Rate My Professor and Is My Thesis Hot or Not

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Rate My Professors

Participation in RateMyProfessors seems to be pretty concentrated at the beginnings and ends of semesters:

Acquired in 2007 by mtvU

ProfHacker defense of RMP:

  • "Ultimately, RateMyProfessors.com walks tediously on that line between useful tool and immature annoyance. A quick survey of other ProfHacker contributors (all professors) tells me that RMP is mostly ignored by faculty, which is a shame – but understandable. I can imagine a tool similar to RMP becoming an honestly useful thing: just take out some of the more strange bits, maintain anonymity while asking students to register so that comments can not be spammed, etc – a little less JuicyCampus, in other words. It could be a much more useful tool for faculty if it shaped up, assisting both students in choosing classes, as well as Professors in evaluation. In the meantime, we should not necessarily rail against the tool, strange as it is. "
  • http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/defending-ratemyprofessorscom/22828

Many journalistic accounts of the site emphasize the "hotness" factor, though that seems to be downplayed in the current version of the site (perhaps at the behest of mtvU?)

Anonymous blog where professors write about students (lots of press coverage of this):

There's also an actual RateMyStudents but no one seems to use it:

Copy-cat sites:

Academic articles & studies

Dowling, W. C. Welcome to www.ratemystudents.com. Academic Questions, Volume 19, Number 2, 35-39, DOI: 10.1007/s12129-006-1013-9

  • Super sarcastic article in which Dowling recounts many offensive comments written about Rutgers colleagues on RMP
  • Jokingly proposes a "rate my students" site

Chaneya, S. B. (2011). Rankings and Ravings in the Academic Public. Rhetoric Review, Volume 30, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 191 - 207. DOI: 10.1080/07350198.2011.552381

  • "RateMyProfessors.com has received critical reception in the academy: While some college teachers and administrators express support for the site, others complain that it invades their privacy and impinges on their academic freedom. This essay looks closely at one response to Rate My Professors, a weblog titled Rate Your Students that was founded in 2005. The site offers a compelling example of how Rate My Professors—and the movement to commodify higher education that it represents—affects public discourse between students and teachers. "
  • http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a935382363

Manning, Mlisa A., "Where the students do the grading: A content analysis of ratemyprofessors.com" (2005). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 757.

Experimental / quantitative studies:

Bleske-Rechek, A. and Michels, K. (2010). "RateMyProfessors.com: Testing Assumptions about Student Use and Misuse." Practical Assessment Research & Evaluation, Volume 15, Number 5, May, 2010 ISSN 1531-7714 "Our findings suggest that (1) student motivations for posting on the website are wide ranging and moderate in tone; (2) few student characteristics differentiate those who post from those who do not post on the website; and (3) although easiness and quality are highly correlated, discipline differences in easiness but not in quality suggest that students can, and do, discriminate between easiness and quality. We concur with previous researchers (e.g., Otto, Sanford, & Ross, 2008) that, although the site is limited, RMP.com has more validity than generally assumed."

Legga, A. M. & Wilsona, J. H. (2010). RateMyProfessors.com offers biased evaluations. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2010.507299

Edwards, A., Edwards, C., Shaver, C. and Oaks, M. (2009), Computer-Mediated Word-of-Mouth Communication on RateMyProfessors.com: Expectancy Effects on Student Cognitive and Behavioral Learning. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14: 368–392. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01445.x

  • "It was hypothesized that students who received positive computer-mediated WOM about a course would demonstrate greater levels of cognitive and behavioral learning than would students who received no information or negative computer-mediated WOM. Results demonstrated the predicted effects for cognitive and behavioral learning."
  • http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01445.x/full
  • This one includes a useful lit review:
  • "Several recent studies have focused on RMP. Kindred and Mohammed's (2005) investigation demonstrated that students’ motives for using RMP included convenience, information-seeking, and interpersonal utility (curiosity about peer experience) and that instructor competence and features of classroom experience were the primary foci of comments posted on RMP (see also Silva et al., 2008). Felton, Mitchell and Stinson (2004; 2005) found that instructor quality scores on RMP were strongly positively correlated with perceived course easiness and professor sexiness (as determined by the “chili pepper”). Furthermore, Coladarci and Kornfield (2007) found a strong positive association between instructors’ RMP quality ratings and their scores on university-sanctioned student evaluations of teaching. In a second investigation surrounding the validity and usefulness of RMP evaluations, Otto, Sanford, and Ross (2008) found that RMP data is consistent with a valid measure of student learning and does not demonstrate a halo effect."
    • Kindred, J., & Mohammed, S. N. (2005). He will crush you like an academic ninja: Exploring teacher ratings on RateMyProfessors.com. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , 10. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/kindred.html
    • Silva, K. M., Silva, F. J., Quinn, M. A., Draper, J. N., Cover, K. R., & Munoff, A. A. (2008). Rate my professor: Online evaluations of psychology instructors. Teaching of Psychology, 35, 71–80.
    • Felton, J., Mitchell, J., & Stinson, M. (2004). Web-based student evaluations of professors: The relations between perceived quality, easiness and sexiness. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29, 91–108.
    • Felton, J., Mitchell, J., & Stinson, M. (2005). Cultural differences in student evaluations of professors. Academy of Business Education Conference Proceedings. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from http://www.abe.villanova.edu/proc2004/felton2.pdf.
    • Coladarci, T., & Kornfield, I. (2007). RateMyProfessors.com versus formal in-class student evaluations of teaching. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 12, 1–15.
    • Otto, J., Sanford, D. A., & Ross, D. N. (2008). Does ratemyprofessor.com really rate my professor? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33, 355–368.

Anindya Sen, Marcel Voia and Frances Woolley (presenter). 2010. "The effect of hotness on pay and productivity."

  • This Economics paper uses the "hotness" criterion of RMP ("chili peppers")
  • "Although a relatively small proportion of our sample is rated “hot” by students, hotness generates, for some, a significant earnings premium, even with comprehensive controls for productivity. We find a strong relationship between hotness and teaching productivity, but a much weaker relationship between hotness and research productivity."
  • http://client.norc.org/jole/soleweb/11328.pdf

Slate, J. R., LaPrairie, K., Schulte, D. P., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2009). A mixed analysis of college students' best and poorest college professors. Issues In Educational Research, Vol 19(1).

  • http://www.iier.org.au/iier19/slate.html
  • Not about RMP specifically but interesting study of student stories about best and poorest professors
  • They find some difference between 1st generation students and others in rating "poorest" professors

Harnish, R. & Bridges, K. (2011). Effect of syllabus tone: students' perceptions of instructor and course. Social Psychology of Education, March 17. doi:10.1007/s11218-011-9152-4

  • http://www.springerlink.com/content/nn83h4386k332658/
  • "Results supported the hypothesis that a syllabus written in a friendly, rather than unfriendly, tone evoked perceptions of the instructor being more warm, more approachable, and more motivated to teach the course. "

Thesis Hot or Not

It was first imagined as an academic version of ChatRoulette by Jason Jones on ProfHacker:

Then implemented by someone at GradShare and announced in the comments here:

If there's anything of interest here it is the clash of values:

  • Who is joking? Who is serious?
  • Who is tone deaf to the jokes of other fields?

Faddish?

Some funny search queries lead people to the site:

  • 1 hot or not 27.64%
  • 2 hot not hot 20.76%
  • 3 a my hot or not 6.97%
  • 4 hot or not hot 6.85%
  • 5 should i copyright my thesis 6.43%
  • 6 help me with my thesis 6.38%
  • 7 thesis index.php code 6.08%
  • 8 hot not 4.24%
  • 9 add a hot or not to my site 3.87%
  • 10 hotornto 2.15%

Bloggers talking about it:

It's related to a site by ProQuest called GradShare

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