Exploring professors’ thoughts on two main ways students can voice course and instructor feedback
By NOAH HARRIS — features@theaggie.org
Every year, students at UC Davis have the opportunity to fill out course evaluations to give their professors and teaching assistants feedback on how well they taught the course during the quarter. Students at UC Davis have two main ways to share their opinions of their teachers online. The first is through Rate My Professors, a website where college students give their instructors and courses ratings, and the second is through end-of-quarter evaluations.
Rate My Professors allows students to post their thoughts on a professor to share with other students. In 2018, there were 1.7 million professors being reviewed, as well as four million users — numbers which have likely grown since.
Dr. Marc Facciotti, a professor in biomedical engineering, said the Rate My Professors feedback system is not as sound as the end-of-quarter reviews.
“What I found was [that] a lot of the [Rate My Professors] critique was factually wrong,” Facciotti said. “[However,] I do find the end-of-quarter evaluations much more informative. There [are] some nasty comments in there too, but [as a] whole, they’re much more focused on what happened that quarter.”
Dr. Laci Gerhart, an associate professor of teaching in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, has a very high rating of 4.8 on Rate My Professors — a fact that she accepts alongside a strong amount of caution.
“Students who do feel strongly go to Rate My Professors, and the majority of students who feel strongly about me [seem to] feel strongly positive,” Gerhart said.
She continued by sharing some of her concerns about the overall accuracy of the reviews to the experiences of her students.
“That also means that students who go there to fill out a negative review maybe don’t because it’s pretty clear to them that they are in the minority,” Gerhart said. “I don’t necessarily think that students generally liking me actually means that they’re learning more. So I don’t pat myself on the back too much.”
Dr. Julia Chamberlain, an associate professor in chemistry, has seen both polite and rude comments while using the website.
“[Rate My Professors] really is like going on a hate page,” Chamberlain said. “Even though there [will] be some positive comments, when someone says something nice about you to your face, it feels good. And when someone says something super mean to you, it feels like 10 times worse than the good thing.”
Student evaluations provide a way to anonymously give feedback to professors about their courses. On the site, students are unable to view one another’s responses.
However, Gerhart said evaluations have a risk of being biased.
“I make a lot of jokes,” Gerhart said. “And I do a lot of explicit encouraging a student to, you know, reach out to me and to talk to me. So how much of the positive aspects of my evaluations are just those personality and identity traits, and [are they] not really correlated at all with how much students are actually learning in the class?”
Several studies back up this claim of bias. One study found that on average, students gave more favorable evaluations to classes that gave higher grades without remarking on the abilities of the instructor.
Another study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania found that female professors are negatively evaluated more often, and that gender and student grade expectations are what students take most predominantly into account. This study, to this end, recommended that student evaluations should not be used to influence personnel decisions.
At UC Davis, student evaluations do have tangible effects, according to Facciotti.
“So, the way the evaluations work on campus is that there are two mandatory questions that get asked [to students], and the results from those questions go directly into a faculty member’s merit and promotion package,” Facciotti said.
The order in which evaluation questions are asked can influence students’ responses, according to Facciotti.
“We have to put [the mandatory questions] first, because the campus wants to make sure that, you know, if students drop out halfway through a survey, they’ve at least answered those two mandatory ones,” Facciotti said. “So, they’re the least informative [but] they’re the most impactful for your merit and promotion. If you give the student a moment to think about the elements of the class, and then they reflect on the value of the class and the instructor, they’re usually a little more generous.”
Chamberlain expressed his own doubts about the evaluations.
“I think it’s difficult for anybody to separate the course and the professor,” Chamberlain said. “You could take the same course for two different professors and have different experiences and that would give you more perspective. But most people don’t do that.”
The average response rate from students is 65%, according to Academic Course Evaluation (ACE) — a site which UC Davis uses for end-of-quarter evaluations. The two mandatory questions that impact an instructor’s merit and promotion are: “Please indicate the overall educational value of the course” and “Please indicate the overall teaching effectiveness of the instructor.”
These questions ask for a ranking on a scale from zero to five. Both answers on average are between 4.0 and 4.1.
Chamberlain also shared her thoughts on the difference between the comments she receives.
“Interestingly, the feedback on ACE, the university platform [for student evaluations], to me feels much more constructive and/or polite,” Chamberlain said. “The feedback that I saw in the past on Rate My Professors felt way more hurtful — like it was a person venting. The phrasing is more hurtful, even if it’s the same sentiment.”
Facciotti, who teaches a chemistry class with hundreds of students every year, described the extreme difference in responses he receives on Rate My Professors.
“In [one review, I could be] the greatest instructor that somebody’s ever had [and have] changed their life,” Facciotti said. “And [in another review] I’m a flaming pile of shit [that] should be reported to the dean.”
Gerhart mentioned a controversial part of Rate My Professors that was removed in 2018, several years after the website was created.
“They used to have a chili pepper where you could rate how attractive your professor was,” Gerhart said. “This was universally viewed by faculty as inappropriate, demeaning and kind of gross.”
On Rate My Professors, Chamberlain is listed as one of the most rated professors at UC Davis. Her students have posted nearly 400 ratings based on different courses she instructs here, and that number increases every quarter.
Rate My Professors and quarterly evaluations are the two main ways that students can rate their instructors. They may look different, but they continue to inform students and professors about courses, instructors and overall processes here at UC Davis and beyond.
Written by: Noah Harris — features@theaggie.org
