By Dominic Arenas
In an effort to increase accurate reviews and active engagement, RateMyProfessors.com is seeking to grow its presence at Fordham for the remainder of the school year. Carly Edenbaum, audience development manager for RateMyProfessors.com, reached out to Unites student Government (USG) weeks ago to pitch the idea of a potential partnership. Executive board and Senate members further engaged in communication with Edenbaum to let her discuss her role and present the intentions of RateMyProfessors.com.
On Nov. 16, Edenbaum attended USG’s weekly meeting. Through already school-sanctioned events, RateMyProfessors.com would, as Edenbaum put it, “slide in.”
In an effort to raise awareness that RateMyProfessors.com needs ratings to survive, Edenbaum suggested that tabling, fundraising and providing students with food and free school supplies during campus activities would be the manifestation of the potential partnership. “The site works best when students see a lot of ratings – and every rating matters,” she said.
According to Edenbaum, 95 percent of college students use RateMyProfessors.com to read reviews and investigate a professor’s teaching style.
“More ratings allow students to better decide if a professor’s teaching style is the right fit for them, before locking into the class,” Edenbaum said. “What we love most about RateMyProfessors is that it’s all about students helping each other out. If every student took the time to leave even one rating per semester, the site would become so much more valuable to them.”
Although many college students navigate through the website and read professor evaluations, only five percent of users actually review, Edenbaum said.
After stating the purpose of her initial reach-out to USG and the disparity between visitors and reviewers on the Viacom Media Networks-owned site, Edenbaum asked USG Brian Reardon and other executive board and Senate members to brainstorm: What would a RateMyProfessors.com and USG partnership look like? In return, for possible free food and supplies, Edenbaum requested that Fordham’s representatives help spread the word about how the website works and encourage students to “rate” professors. Reardon notified Edenbaum that USG participates in “cosponsorships” of events throughout campus.
In addition to Reardon’s comments, executive board and Senate members had many questions for Edenbaum, ranging from “How does RateMyProfessors.com market to us?” to “What’s up with the chili pepper next to a professor’s name?” Though student leaders and Edenbaum interchanged collaborative ideas, no specific dollar amounts were mentioned.
Additionally, attendees at the meeting informed Edenbaum of the current mandatory course evaluations students fill out at the end of each semester.
The student leaders, along with Edenbaum engaged in extensive dialogue on how the deans could potentially incorporate RateMyProfessors.com features within the already implemented rating system Fordham has.
USG Senator for the Gabelli School of Business, Roderick Perez, GSB20, says he is one of the students who regularly reads reviews on RateMyProfessors.com. He says a potential partnership between USG and the site could improve the course evaluation system at Fordham.
“I could see a partnership being very successful because both RateMyProfessor and Fordham utilize professor rating systems, so an integration the two would benefit the website, the university, the professors and the students,” said Perez.
When asked to comment on the likelihood of the potential collaboration, executive vice president, Abigail Kedik, FCRH ’18, expressed appreciation for the information Edenbaum provided.
“She reached out a few weeks ago asking to stop by. We wanted to give her a chance to present RateMyProfessor to us and explain her role,” she said. “We appreciate the information Carly provided, and hope our conversation was helpful to her as well.”
As Fordham already has a system that gives students a platform to review professors and courses, Kedik is doubtful that undergraduate deans will agree to the partnership “We are hesitant on partnering with RateMyProfessor in the future, simply because of our existing partnership with the Dean’s office of undergraduate schools and the Fordham evaluations already in place,” Kedik said.
The purpose of Student Evaluations of Education Quality (SEEQ) are to solicit feedback regarding the quality of instruction. Based on the student responses and reviews, instructors are encouraged to detect patterns in evaluations and be mindful of criticism in their reviews. However, since the digitization of SEEQ reviews, completion rates have dropped.
Fordham distributes evaluations in the weeks leading up to final exams so that responses are not affected by a student’s final grade. Although student input is important to a professor’s portfolio, the reviews are just one aspect in Fordham’s system of evaluating. Since grade distribution and classroom observations sheds light on other aspects of a class or particular professor, these components are weighed on top of SEEQ reviews.
The USG leaders who voiced opinions during Edenbaum’s pitch concurred that both RateMyProfessors.com and Fordham’s online evaluations are not perfect. Some senators admitted they themselves don’t tend to fill out Fordham SEEQ reviews unless a professor told them do so during class time.
The USG leaders questioned the legitimacy of ratings on RateMyProfessors.com since students often feel inclined to leave comments when feelings toward a professor are strong.
