Whether you ’re about to start a course , or just looking ahead to registration for next semester , knowing what to expect from the professor can help relieve your first - day anxiousness and provide insight on how to come near the class . The societal networking internet site RateMyProfessors.com gives you access to more than 6.8 million student - generate professor military rating on more than one million professors from colleges across the United States , Canada and the United Kingdom . Like many societal networking entanglement web site , you’re able to access RateMyProfessors from your Web web web browser and apply its services detached of charge . This includes understand any of the professor ratings posted , even if you do n’t register for an account .
RateMyProfessors has savour continued growth in popularity since John Swapceinski founded it in 1999 . Swapenceinski , a software engineer from Menlo Park , Calif. , sold the web site to Baltimore Solutions , Inc. , in belated 2005 . New owner Patrick Nagle and Will DeSantis were n’t newfangled to managing societal networking web site , having created an online school text trading site when they were in college . When Nagle and DeSantis moved to Viacom MTV Networks in other 2007 , they took RateMyProfessors with them , relocate its main office to New York . Now , RateMyProfessors is part of mtvU , a collection of social networks , entertainment word , contest and articles targeted toward college students .
In this article , we ’ll await at the paygrade organization at RateMyProfessors and see how it compares to prof feedback on other societal meshwork Web web site and online community .
Using RateMyProfessors
Anyone accessing RateMyProfessors.com can search and translate the educatee - contributed professor feedback without creating an account or ratify in . If you ’re using RateMyProfessors just to incur information , hunt for the school and the professor , and click the professor ’s name in the search event . Here ’s the information you ’ll incur on each prof ’s " card , " part of the professor ’s military rating page :
RateMyProfessors follows the model of other social networks by requiring you to create an account and access before contributing ratings or accede prof feedback . Besides create a username , password and other typical social networking profile information , RateMyProfessors postulate you to enter your school , major and at least one current professor . From there , you’re able to pick out up to six current professors for your profile , and you’re able to take whether you ’d care updates on music , contest and even casting calls from mtvU.
While you ’re logged in to RateMyProfessors , you’re able to explore for any professor in the system and submit a evaluation . If you could not find the professor in search result , scroll to the end of the results and click the link to add a teacher . No verification process is take when enter the professor ’s information . As a resultant , RateMyProfessors has some fictional professors with amusing fictitious ratings , often inspired from television or movies .
When you complete your rating , RateMyProfessors postulate you to enter more info other than that shown on the professor ’s evaluation page . Besides the prof ’s scorecard , the rating form involve for textbook feedback , your course ( including " Rather Not Say " ) and whether the prof is still teaching . input are limited to 350 character , and the form provide a link to the notice guideline – a standard feature of speech for text entry on societal networking sites .
In the next section we ’ll look at the benefits of using RateMyProfessors and how it compares to its contender .
Benefits of RateMyProfessors
Some social meshwork sites are perpetually bring feature article to enhance their on-line communities . However , the benefit of RateMyProfessors are a result of its proceed focus on its primary end : sharing feedback on college prof . rating are well-to-do to regain and easygoing to contribute to at no price to its users , and without extra social networking bell and whistles . While members can speak out using the RateMyProfessors forum , the forum is very simple and less relevant when compared to other societal net Web site . The existent value of RateMyProfessors is in its millions of ratings over a decennary of use of goods and services .
In a 2007 article on professor paygrade Web sites , Naomi Rockler - Gladen outline some of the arguments for and against social networking internet site dedicated to prof ratings . Though the inclination of debate against cited most of what RateMyProfessors ' critics have expressed , the lean of arguments for the sites explain that they ply an sales outlet for students to defend themselves against prof who abuse their force or assay to indoctrinate them . With its side - by - side comparison between the pros and bunco game , Rockler - Gladen ’s article does n’t take a side , but asks dubiousness that both students and professors must answer for themselves when make up one’s mind the time value of RateMyProfessors .
The telephone number of Web site for professor rating is raise , but they ’re less established than RateMyProfessors , and they variegate in their glide path . For exercise , Campushopper.com has a wide range of societal networking feature article for college scholar besides professor ratings . Lower - traffic sites include Professor Performance ( myprofessorsucks.com ) with a schooling - like grading system alternatively of numeric military rating , and GPABook.com , which includes schoolbook price comparison . Newer to the scene , PickAProf.com creates attractive military rating charts while restricting accession to its service to those who read with an e - mail address issued by the commit college . net - savvy students can also use search engines to find web log entries and indorsement about professors from other social networking Web internet site , but an array of hunt locomotive results may not seem as credible as an established situation with lots of contributed rating .
So RateMyProfessors is popular and include a lot of ratings , but some user have expressed doubtfulness about the validity of using social meshwork like this to find reliable entropy about college professor . Even if the critics ' voices grow louder or the contest fetch stiff , there ’s no uncertainty that RateMyProfessors has spend its first decade as a best-loved semester - planning resource for millions of college students .
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