“Beyond ratings, beyond rankings, beyond opinions…”
See what professors say about their teaching style, grading, and experience. Learn what you need to know before you invest your time, your money, and your energy into an entire semester’s class.
It’s a nice idea this. Inside Higher Ed reports on this new(ish) website intended to offer a more rounded picture of academics’ approaches to teaching and learning:
Until now, college students mostly have relied on word of mouth, professors’ reputations, previous student evaluations and the often rude and anonymous comments (complete with a “hotness” ranking) on RateMyProfessors.com before choosing a professor for a particular class.
A 20-year-old sophomore at Northeastern University has hopes of changing all that with a new website called KnowThyProf.com, a platform where individual professors can share information with prospective students by answering a few questions in a limited number of characters.
Daniel Abram, the student who started the website, said students often have an incomplete picture of professors before they decide on a class. He called it an “imperfect information” situation, where the information available may not be very relevant or polarized and anonymous (as in the case of a site like Rate My Professors).
KnowThyProf.com is certainly an interesting approach and much more constructive than the RateMyProfessors concept. However, given that it depends largely on academic staff themselves providing profiles it does seem unlikely that it will become anywhere near comprehensive. Numbers of institutions and profiles are small at the moment but it may yet take off.
