Related Web site lets students rate professors

The concept of rating instructors is not a new one. On the University of Montana campus, students used to publish their populist accounts of all professors in an annual book.

Now, college and university students can turn to the sister site of http://www.ratemyteachers.com – http://www.ratemyprofessors.com.

By ALLISON FARRELL – IR State Bureau

But UM Sociology professor Rob Balch doesn’t see much difference between the paper and the online version, and doesn’t place much stock in either.

‘‘ ‘The Book’ was a compilation of seemingly random comments,” Balch said Tuesday, after learning of ratemyprofessor.com (he earned high marks). ‘‘They were really, really out of the blue.”

But UM Law School professor Rob Natelson, who earned three negative reviews on the site, has a different take. He said student evaluations can be a good thing.

‘‘There’s nothing wrong with having students participate in evaluating professors,” Natelson said. ‘‘But as with any sort of polling, you have to use the right instruments and know how to evaluate the data.”

Natelson said an Internet survey is probably less reliable than the evaluations students fill out at the end of each semester, and said a teacher’s ‘‘easiness” factor tends to translate into popularity.

And evaluation experiments show that external factors, such as wardrobe and voice timbre, can affect a teacher’s rating, he added.

‘‘One year I was able to raise evaluations by changing my wardrobe,” Natelson said.

Michael Hussey of Washington, D.C., a co-founder of ratemyteachers.com, said the success of ratemyprofessors.com was inspiration for the teacher site.

‘‘I had been working on ratemyprofessors.com,” Hussey said. ‘‘We saw how successful it was holding professors accountable to students.”

At UM, 105 professors have been rated, with an additional six rated at UM’s School of Law. At Montana State University – Bozeman, 174 professors have been rated. In addition to rating professors on their helpfulness, clarity and easiness, college students can also rate them on how ‘‘hot” they look.