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.
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