Rate Your Students

Since I am crushed by my lack of hotness rating on Ratemyprofessors.com, I may have to make use of Rate Your Students. Anonymously, of course. Erm… I mean… it wasn’t me? It was all Dr. Cassatta? (via Dan Li)

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8 Comments

  1. Posted 1/16/2006 at 3:19 am | Permalink

    While an interesting feature I have to wonder just how useful that would be in selecting a course…I can understand if it’s a 101 that you don’t want to take and the professors are of equal rating (because then you get the added benefit of at least looking at someone attractive while learning something you don’t care about from someone who’s as good if not better than the other professors) but in reality if you’re going to take Neurosurgery 504 and Advanced Basket Weaving 406 I’d hope that my classmates would be more concerned with what the teacher has to say rather than how s/he looks…but ya never know.

  2. Posted 1/17/2006 at 11:20 pm | Permalink

    Nice site and great curriclum. Come to the darkside:

    http://corporateslavemonkey.blogspot.com/

  3. Suzanne
    Posted 2/24/2006 at 10:03 am | Permalink

    I love the idea of a “rate my student” to counter the “rate my professor” phenom. Wouldn’t you love to know in advance you have “the excuse monster”, “disruptive Dave”, and “sleepy Sarah” in one of your courses. This could also tie in with your thoughts on plagerizing–known offenders can be noted and professors/teachers can be on the lookout.

    As far as the “hot” rating, I find that so not important. Why is it even there?

  4. Slithy
    Posted 2/26/2006 at 10:23 am | Permalink

    I hope you don’t mind my chiming in. I’m a law school student, not a teacher, however I think there are valid complaints on both sides of the podium.

    As a “50 something” student I find a lot of younger students to be needy dunderheads who want to be spoon fed and tucked into bed for an “A” with no pain and no gain. That not only annoys the h*ll out of me, it scares the bejesus out of me to think of them as corner-cutting attorneys. Thankfully, in law school most of the maladaptive student types bomb out in the first 3 semesters, so there are a lot fewer of them in my classes these days.

    On the other hand, I pay $400 + a credit hour for my courses and I expect my professor to know what he is teaching. When “Professor Lackwit” comes in and lectures for 2 hours on a subject, is having the students correct him from the book and is making no sense at all, and then comes back the next class and says he checked the book and he was mistaken and now he has the right concept, that infuriates me. It is also an embarrasment to the school, although no one seems to care about hat.

    When I was working in child protection I didn’t get to rehearse the wrong moves the day I took someone’s kids away and then revise them two days later. I’ve have been sued for incompetence and probably a criminal infraction of some sort. So I know about walking the talk.

    I am perfectly capable of buying black-letter law study guides and learning it all on my own if I have to – but I’d like to think the person grading the papers knows the actual answer and isn’t going to change his mind the next day. I actually did not know if I would pass the class or not. The fact I passed with high marks also doesn’t mean I got it right – it only means he thinks I may have gotten it right, but maybe today he would no longer know and be trotting off in a new direction.

    As an adult learner, I really don’t care if the Professor is a jerk or a sweetheart – just teach me what I need to know and let me do my own work. In other words, give me what I need in class and if I need something I’ll ask you. But don’t walk into class and waste my time and suck up money that is supposed to be for a good education.

    So I do believe that there are issues on both sides of the podium that need to be addressed. Suzie Slackhart and Sam Sleeper as well as Noddy Nan and Unprepared Ursuala are their own worst enemies. Professor Lackwit is everyone’s worst nightmare. Thank heavens I’ve had only one Professor Lackwit and his cousin, Professor Lackwitz, but they were two too many as was 2nd cousin Professor MIA who was always late, unprepared and … uh, gee, was THAT what we were covering today???

    As to the “hottie” stuff – I think that is rude, frankly. But that’s just me. Obviously designed for the younger crowd. And in my school the “hotties” are often dumpy older guys with balding heads and ties with mustard on them, so the “hottie” obviously has to do with personality more than looks.

    I noticed at my school the rate your professors stuff was actually pretty accurate. Most folks (so far) who rate, rate on the quality of education provided – and the criticsms leveled are fairly accurate such as lack of preparation by the professor, over-involvement in politics rather than substance, etc.

    It would be great if these ratings actually created a climate for change, but they don’t – mostly it is a vent to blow off steam. In fact, rating the professors at the end of class also doesn’t seem to do any good. I have often wondered if the student assessments are simply incinerated with the rest of the garbage. Rating the students also seems to be a good way to vent steam, but not create anything like lasting change. I’d be all for it if I thought it would actually helps Stephen Snorer wake up in class.

    I am curious what faculty would like to see done about people who teach and who may be brilliant doctors/lawyers/writers – but are truly wretched teachers.

    My mentor/favorite professor and I have discussed the problem. He is phenomenally well prepared and everyone (except the people who can’t be bothered to come to class) respects and admires his knowledge and his teaching ability. However, he is an adjunct and he has no power at all to make changes with faculty members who really are maladapted in terms of being good teachers.

    And now I will leave you to your learned discussions as I’ve got 100 pages of text to plow through and outline to prepare to teach on Tuesday. I’m not a teacher, I just have to be prepared to teach the class each day, as we all do – because that’s what’s required.

    Respectfully,
    Slithy Tove (of Jabberwocky fame)

  5. Posted 4/25/2006 at 2:57 pm | Permalink

    we love this site…we’re big fans. we must confess you bring traffic to our site, and that makes us happy…if you’d like us to give you a theoretical chili pepper, we’ll do it right now…

  6. Megan
    Posted 2/12/2007 at 6:55 am | Permalink

    Fuck this alll, I prefer ratemyteachers.com the best, now whos with me? Students lets get back on teachers once and for all!

  7. Posted 3/2/2007 at 9:47 pm | Permalink

    I’m not a college professor, just a lowly adjunct. During the day I teach high school, at night I teach college. I don’t think our students in high school or college are any more self centered than we were so many years ago. I think our biggest challenge is enthusiam. When I first taught, my subject was exciting and I assumed that my students were as turned on as I was. As I got along in years of teaching, I found out repetition can be boring. Boredom is as boredom does, and so the students assumed the subject was boring, not the teacher. It really shows up with the adjuncts who teach the same freshmen courses all the time. You colleges and universities need to shuffle around your part-time teachers a bit to make sure the freshman courses stay fresh and alive. We are the reason many of your students assume a field is tedius. You will always have your problem students, we just have to be sure we’re not the problem teachers.

  8. confused
    Posted 11/4/2009 at 5:14 pm | Permalink

    um, is this site for teachers or students? I’m kind of lost.

One Trackback

  1. […] “Slithy Tove” has a reply to my brief comment on “Rate Your Students.” I’ve talked a bit about evaluations before, but I thought I’d address some of his comments. In particular, he is frustrated by the lack of quality in some of his teachers. It does seem that, especially among tenured professors, there are bad teachers at every school. It’s very difficult to get rid of faculty, even those without tenure, so it takes extreme incompetence before anyone has to leave. Even then, the Byzantine bureaucracy of the university means that the process of getting rid of and replacing them takes years. […]

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