Just browse the Web site, ratemyprofessors.com, and you will see many students praising or panning UC Davis faculty based on their classroom experiences.

There is no denying the popularity of sites like this one. Ratemyprofessors.com bills itself as the Internet’s largest listing of collegiate professor ratings, covering more than 6,000 schools, 1 million instructors and 6 million opinions.

For UC Davis, it lists reviews on 2,656 instructors, from senate faculty to teaching assistants, offering the kind of information that students relish when deciding on classes.

Controversial, candid

But do online prof ratings shortchange students by steering them into less challenging classes ? And, are they fair to faculty?

Supporters say social networking tools like ratemyprofessors.com represent a great democratizing force, giving students a chance to weigh in on instructors — after all, students (and their parents) are consumers of higher education where the learning just keeps getting more expensive.

On the other hand, critics say defamatory language and factual errors riddle these types of sites — Internet anonymity allows for the worst excesses of human nature, they charge. Yet it’s this total freedom of expression that attracts Web-saavy students.

Here is how ratemyprofessors.com works: Students numerically rank their instructors on attributes like easiness, helpfulness and clarity. The data is added up for an overall “scorecard” for each professor. The site offers lists for the top 50 “highest rated” professors and schools, and in a nod to the youth world, allows students to declare “hot” professors by marking them with a red chili pepper.

Started in 1999, ratemyprofessors.com is the largest site of its kind, but not the only one. Others have sprung up recently—pick-a-prof.com, myspace.com and facebook.com offer online faculty ratings.

The reaction is mixed in the academic community.

Bruce White, interim vice provost for Academic Personnel and a professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering, said, “Ratemyprofessors.com has a huge following and simply cannot be overlooked in the influence that it has on students.”

White says that when students take their time and seriously write and think out the comments, the site works just fine in giving surprisingly accurate comments about professors.

White has checked his own ratings and considers them to be “fairly accurate” and where the comments are “sincerely written,” useful constructive criticism.

The drawbacks, he said, include the fact the site does not sample the entire class and that the measuring is simplistic.

“The evaluation characteristics of faculty are not truly reflective of what students are learning from the professors,” White said.

He explained that the category of “easiness” is misleading.

“This is one of the pitfalls of the site that it does not define what ‘easiness’ is and student reviewers have a range of subjective opinions often not based on course content or the overall educational experience received in the course,” White said.

Some faculty ignore it altogether.

“I have not looked at the comments on me on that site,” said Jay Mechling, a professor of American studies. “I really can’t see any good that can come from that.”

He tweaks his course based on class discussions and student coourse evaluations.

“My teaching style is my teaching style,” said Mechling, who won the 2006 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement. “I won’t change that. Some students like it, some don’t.”

Mechling says effective teaching lies in the design of the course itself—clear course goals, effective learning activities to achieve those goals, and an assessment plan that measures how students are faring.

Professors can speak up, too.

Since its purchase by MTVu in 2007, ratemyprofessors.com has launched a new section of the site called “Professors Strike Back.” As the name implies, professors are able to respond to comments via videos uploaded to the site. “Your professors have been reading your comments and now it’s their turn,” states the Web site. A TV network broadcast to college campuses nationwide, MTVu also owns the College Media Network, a network of online college newspapers.

Methodology issues

Eric Schroeder, a lecturer in the University Writing program and recipient of this year’s James H. Meyer Distinguished Achievement Award, given by the Academic Federation, agrees that the site is hardly scientific in its measuring yardsticks.

“Students are answering very broad, generic questions and often don’t provide a lot of context for their answers,” Schroeder said. “One student might say an instructor is an extremely easy grader and another might say that same instructor is the toughest that student has ever had. Who is right?”

And Schroeder, frankly, has doubts about a methodology that asks students to assign chili peppers to “hot” instructors.

He sees a significant discrepancy between course evaluations and online ratings. In the classroom, students are more likely to be “constructive or tactful” in their evaluations, thinking that someone will read the reviews and possibly improve the course.

But in cyberspace, Schroeder said, students may rant without censoring themselves or paying attention to the facts.

Students like to know who is teaching their class — before they enroll.

Rebecca Backer, an exercise biology major studying in Ecuador this quarter, said, “The quality of a teacher completely determines the quality of a class, so I think it is very important to investigate a little bit beforehand, whether that is ratemyprofessors.com or word of mouth.”

Some students post comments; others like Backer just read them, especially “if I am deciding between two classes.” She thinks the ratings are mostly accurate.

“I figure the people who take the time to write about a teacher had very strong feelings about them. If I read about a teacher with very mixed reviews I ignore them, but if 20 people post comments saying they loved or loathed a teacher, I will definitely take that into account,” Backer said.

She says a need exists for online ratings — for both students and faculty.

“I think that any Web site that allows students to communicate and share opinions about teachers and classes is worthwhile.”

Like Backer, Matthew Sevrens, a psychology major, uses to explore and investigate prospective teachers and classes.

“I check it before I register for a class to make sure the teacher isn’t really bad.”

Sevrens believes that the site is “generally fair,” but that it all depends on how many reviews the teacher has.

“The fewer the reviews, the harder it is to get a bearing on the teacher,” he added.

“It’s a good way to spread the word because there are just certain professors that are really terrible,” said Sevrens.

A new kid on the online rating block is thecampusbuddy.com, which says it offers a method of tracking less prone to bias. By collecting — when available — the grading histories of professors, the site offers a snapshot of grading and grade-point-average patterns for professors, departments and universities.

As for the future, interim vice provost White expects sites like ratemyprofessors.com and others to become more sophisticated in how they deliver classroom information. Simply, the demand exists.

“Its ratings are growing in size,” he said.