A website here, an online business there. Thus were the teenage years of Tim Perkins’ creative web experience that brought him to find his passion in web design and programming.
Perkins learned with his father how to digitally showcase his love for basketball, and even started an online family reptile store that eventually made him enough money to support his mission. As the web developer for BYU’s law school since 2010, he has learned skills that helped him take on his latest project.
With Professor Plug now completed, he anxiously awaits Winter 2013 class registration.
The idea
Perkins has headed many projects for the law school’s website. He said his experience there helped him gain confidence in his abilities to start his RateMyProfessors add-on.
“Since I’ve been a student, I’ve used RateMyProfessors.com a lot because it’s really useful getting to know professors before you sign up for the class with them,” Perkins said. “A problem that I noticed with that is that it takes a long time to search for each individual professor. It is tedious. Then I had the idea of a RateMyProfessors add-on.”
Perkins said he made this add-on because he knows other students feel the same way he has. Stacey Harkey, a junior studying public relations, said in an email that he too used RateMyProfessors to find information on his teachers.
“It’s annoying when you have to go from window to window while searching,” Harkey said. “Today, society is all about saving time and this completely accomplishes that.”
It took Perkins just two months to make his idea a reality, and to his knowledge, it is the first of its kind. “There are a ton of different extensions out there, but I’m not aware of any other add-on like this,” Perkins said.
What it does and how it works
At first, Perkins had only the numerical rating of each professor under a “professor rating” column on the registration page, but he said that just the numbers were not enough. He later came up with a way to link reviews to the page as well.
“All you have to do is click the professor’s name, and it opens the actual RateMyProfessors site so you can read all the reviews as well,” Perkins said. “It is secure, requires no password and is free.”
Mike Eads, who graduated with a master’s degree in information systems management, said that although he has not used the add-on, he feels it could be beneficial to those who do. “I think it is a great opportunity for (Tim) to both serve students and learn a new technology at the same time,” he said. “The teachers you end up with can make a big difference in your experience here, and this tool makes it so much faster to get some advice from others that have gone before you.”
Users should know that Professor Plug is only compatible with Firefox and Google Chrome.
Any kinks?
Richard Shurtz, a first year computer science master’s student, said that he has found a few kinks using Professor Plug.
Perkins said that it is expected to find bugs during the creation process, but said the biggest obstacle is the difference in the spelling of professors’ names on both sites. “It just won’t make the connection,” Perkins said.
Although not every rating may be available, for Perkins, Professor Plug was “just another project.”
“It is awesome. Not to sound prideful, but once I got it working, I got really excited,” Perkins said. He hopes that it will be a good tool for students and eventually be useful as a portfolio piece.
