Have you ever been wondering what your professor will be like? Will they be helpful if you have any questions? Is he or she easy to understand? Does he or she make the course easy or difficult? And most importantly, is he or she hot? Thankfully, there is a website where you can go to find out all of this information and more. Ratemyprofessor.com allows you to never wonder again because you can compare professors and schools and evaluate their performance based on certain criteria.
Rate My Professor is the highest trafficked free site for researching and rating professors and schools. It has over 1,000,000 ratings of over 1,700,000 professors and colleges around the U.S. and in Canada and the United Kingdom. This website was created in 1999 by a software engineer and is now owned by mtvU, MTV’s college channel. This website not only allows you to search through professors and schools; it allows you to rate them, as well. Rate My Professor embodies the idea of Web 2.0 because it allows the user to become the author, and it is constantly growing and changing with reviews from around the world.
In this evaluation, three main criteria will be used to assess the website. These criteria are broken down into appearance and appeal to audience, content, and functionality and usability. This website offers many different features that are useful to every college student; however, the first impression that everyone gets is based upon the appearance.
Rate My Professor takes first impressions into account by creating an engaging appearance for its audience. The first thing you will notice when visiting the website is the appropriate use of bright colors contrasted against a dark background. These colors are used in order to highlight the important aspects of the website and appeal to the users’ feelings. For instance the main background color on the websites homepage is blue, which symbolizes serenity, clarity, intellect, and precision. Along with the colors, emoticons are used to quickly direct and inform the user. Each professor’s profile is accompanied by a face that describes the overall quality of their performance. For example, a smiley face represents good quality, a frowny face represents bad quality, and an expressionless face means average quality. Images are also used to create a positive atmosphere on the background of the home page where images from all subject matters are displayed in order to appeal to all majors at all schools. However, as you scroll down on the homepage the appearance transitions from a simple well organized web page to a chaotic web page with an overwhelming amount of ads. This chaotic amount of ads can be unfavorable for many users. Fortunately, these ads are only displayed the bottom of the home page, and do not detract from the main purpose of the website. The font of this website is appropriate because it is easy to read and appeals to a younger generation. The font is simple, yet modern, and it has easy navigation because it highlights the important features through bold lettering and harsh contrasts. You may also notice links to social media websites, such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, which allow you to crossover between sites in order to share your findings with classmates, and in turn, promotes the website. The website also appeals to younger generations, like college students, because it uses slang words such as “profs” instead of professors, and features a blog. This website not only has features that create a professional appearance, but the content to go along with it.
The content of Rate My Professor delivers a plethora of relevant information to the user. This is possible because the website allows users to anonymously add reviews about schools and professors; therefore, the content is constantly growing and adapting to changes that occur every school year. The content also speaks to the user because it uses personal pronouns to show that the website is not only created by the user, but is created for the user; for example, when you first open the page, it says that you, the user, can “Find what you’re looking for.” Although, the website is constantly being updated, it may not always contain ratings you desire. Most of the time Teacher’s Assistants and other staff members along with new professors are not listed because they are not full-time positions or are relatively new to the school. This is one of the major flaws of the website and will continue to be a flaw; although, the specific professors that lack reviews will change with time. Despite these exceptions, there are thousands of reviews for professors that judge them on a scale from one to five in three main criteria: helpfulness, clarity, and easiness. These scores are averaged together to assign an overall quality grade for the professor, which is prominently displayed on the review page. There is also an average grade received by previous students and the hotness factor, which is the main purpose of the website. 
Along with professor ratings, the website allows you to view and rate schools and universities. Rate My Professor breaks down the reviews for schools into ten different categories, which average out to form an overall quality grade. The categories for determining that overall quality grade range from reputation of the school, to the quality of the food and Internet service, to the different aspects of student life. The school’s review may not always be accurate due to the lack of sufficient ratings for smaller schools and could be biased for certain criteria. For instance, small trade schools might only have a few positive reviews making it appear more appealing than a major university that contains hundreds of reviews, and the location of a school might be favorable for one person, while it might be unsuitable for another person. Whether you are searching for either professors or schools, this website’s content contains no grammatical errors making it appear flawless and professional, which matches the excellent functionality and easy usability of the website.
Regardless of the browser being used, Rate My Professor functions efficiently and effectively. It is also extremely simple to find from any search engine because it is such a heavily used website. Whether you search “rate”, “find”, or “review my professor”, the website is the first result that appears. Even if you search “professor rater” or “review my teacher”, the website is the first or second result that appears. When the user opens the home page, all of the necessities needed to navigate the website are easily available, and no matter where the user scrolls, those necessities will always be visible. These necessities consist of the main “Search” bar, tabs that direct you to finding and rating professors, plus a “Home” tab that redirects you to the home page. This is also where you find the tab for the blog. The blog offers a wide variety of related content. For example, the blog presents the Top Lists of the Year, which ranks the nation’s top professors based on students’ input. It also displays a miscellaneous section that contains tips on surviving college and studying effectively. The main menu bar, which is always visible at the top of the screen, offers a “Login/Sign Up” button that personalizes the user’s experience on the website. It does this by saving your search history, so you can find professors and schools quicker and with more ease.
Rate My Professor is easy to navigate because you can search a school and a specific department in order to get a list of professors. However, the list does not include the specific courses they teach; it only specifies the department in which they teach. If you happen to know the school or professor’s name, you can search it immediately and find results, but you must spell it correctly in order to actually get the results you desire. No matter how you search for the professor, it always displays the grading criteria in a consistent format. Even though the format is consistent, the reviews may not always be relevant or accurate. For example, a student, who puts little effort into a class and receives a bad grade, might create a negative and inaccurate review of a teacher out of spite. Additionally, someone can create multiple reviews from different computers to inflate or diminish the overall quality rating of a professor. Although these reviews exist, they are easy to point out and disregard because poor reviews normally lack content and are personal rather than factual. Although, those reviews affect the overall rating, the professors, themselves, can make a rebuttal to those reviews and even add videos to the blog that target specific ratings they have received. It is important to be able to identify irrelevant or inaccurate reviews in order to get the best understanding of what a professor will really be like.
Overall, Rate My Professor is visually appealing because it contains appropriate colors and fonts throughout the website to create a user-friendly interface. The amount of relevant and useful reviews makes it the most valuable website to use when exploring the quality of numerous professors and schools. The website is simple and easy to navigate regardless of whether or not you are tech savvy. Although there are some flaws with the website, in general, Rate My Professor is a great resource for any college student seeking more information on professors and schools. By using this website, you can know what your professor will be like, how helpful he or she will be, whether or not you can understand him or her, how difficult he or she makes the course, and whether or not they are hot or not. If you are a college student or future college student, this website will help make your college experience easier and more enjoyable.
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