The
days of summer are counting down. The once careless days of
assignment-free fun are only but past memories. Slowly and inevitably,
the ominous presence of school lurks back into the subconscious of
college students across the nation. Perhaps one of the most excruciating
reminders that summertime merriment has come to an end is class
registration. It is the classic game of Russian roulette. Students must
choose their classes in hopes that the professor they have unwittingly
chosen does not turn out to be a monster. But does it always have to be
like this? The creators of ratemyprofessor.com say it doesn’t have to
be. Through the use of the ever-evolving World Wide Web,
ratemyprofessor.com has given students a medium in which they can warn
their fellow peers to steer clear of dangerous professors waiting to
kill their precious GPAs. Ratemyprofessor.com allows students a partial
glimpse into the future and as a result, allows them to minimize the
pain and suffering they will have to endure over the next sixteen weeks.
On the surface, ratemyprofessor.com seems like a useful tool for
students to take for students to take advantage of and in many ways it
still is. However, students who decide to use rate myprofessor.com
should realize that the website is only a tool, not the Bible. Any advice
found from ratemyprofessor.com should be taken with a grain of salt.
Opinions displayed on this website often are wrought with heavy bias
from students with questionable credentials and work ethics.
When one first loads the website on their most convenient platform and
browser, the first noticeable feature of the website is the baby-blue
theme: a wise and tactful decision by the web-designer of
ratemyprofessor.com. The calm blue them undoubtedly takes the edge off
the nervous spasms the average student is feeling when visiting the site
for the first time. It is as if the website is trying to tell you that
everything will be all right and that the calm blue summer sky will soon
reappear again. After one is done admiring the carefully selected color
scheme, a conveniently placed search bar is placed in the front and
center of the screen like a magic 8 ball, waiting to bestow heavenly
truth. 
The obvious placement of the search function allows for easy
navigation for users visiting ratemyprofessor.com, especially those
using the site for the very first time. In fact, the interface of the
entire site is very easy to navigate. There is a very natural feeling to
the website. The hyperlinks on each page are there for obvious reasons
and always provide links to relevant pages. The overall organization of
the site is very clean and crisp. It is simple enough as to not
suffocate the average viewer, but still has enough features to provide a
useful experience. Whether you’re viewing or writing professor reviews,
ratemyprofessor.com has a very self-explanatory set-up that lets users
focus more on the content rather than navigating the site. The site is
well written so that it runs smoothly across a multitude of platforms,
which is quite important considering the average college student has
very little patience to wait for loading times.
Once
you navigate to the review of your potential professor-to-be, it
becomes immediately obvious why ratemyprofessor.com has risen to such
high levels of popularity over the past couple of years. Off a first
glance, from the brightly colored rating scale gives the viewer a
detailed score based off of three criterias: Helpfulness, Clarity, and
Easiness.
Ratemyprofessors takes the average of these scores to give the
professor an overall rating. The system ratemyprofessor.com has devised
to rate professors is very apt for the audience they are catering to.
When it comes down to it, the first and foremost concern among college
students is passing classes. Ratemyprofessor.com has distilled the key
qualities that make a class “passable” into one easy-to-read number. If
viewers wish to look deeper into a professor’s profile, all one needs to
do is scroll down to read more detailed reviews from student’s who had
taken the class previously. In most cases, the reviews left on a
professors are very parallel to one another. Because of this, you can
almost tell what a professor is going to be like without ever having to
your set eyes on him or her.
Ratemyprofessor.com has been one of the most useful websites for
college students around the country when choosing their classes. Because
of this site, they are able to get a sense of what the professor is
like, as well as, get an idea of how much the workload is and how hard
the tests can be. However, just like any website, there are always
weakness that take the shine off of an otherwise brilliant idea.
Ratemyprofessor.com
has a huge database of professors that continues to expands as more
students provide their own personal feedback on professors. However, it
is quite often that a professor’s name does not return any results in
the search function. 
Since nearly all of the information found on rate
my professor.com has been inputted by users, there are many gaps of
missing professors that students have not yet reviewed. Because of the
limited data base, new students are not able to look up the critical
information they need when selecting courses. Some students will not
even take a class because they are unsure of what to expect, or will
even be hesitant when clicking on the enroll button. Unfortunately, this
problem cannot be fixed by the developers of ratemyprofessor.com. Users
just have to wait for others to fill these gaps or take the class
themselves at their own risk.
Along
with a limited data base, the information of Ratemyprofeesor.com is not
based on facts. The information provided is simply opinions from other
students who have taken the course and have either benefited from the
class, or it had hurt them throughout the semester. Because of these
events, sometimes the information can be swayed to a certain side of an
argument and can give off the wrong impression to new students. For
example, I was sitting in my COM 100 class when the topic of
Ratemyprofessor.com came about. My instructor who was teaching the
course had told us that he had looked through this website, and when he
saw the information about his particular course, it was false. Although
we can say his reaction was simply from him being offended, those
actually were false words and the content had nothing to do with the
class itself. What students do not realize, is that just because the
website says a class is difficult, or that a teacher is really laid
back, does not mean it is true. The only way to know for sure is to take
the class yourself. When reading the posts from other students, you do
not always hear the story from both sides. You cannot completely base
your judgement of a professor off of what a few other students have said
about them.
The
student who looks up a certain professor, typically will only read
articles from the students themselves and ignore any other feedback.
What most students tend to forget about, is the column that allows
professors to respond. In this response, professors can give their own
opinions on why they believe students feel the way they do, and can give
a more accurate response on to how the course will be. On the site,
this allows students to hear both sides. However, most professors have
not responded to criticism on their profile. Because most professors
have not written a response, students are left with the one sided
information and are only influenced by student opinions.
After
analyzing Ratemyprofessor.com from its strengths and weaknesses, the
website as a whole is still very successful. Being able to go to this
website, look at teachers that you are wanting to take, and getting an
idea of what they are like is very helpful when choosing classes.
Regardless of the fact that it does not always have the information you
need, the information it provides is still helpful. To give an
opportunity to allow those to choose a course based on how well it fits
that persons personality and work load is very important. Students will
continue to use this website on a daily basis when the enrollment dates
start to show up, and the opinions of others students will be taken into
account. Just as we said before though, when using this website,
students should take their peers advice with caution.
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