Presentation Type
Poster
Tapping the goldmine: Use of RateMyProfessors.com as an instruction assessment tool
Abstract
Online instructor evaluations have gained influence on professor and course selections at universities. However, those in academia often view these websites validity with skepticism and dismiss them without consideration of their reliability and accuracy. RatemyProfessors.com (RMP) is the most popular of such evaluation tools and houses a wealth of qualitative and quantitative elements regarding instruction, professors, and the learning process from the viewpoint of the student. The purpose of this study is to utilize RMP to develop a qualitative analysis model to interpret student’s entries and construct a profile of General Chemistry instruction at our institution. The analysis included a random sampling of ten comments for each of the six current General Chemistry professors at USF submitted between 2008-2010. Findings revealed seven categories that emerged as important pertaining to students’ learning environment. The validation of the online RMP data will use statistical analysis to test its convergence with the Student Evaluations of Instruction (SEI). The constructed model could be potentially used by other institutions or departments in tandem with other evaluation tools to inform and improve instruction.
Categories
Interdisciplinary
Research Type
Research Assistant
Mentor Information
Dr. Santiago Sandi-Urena
Tapping the goldmine: Use of RateMyProfessors.com as an instruction assessment tool
Online instructor evaluations have gained influence on professor and course selections at universities. However, those in academia often view these websites validity with skepticism and dismiss them without consideration of their reliability and accuracy. RatemyProfessors.com (RMP) is the most popular of such evaluation tools and houses a wealth of qualitative and quantitative elements regarding instruction, professors, and the learning process from the viewpoint of the student. The purpose of this study is to utilize RMP to develop a qualitative analysis model to interpret student’s entries and construct a profile of General Chemistry instruction at our institution. The analysis included a random sampling of ten comments for each of the six current General Chemistry professors at USF submitted between 2008-2010. Findings revealed seven categories that emerged as important pertaining to students’ learning environment. The validation of the online RMP data will use statistical analysis to test its convergence with the Student Evaluations of Instruction (SEI). The constructed model could be potentially used by other institutions or departments in tandem with other evaluation tools to inform and improve instruction.
