From the site:
RateMyProfessors.com is the Internet's largest listing of collegiate professor ratings, with more than 6.8 million student-generated ratings of over 1 million professors. Each year, millions of college students use the site to help plan their class schedules and rate current and past professors on attributes such as helpfulness and clarity. Online since 1999, RateMyProfessors.com currently offers ratings on college and university professors from over 6,000 schools across the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Wales with thousands of new ratings added each day.I must admit, I always check it before signing up for a class and have found the reviews to be, on the whole, correct. I like to think that, perhaps, it has made my college experience thus far more enjoyable and helped my ability to learn by assisting me in picking classes with professor I know I will be able to work with.
In addition to checking the site, I reciprocate by ranking my professors after every class is finished. I am not a believer in free-rider-ism.
Most of my friends do the same thing as I do, but I know some who scoff at the very idea of an online clearinghouse for professor reviews. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, I suppose, but it's hard for me to imagine life without this wonderful site.
Below this blog post is a link to a comment section, and I want to make this post interactive... I want your opinion on this sometimes-contentious issue between students and certainly amongst students and faculty.
So tell me: if you are a user of RateMyProfessors, what do you think of it, what are some of your experiences? If you aren't a user, what are your initial impressions of the site? Will you start using it? Does it offend you? It's open season in the comment section. Have at it.
It's your turn to sound off. Let's turn this soapbox into a dialogue.
