This is the second thing that bothered me this morning, though it’s been nudging me a while but brought up again recently by some interesting posts about student attitude over at Steve Ersinghaus’ place.
You’ve all heard of Rate My Professor.com, right? It’s a place where students can sign in and grade their instructors based on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) on elements of Easiness, Helpfulness, Clarity, and Rater Interest (the rater’s interest in the subject matter prior to taking the course–how that has anything to do with it, I don’t know).
I was truly surprised at some of the scoring on some of the teachers I’ve had. But then again, the majority of people who bother going to the site are either disgruntled flunkies or star-struck groupies, with a small balance of honest students leaving a comment. But what struck me was the fact that rating a teacher on the low end of Easiness, meaning that his class was probably challenging, brought the overall score down!
Here’s a couple of comments from students of one the top rated teachers (5 for Easiness):
She is an all around great teacher. The assignments where relevant to what she was teaching. The class was a ton of fun. If you like to learn and learn about children or your a mom, you will pass pretty easily. Take classes with Dawn!her class was very intesting i learned tons. i highly recommend her to anyone that is going into the education field.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology