Amarillo College Ranger

Issue date: 3/8/07 Section: Front Page

Media Credit: www.ratemyprofessor.com [Click to enlarge]

The bright, red chili pepper to the right of a professor's name symbolizes that the professor is "hot." The yellow, green and blue smiley faces represent "good quality," "average quality" and "poor quality," respectively.

Teachers aren't the ones with the power to give out the grades on Web sites such as RateMyProfessors.com and the MySpace.com Professor Grading system. Students decide which smiley faces and grades their college professors deserve.

Besides rating the teachers, students can view ratings on the Web sites from other students and use them to determine which professors they want for their classes.

"The MySpace rating system pretty much decided my classes," said education major Christian Enevoldsen, "between that and my friends."

The MySpace.com Professor Grading system and RateMyProfessors.com allow students to grade teachers based on categories such as easiness, helpfulness, clarity, homework and fairness. RateMyProfessors.com even permits students to rate teachers based on their appearance. If a student believes a professor is "hot," then the student can choose to have a red chili pepper displayed next to the teacher's name.

Robert Boyd, chairman of the Language, Communication and Fine Arts Division, said he believes the professor rating Web sites aren't helpful because they don't include responses from a wide enough variety of students to precisely judge the professors.

"I don't find them of value because of the limited number of students that participate in them," Boyd said.

Boyd said that many of the responses on the grading sites he has seen are flawed because there is no mechanism to make sure they are accurate.

"Some of the Web sites combine the ratings of teachers with similar names," he said.

"So, while one student is rating one teacher under a certain name, another student is rating a completely different teacher under that same name."

Whether the ratings are accurate or not, several Amarillo College students are using the Web sites and taking advantage of their opportunity to have the red grading pen in their hands.

Past and current AC students have listed 127 professors on RateMyProfessors.com and more than 280 on the MySpace.com Professor Grading system for AC.

Most of the professors on both of these Web sites have at least one to four "grades," while some have 15.

The MySpace.com Professor Grading system gives teachers grades ranging from an A+ to an F based on six categories.

RateMyProfessors.com rates teachers from 5 to 1, with 5 being the most satisfactory in two categories, and smiley faces in shades of yellow, green and blue, with yellow being the best ranking in three categories.

Students also are able to view comments other students have left about the teachers.

"I even took a night class because I heard what an amazing teacher Ms. Davis is," Enevoldsen said, "and it was right."

Public relations major Kaylee Miesner can vouch from personal experience that the ratings she viewed for professors on the MySpace.com professor grading system were accurate.

"I thought my professor measured up to what the ratings showed," Miesner said.

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