Our View

By:

Shandra Jordan, editor in chief

Liz Ling, assistant design managing editor

Patrick Crossland, state/regional editor

Willow Welter, visual editor

Christopher J. Ortiz, opinion editor

A particular professor can make or break your next class.

Today’s front page story talks about a Web site, www.ramrating.com,

that allows students to post their opinion about professors they

had.

We all take professor surveys at the end of every semester but

those results are typically harder to track down and are not

readily available for all students as these Web sites.

We support Web sites such as these so students know what they

are getting into when they register for a class. Some students work

better with certain professors than others. We want students to use

these teacher evaluation sites but we also want them to be cautious

when using these sites to determine which classes to take next

semester.

Students (or really anyone) can post comments on the site, which

can be a little misleading. Users do not necessarily have to have

taken the class or even be a student at CSU. Also, people who use

these sites have to be motivated to go out of their way to make

these comments. Students going to these sites to read feedback on

their professors are likely to find hate/love comments.

If students use these sites to determine which classes to enroll

in next semester, take the comments with a grain of salt. Take the

opinions into context. The opinions collected on the sites are not

collected scientifically and they might not necessary represent the

general opinion of students who have had a particular

professor.

It is also important to remember that these sites are not

supervised or endorsed by the university, which may be a good or

bad thing.

We like the idea of having access to opinions and comments from

other students about professors, but we need to read the opinions

and comments with a skeptical eye.