My reaction is to wonder what chumps would invest in this corporation. First, as a student at Almost-a State University, I could give a flying fig as to what students at Univ Calif--Banana Slug (even though they have the best mascot in the universe) think of Professor X at ASU as a teacher of PSY 200. I want to know who is the *best* instructor of Brand-X Psychology for *me* on *my* campus.
Next is the definition of *best*. For some students, definition of best is the easiest grade. For others, definition of best is some person who doesn't bore the bejesus out of me and I can get a passing grade. For more others, definition of best is someone who seems to care that I am doing well in class. For even more others, best is someone who seems to be really excited by what they are teaching. And for even a few others, best is getting prepared for looking good for grad school applications.
My point is that there are a range of motivations that students bring to class. Students are not single-minded grade-grubbers. Students are not the rational consumers of economics. They are not clear or single-minded in their goals. They bring lots of appropriate and muddled ideas about what makes a good class. We, as instructors, are much more clear in our ideas about different types of classes only because we have so much more experience in evaluating class contents. Students are like us when it comes to making decisions outside of our area of expert knowledge. Contrast our sophistication with class evaluations with our ability to deal with buying a car. From the car salesman perspective, we are muddled in thinking about what we can expect to find in the current car offerings.
I think that the lone influence of sites like ratemyprofessor is very weak and I don't fear their ratings. Students ask friends whose opinion they respect, trust, and know their needs (see definition of best) and then choose accordingly.
So show my grade distributions and I hope you are not paying to see them.
Ken --------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [email protected] Professor Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --------------------------------------------------------------- On 1/10/2011 6:16 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This weekend's edition of the NY Times included the Education Life section, which had an interesting opinion piece about how a private company used the Freedom of Information Act to successfully force professors at one state university to reveal the grade distributions for their courses. From the article: "The company is in the process of uploading the grades on CourseRank.com <http://courserank.com/>, a class planning Web site that Chegg acquired in August. Students who register for CourseRank will be able to take into account a professor’s grade distribution, along with peer reviews and ratings, when deciding whether to take a class". http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/edlife/09notebook-t.html?_r=1&ref=edlife <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/edlife/09notebook-t.html?_r=1&ref=edlife> The piece raises a number of questions: Will students begin to make course section selections based on the instructor's grading profile? Does this approach further encourage grade inflation? Miguel
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