Review Of Ratemyprofessors. Com

Submitted By aalaag2929
Words: 1153
Pages: 5

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1338356

Ratemyprofessors.com has been designed in order to guide college students into selecting the best professor for the certain courses. According to the website’s About page, students run the website and strive to help students interact with each other about college courses and professors that are available. RMP does not only allow students to speak up about the better professor but also about the professors who they shouldn’t take. There are guidelines and restrictions to what the students may post on the website. First of the guidelines, the students must have been a student of the professor who they are rating. Secondly, the students are suggested to refer back to the “rating categories” to further help them develop their comments. Lastly, RMP wants students to focus their critical comments on the professor’s professional ability to teach and what to expect out of the class. A few of the restrictions are that the student must keep their identity private and not to expose any of the professor’s contact information. When it comes to the rating, they are specific in saying that a rating could not be done unless the student was enrolled in the college or the course, the same professor cannot be rated twice, an opinion cannot be written as a fact, the professor can also not rate themselves and the rating cannot speak on behalf of the general public. Failure to comply with these restrictions could lead to the removal of the comment from the website. If a comment is made on a professor’s page and a third party feels that it has violated the restrictions they are able to flag it. Once it is flagged RMP will review it and decide whether it is removed or not. When surveys are designed they have a structure. The survey wants to reach a certain crowd. They want to measure opinions on certain topics. Once they have targeted their population, the survey must assess the sample frame. After having the sample there has to be a way to contact the people for follow-ups or etc. A problem can occur because at times the sample frame doesn’t cover everyone, it only covers a certain group due to the lack of being able to contact every individual being sampled. It then goes into selecting individuals from the frame to actually question. A random sampling error might happen because only a small section of the whole population is being sampled. If more respondents are included then there is a less likely chance for the sampling error to occur. Finally the respondent takes the survey. In this step, there is a chance of non-response error meaning that the people taking the survey might feel strongly about the subject thus creating bias in the response. RMP has a different way to sample its respondents. The website is reaching out to students across the nation and certain countries around the world, in order for them to express their opinion about a professor they have previously taken. The type of sampling they have is simple random sampling. Everyone who participates will most likely be selected unless they violate the rules the website has provide on what not to do. The problem with this sampling is that there is no true size of the sample. It could be a huge sample or a small one due to the fact that it is open to anyone. There is also a chance for sample bias because of the participants. Since the website is open and the questionnaire is not given to a certain crowd, the people who are most likely to participate are those with strong opinions. These strong opinions are usually the students who either had a good or bad experience. The student’s opinions mostly stand out in their comments rather than their actual ratings. For example, one rating made for Professor Bartoo:
“Average Quality
Easiness: 2
Helpfulness: 3
Clarity: 3
Rater Interest: 3
Grade ReceivedN/A
Professor Bartoo can be very funny and entertaining, but she does