Since the advent of the Internet age, countless professor-rating websites like Rate my Professors and Koofers have popped up on the scene and allowed students to fill out online assessments of their professors. They can give them a rating and a short explanation as to what constitutes the rating.

For Koofers, the ratings are made on a five-star basis, with a list of pros and cons listed for each class. In addition, details for each class are shared concerning the difficulty and quantity of exams, quizzes, homework and class projects.

Generally, for a professor to get a good review, students who post on these websites take into account if the professor was easy to contact, if they had interesting lectures, if tests and quizzes were fair and even what a student feels they got out of the class.

For the most part, the idea behind these websites is to advise future students on what classes to take and with which professors. But that’s just one of the many reasons advertising senior David Jelliffe uses these sites.

“I use Koofers a lot,” Jelliffe said. “It’s helped me out choosing my professors because I actually (take) what people have said about them into account. ... But I use it mainly for studying purposes ... I’ll go back and see if people have posted past exams or past study guides.”

At times, some might question the authenticity of the professor reviews found on these websites. But in some cases, the reviews can be influential enough to sway a student’s decision on whether or not to even take the class.

“If they have really bad ratings or they are known to give out bad grades, I won’t take the course with them,” dietetics senior Libby Friend said. “My microbiology class, there’s only one professor at MSU and I didn’t take the course because it was a known that everybody gets a 2.0 in the class. So I took it at Lansing Community College online.”

A professor’s perspective

With these testimonies from students taken into account, it begs the question: What do professors think of these websites?

For Jelliffe, he says if he were a professor, he would take any critique of his teaching skills into account.

“I had a professor last semester. Great professor. His name’s Karl Gude. And he went on this rant on YouTube about how professors complain about their students,” said Jelliffe, speaking of journalism professor Gude’s viral video from August 2014 where he expressed frustration at professors for being stubborn in their old ways of teaching. “If there are enough negative reviews, that means you have to change, not (the students).”

But what happens when the reviews on websites like Koofers and Rate my Professors become too harsh? What happens when it’s clear that the person behind the review is nothing more than a disgruntled student who never came to class simply hiding behind a keyboard?

Gude’s been there.

“They just hurt your feelings,” said Gude of the online review websites. “I was very curious my second year here and I logged on as a student and went and read that ... never again. You just don’t need to know all that.”

Gude, a journalism professor, went on to compare the reviews on websites like Koofers and Rate my Professors to what it can be like sometimes when someone is working as a journalist.

“It’s like ... you’d write a story and a lot of people loved that story, thought you did an amazing job,” Gude said. “But almost every letter to the editor or comment you’re going to get is from someone who is pissed off at you.”

It’s reasons like these that Gude and other professors tend to steer away from professor rating websites and toward a healthy alternative.

“Every semester I devour my student evaluation forms,” Gude said. “Those can be brutal, but they can also be very supportive. ... Instead of just hearing how one kid may feel about you and may have flunked, and is all pissed off ranting about you on Rate my Professors, what you get is somebody writing who knows you’re going to read what they’re going to write.”

A more official account

The SIRS forms Gude speaks of are the Student Instructional Rating System at MSU, which consist of a series of brief online surveys students are asked to participate in at the end of each semester.

According to the SIRS frequently asked questions page, the forms provide an opportunity for students to evaluate the instruction they receive in relation to the provisions of the Code of Teaching Responsibility, and the various instructional models in operation in the university. The student input is then used toward assessing and improving course design and teaching performance. The university and individual departments are responsible for designing and administering their respective survey forms to obtain such evaluations.

The data from these forms is then collected and analyzed by the university. From there, the information is made available to both the instructor and administrators making personnel decisions, and are taken into account when decisions are being made on things like faculty retention, promotion, tenure and salary.

This complex system of professor evaluations in place at MSU allows Charles Ballard, a professor of economics, to devote a lot of time to reading over his SIRS forms, and steer clear of websites such as Koofers and Rate my Professors — mostly because of their lack of validity.

“It is my impression that the postings on these websites (such as Koofers) may be drawn from unusually small and unrepresentative samples of students,” Ballard said in an email.

Even for students like advertising junior Madeline Doyle, who does believe Koofers to be helpful in some studying purposes — such as when past study guides and notes are posted — when it comes to professor evaluations, she too agrees SIRS is a better option when assessing how effective an instructor can be.

“I think SIRS forms are more for the MSU administration to evaluate professors,” Doyle said. “So I think those are a lot more helpful when it comes to really evaluating professors because those are really what’s going to matter in the end.”

Professor of economics Norman Obst also has similar viewpoints.

“Sites such as Koofers and Rate My Professors and some university surveys measure student evaluations of instructors rather than determining to what degree learning objectives are being met,” said Obst, who went on to say that while some of the reviews on these websites can be useful, they’re far from perfect. “Unfortunately, sometimes evaluations are not accurate. The risk is other students who read these evaluations can be misled.”