Liz thinks systems that let students rank professors tend to be skewed, unreliable and nasty … and important. An interesting discussion follows.

It’s a problem. There are lots of reasons to be disappointed in a professor, including some that don’t actually reflect on the teacher as a teacher. Some courses that are unpleasant experiences may yet be worthwhile. So what do you do? The systems seemingly have to be anonymous if they’re to work, although one of Liz’s commenters suggests tying them into social networks. Having them structured more like discussion boards so that students can respond to one another’s comments might help. More metadata about the students might enable a system to note that a particular professor is rated low by science majors but high by humanities majors, low by women but high by mean, and maybe even low by C students but high by A students (??).

The truth is, I don’t really know what might help. [Tags: liz_lawley teaching social_software ]

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