Mason's Own Course Rating System

By Broadside Staff Writer Ryan Dempsey

I often wonder how many services George Mason University provides that students are unaware of. Some of the services do not even have an advertising plan established to reach out to students. One of these services that many students don’t know about is ratings.gmu.edu.

At the end of every semester, students are asked to fill out course evaluations about their professors. Kris Smith, associate provost of institutional research and reporting, stated that these evaluation scores are used to make course improvements and use “the results along with other information to evaluate the effectiveness of a faculty member.” Additionally, Smith states that “students used the results to aid in course selection during the registration process.”

But how are students supposed to use the results to aid in registration if there is no form of advertisement to the student body? I never would have heard about ratings.gmu.edu if it weren’t for my English professor during my freshman year. Smith stated that “the Provost has sent e-mails to students encouraging their participation [in course evaluations] and has referenced the website.” While I am not saying that e-mails have not been sent, I have been at Mason for three years and never once received any notification about this website from any department at Mason.

Now, when I try to spread the knowledge, everyone I talk to about the website will give me a weird face and say something to the effect of, “What are you talking about?” When talking to other students, I have found that most people who care enough to find out which professors are “great” or “crappy” to take a class with use ratemyprofessor.com. I tried using ratemyprofessor.com, but ended up taking the advice of a student who praised a professor, only to find the review horribly wrong.

Ratings.gmu.edu is the best way to find out information on which professors to consider taking because the website compares the professor’s averages to the others in the department, division and university at large. Additionally, a student’s personal comments are not shared which limits students from misleading others like my ratemyprofessor.com incident. Smith however, disagrees. “A drawback to providing the information on the web is that individuals may put too much emphasis on the survey results, thereby drawing erroneous conclusions about a course and/or faculty member based on a limited number of questions.”

Whether students use ratings.gmu.edu for specific professor choices or to gain insight on general information is not what’s important. Rather, if information like this is in fact available for the student body, then the university needs to be promoting it in a more effective manner.