I read a really interesting article today in Inside Higher Ed about a study coming out that looks at the correlation between ratings on RateMyProfessors.com and IDEA, a well respected student evaluation tool that is used in many higher ed institutions. Many professors don't have very kind feelings towards RateMyProfessors.com, because they think the students base their ratings on elements that are largely out of their control. So there has been some debate about how accurate these ratings are. This study supports the validity of the RateMyProfessors.com ratings, because the IDEA evaluation puts a lot of control in the hands of the professors by allowing them to identify the teaching objectives that are the most important to the class and counting them more. They also use weighting to adjust for factors that the professors have little control over... the same factors they have argued have affected their ratings on RateMyProfessors.com. So it is pretty interesting that they found so many similarities between the ratings. I am really not doing the article much justice, so click here to read it yourself. It is definitely an interesting read!

--Meredith Simpson