Students can now review professors online
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 26, 2001 9:00 p.m.
By Noah Grand
Daily Bruin Contributor
Students may have a new way to learn about their professors in
the Web site UCLAProfessors.com, which
allows users to rate professors in several categories.
“It seemed like there was significant demand for the
information,” said Arvli Ward, director of UCLA Student
Media, which UCLAProfessors.com is part of.
Professors are rated on a scale of one to 10 in terms of
effectiveness, availability and overall ability, among other
categories. These results are immediately added to a
professor’s overall rating.
Ward said he expects that mostly undergraduates, who do not have
as much access to information as graduate students, will use the
Web site.
“Graduate students can interact more with their professors
than undergraduates can,” Ward said. “Undergraduates
may need additional resources to see if a professor is right for
them.”
Anyone accessing the site can look at the ratings of any
professor. Professors can also be sorted by their rating within
each department or be ranked among the 10 best or worst in each
category.
Users can also type in a review of a professor. These reviews
are monitored by the Web site’s staff before being posted.
Malicious reviews are taken down, according to Ward.
“It hasn’t been a problem yet,” Ward said.
“I think people are doing a great job. I have read a lot of
the reviews. Most of the comments are thoughtful and
useful.”
Students have gotten together in the past to rate their
professors. John Sandbrook, assistant provost of the College of
Letters and Science, recalls buying a book with similar survey
results when he was a UCLA undergraduate in the 1960s.
He also commented that there are similar movements at UC San
Diego and UC Berkeley, among other schools.
“Students rating professors has been dormant for the last
10 or 15 years or maybe longer,” Sandbrook said. “It
depends on student initiative.”
Some professors said there are major problems with this process,
including the inability to determine who is actually filling out
the survey.
“I tried to enter a rating for myself and it appeared to
take it,” said Betty Luceigh, a chemistry and biochemistry
professor. “There is no identity associated with the
comment.”
Because ratings and reviews are done anonymously, many
professors do not feel as though they have the ability to respond
to comments. Luceigh is one of these professors, even though she
has the third highest overall rating at 9.09 out of 10.
Another problem some professors see is that any response they
would post to the Web site, such as Luceigh’s, is taken down
by the Web site’s staff. They feel that professor feedback
would cause more students to write negative reviews.
“The thing that keeps this Web site afloat is that
students want to be able to use it. Students have (the)
responsibility for giving honest reviews,” Ward said.
Another common fear among professors is that students who did
poorly in a professor’s class will give that professor a poor
review. Students are asked how difficult a professor’s class
is in UCLAProfessors.com ratings, but they are not asked how well
they did.
The ratings on UCLAProfessors.com are not the only way that
students evaluate professors. Toward the end of every quarter,
students have the option of evaluating their professors.
These evaluations consist of multiple-choice questions and a few
short-answer sections. The Academic Senate helps to create the
questions, which largely have to do with what was successful in a
class and what wasn’t, along with how the student expects to
do in the class.
The survey results for each professor are summed by the Office
of Instructional Development and then sent to academic
departments.
These surveys are intended to help professors and departments
improve the quality of their teaching. The results are not intended
to be distributed to the public, Sandbrook said.
UCLA has no plans of discussing whether or not to put results
from the OID survey on the Internet at this time. Sandbrook said
there have been discussions about using the My.UCLA Web page to
survey students about their professors, but at the moment it is not
being seriously considered.
“The electronic gradebook was deemed a higher priority.
Everyone deals with grades,” Sandbrook said.
Sandbrook said there are problems with the process of
UCLAProfessors.com, but added that the right to free speech
prevails.
Because UCLA is in the Web site title, some professors said
these ratings will be seen as official UCLA ratings of
professors.
Ward said these ratings are only student’s opinions and
there is disagreement even within the reviews on the site.
UCLAProfessors.com is maintained on a day-to-day basis by
students who receive a stipend for their work. The money used to
fund these stipends comes from advertising banners on the Web
site.
