Tallahassee Community College students are avoiding taking “bad” instructors each semester with the help of the popular website RateMyProfessors.com. Surprisingly, many students and instructors see the website as a helpful resource.
“4 million college students each month” visit RateMyProfessors.com, according to the website About page.
Dhderaj Katari, a first-year TCC student, uses the website to select all of his instructors and says that the student reviews are the most important part when deciding on an instructor.
“It depends how you look at it. If you just look at the rating itself, I don’t know if that is enough to like have you choose that Professor,” said Katari. “I think you should look at some of the reviews first.”
On RateMyProfessors.com each instructor has an overall quality rating with a one being the worst and five being the best. Along with this rating students can leave an anonymous review on the specific instructor’s page complete with a quality and difficulty rating.
The reviews also include accompanying tags added by students. Tags include “Tough grader,” “Skip class? Won’t pass” and “Lots of Homework.”
Since most of the reviews on RateMyProfessors.com are from students who either had a good or bad experience, evaluating the reliability of the reviews on the site can be difficult.
Devon L’Heureux, a second-year TCC honors student, uses the website to select all of her instructors each semester but has also written reviews on instructors. L’Heureux says she has given the highest and lowest possible ratings.
“I’ve written ones for professors that I love and I’ve taken multiple classes with and will go out of my way to take their class in the future,” said L’Heureux. “But I’ve also written them for teachers that have made me wonder why they were teachers.”
From one instructor’s point of view, the site is a useful tool in selecting instructors.
Donya Samara, an assistant professor of English at TCC, said that when she was in high school her teachers suggested that she talk to other students to determine the type of instructor she would be taking.
“This strikes me as being the online social media way of doing that,” Samara said.
