Judging teachers by the numbers

Carolyn Long, associate professor of political science at Washington State University Vancouver, says sites such as ratemyprofessors.com that let students evaluate instructors anonymously are only useful when the comments are substantive and relevant to teaching performance and course content. (Photo illustration by Steven Lane/The Columbian)

Carolyn Long says it doesn’t bother her being one of only two Washington State University Vancouver instructors included on the site myprofessorsucks.com, but it can’t feel good.

"Someone wrote on there that I fart and it smells. It’s not really helpful, and clearly that’s a disgruntled student," said Long, an associate professor of political science.

She finds the comments laughable and more a reflection of the evaluator than herself. Earlier in her career such a statement would have been harder to take, but professors develop calluses over time, she said. She remembers first becoming desensitized to caustic feedback when a graduate student likened her to a Nazi. That review, replete with misspellings and poor grammar, had a place of honor on her bulletin board. It served as a reminder to consider the source of criticism.

Long has been at WSU Vancouver since 1995 and was selected by students for a teaching excellence award in 1998. Despite that popularity, it’s impossible to please everyone, and sites where students evaluate their instructors reveal extremes in opinions.

Imagine having your job performance evaluation posted online for the world to see. And, that anyone could leave anonymous comments about everything from the quality of your work to your appearance. That’s reality for college instructors with the proliferation of Web sites such as ratemyprofessors.com, ratemyteachers.com and myprofessorsucks.com.

At their best, the sites help students make informed course selection decisions. But the anonymity they offer also gives students the chance to rant without taking ownership of their comments, and sometimes the feedback can be hurtful and offensive, not to mention irrelevant or out of date, professors say.

"It’s not very nice to have nasty things about oneself up on the Web that often may have no foundation," said Clay Mosher, associate professor of sociology and associate department chairman at WSU Vancouver.

And it’s an issue confronting not just teachers at the postsecondary level. The site ratemyteachers.com lets students and parents evaluate middle and high school teachers on a public forum. But since those students have less control over course selection than college students do, the site is less relevant than ratemyprofessors.com, said Nathan Shields, a 29-year-old math teacher at Fort Vancouver High School.

Shields has had the same two ratings on ratemyteachers.com — which misspells his last name — since 2005. That was his first year of teaching, and those ratings don’t reflect the skills as a teacher he’s gained with experience.

"I’m more challenging, a better teacher now," he said.

Faculty may be dismissive of ratings sites, but they do pay attention.

"Everybody’s curious. I don’t know any professor who hasn’t looked up their ratings on (ratemyprofessors.com)," said Tom Tripp, a 46-year-old business professor at WSU Vancouver.

There is some concern that pressure for high student evaluation scores could encourage instructors to water down their course content and lower their standards to "buy ratings."

"Students who don’t like their grades are more likely to rate you in a negative fashion," said Mosher, 47.

The relationship between student grades and course evaluations is one of the hottest discussion topics at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, the teaching and learning center at Penn State. When Angela Linse, the institute’s executive director and associate dean, did a literature review of existing research on the topic, she found that most studies indicate a slight positive correlation between student grades and teacher evaluations. But correlation does not equal causation, she’s quick to note.

An even juicier topic of discussion than grade inflation is the hotness points that ratemyprofessors.com lets students award to instructors they deem attractive. Hotness is represented on the site with a chili pepper icon.

"Faculty will joke around, ‘What’s your hotness factor?’" Tripp said.

Hotness is one of four categories students use to rate instructors, in addition to clarity, helpfulness and easiness.

Chili peppers are tricky because you’re offended if you get one and offended if you don’t.

"I think that’s completely useless and terribly demeaning," Long said. She acknowledged, however, that having seven hotness points is a little flattering.

"I guess seven is better than none. It’s irrelevant, but I am a middle-aged woman," she said.

The owner of ratemyprofessors.com, mtvU, argues that hotness is in fact relevant.

"The students told us what are the core characteristics they look for when selecting a course. Attractiveness was right at the top with helpfulness and clarity," said Carlo DiMarco, mtvU’s vice president of university relations.

It’s that cheeky, playful attitude that leads some professors to discount their ratemyprofessors.com evaluations, but that could be a mistake, two researchers from the East Coast have found.

Ted Coladarci and colleague Irv Kornfield examined how the ratemyprofessors.com scores of 426 instructors at the University of Maine compared to formal in-class student evaluations of teaching. They found that the overall quality, an average of the helpfulness and clarity scores, and easiness ratings on ratemyprofessors.com correlated significantly with the official university evaluations.

"I was disappointed. I did not want to find that," said Coladarci, director of institutional research and professor of educational psychology at the University of Maine. He regrets that his findings added legitimacy to a site he doesn’t like.

In addition to concerns about the small response rate compared to evaluations given out in the classroom, Coladarci thinks the site encourages mean-spiritedness.

"(Ratemyprofessors.com) is public information that is negative and hurtful coming from an anonymous student," he said, noting that students find the site entertaining and don’t consider whose feelings are being hurt for their amusement.

Coladarci and Kornfield’s findings track with WSU Vancouver senior Tori Cox’s experience with ratemyprofessors.com. She consults the site every time she registers for a class and finds the ratings dead-on.

"They’ve always been right," said Cox, a 19-year-old business major from Washougal. "It will definitely give you an idea of what to expect."

Cox has posted ratings on the site and encourages friends to use it when making their course selections.

"You spend so much time and money, you want to make sure the class is worth it," she said.

Coladarci would like to see more universities give Cox and other students an alternative to these sites by publishing their formal class evaluations, and Long concurs. These are a more representative sample than the comments found on ratemyprofessors.com, she said.

While traditional student evaluations administered by the university are given out to the entire class, students have to seek out instructor rating sites. This creates a small sample size with a strong selection bias and tends to draw students with extreme opinions, either positive or negative, Long said.

"The problem with that is it gives a skewed picture of faculty performance," she said.

The University of Washington is among the institutions working to meet the demand ratemyprofessors.com fills. UW has an online catalog with a year’s worth of ratings that students, faculty and staff can access. The catalog only includes scores for select questions and does not post responses to open-ended queries.

This may be a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t solve some fundamental problems with standard evaluation measures, said April Mixon, chemistry professor and department chairwoman at Clark College in Vancouver.

Student ratings, whether from sites such as ratemyteachers.com or ratemyprofessors.com or from surveys administered in the classroom, can provide snapshots of what an instructor or course is like, but they don’t give the full picture, she said.

In the past Mixon, 33, has used the Student Assessment of Their Learning Gains Web site, a customizable online survey, to supplement the college’s course evaluations. This tool allows instructors to ask very specific questions tailored to each course. By giving it early in the semester, midway through and at the end, instructors can gauge students’ learning and make adjustments as the term progresses.

"I would hope that an instructor would be able to take the feedback constructively and make the changes they feel comfortable making without sacrificing content, learning goals and their own expectations," she said.

Most instructors say they take specific, constructive feedback about ways to improve their accessibility, syllabi and textbook selection seriously. But when comments devolve into rants, they cease to be helpful.

"The better professors will learn to take the good out of those evaluations and leave the bad," Long said.

Mary Ann Albright: maryann.albright@columbian.com, 360-735-4507.