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Students use Rate My Professors website to varying extents, professors warn against flaws

As one semester approaches its close, university students and professors turn to the Rate My Professors website to prepare for the next.

According to its website, “Rate My Professors is the largest online destination for students to research and rate professors, colleges and universities across the United States. Our mission is to provide a safe forum to share classroom experiences to help fellow students make critical education choices.”

The site allows users to anonymously rate classes and professors based on their level of difficulty, if they would take another class from the professor again and overall quality. The site says the overall quality metric should “reflect how well a professor teaches the course material and how helpful they are both inside and outside of the classroom.”

In addition to individual professor ratings, students can also anonymously review their university as a whole. One Texas State University study found evidence that suggests anonymous self reporting tends to be flawed. (Sierra Martin)

Guidelines listed on the site recommend students to focus their reviews on the course and learning experience, rather than identifying a professor's characteristics, such as dress, race, gender, etc. They also invite students to identify pros and cons in order to provide more constructive feedback to their peers.

Students and professors alike utilize the resource to varying degrees while acknowledging its flaws. Students use it to determine if their learning style will align with the class or professor.

“When there are many professors for a class, I want to know which one fits my style of learning the most,” BYU student Mason Shuldberg said.

Another BYU student Ella Hansen expressed her feelings about the platform.

“I think it’s accurate to a certain extent because you have to keep in mind that these are personal opinions,” Hansen said. “People will likely only get on Rate My Professors if they had a really good or a really bad experience, so it’s very biased.”

Luke Smith, another BYU student, explained what he does to sort through the bias.

“You have to have several people who are saying the same thing—if you just have one opinion it’s hard to be sure that it’s true,” Smith said.

In a Texas State University study entitled "Rate My Professors: A Study of Bias and Inaccuracies In Anonymous Self-Reporting," professors Alexander Katrompas and Vangelis Metsis found evidence that “supports the idea that anonymous self-reporting, without compensatory validation measures, is flawed and unsuitable for use in a decision making process.”

Erik Larson, a Spanish professor at BYU, has only read his Rate My Professors reviews once or twice, and cautioned against relying too heavily on the site while registering for classes.

“I've seen the damage bad ratings can do for enrollments in a given professor's courses. I think it's tremendously unfortunate, and unwise, that so many BYU students give this website so much weight as they assemble their semester schedule,” Larson said. “The reviews are anything but objective, seeing as they are mostly by students who either hated the class ... or those who absolutely loved the professor.”

Rate My Professors allows students to anonymously review professors based on level of difficulty, whether they would take a class from the same professor again and overall quality. Professors Josh Matson and Erik Larson have both read their reviews on Rate My Professors. (Sierra Martin)

Josh Matson, religion professor at BYU, said he does read student reviews on the Rate My Professors website, but he also acknowledged that they can sway towards extremes.

“This is one of multiple ways in which I can gauge student learning and improve myself as a teacher,” Matson said. “I think that Rate My Professors is a factor students can use to enroll in classes, though I think that you get the extremes more so than the true average student experience. Anything that seeks to be all or nothing, I feel, is detrimental overall.”