‘I might actually change my professors for small little classes, but none of my major-related stuff,’ Kim said. ‘I may change professors, but (the website) is more about figuring out what kind of professor I’ll have to deal with.’

Other students said they would change a class because of a professor’s rating. Leah Psoinos, a sophomore in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, uses the website to make some of her class decisions and plans on continuing the trend.

 

‘I think I’ll use [RateMyProfessors.com] more in the future. I usually just pick my classes for when they work out best, but if I use the website and find that one of my teachers isn’t that great, then I would probably change it,’ Psoinos said.

 

Although Psoinos and Kim use the website as a guide, other students won’t schedule any classes without consulting the site. David Titan, a freshman in Whitman who knew nothing of RateMyProfessors.com, will use it while planning his schedule for the spring semester.

 

Donald Cardarelli, a management professor who earned a 5.0 rating on the website, said that while feedback is an important aspect for improving a teacher’s skill set, students should be wary of websites like RateMyProfessors.com.

 

‘It is all skewed toward those who wanted to say something about the professor,’ Cardarelli said. ‘So you may get it skewed very negatively or positively based on the personality of that class. I think from a professor’s prospective, it is important for you to get that kind of feedback as you go along.’

 

Although RateMyProfessors.com is a good tool for students and teachers to plan their futures and learn from their mistakes, Kim, like Cardarelli, feels that students will not necessarily give accurate reviews and said the website should be used with caution.

 

‘I guess some professors could change their attitudes and teaching styles, but students post comments depending on what grades students get,’ Kim said. ‘It’s not necessarily accurate information about how well the professor has taught the course.’

scschoen@syr.edu

Published on August 30, 2010 at 12:00 pm