Online Course Reviews Do/ Do Not Affect UMD Students When Registering For Classes

CourseEvalUM provides results only for courses where 70% of students in the class participated in the evaluation.

-Here I will talk about how the University of Maryland has its own course evaluation system to collect data from students and uses specific criteria for the reviews they include on the site. These have more well rounded reviews due to the reminders from the University.

Insert Video here.

Questions:

-How do online professor and course reviews affect your decision when signing up for classes?

- What has been your experience with a professor and very strong reviews online?

-What sites  do you most frequently use for finding reviews for courses and professors?

-How often do you research a professor’s reviews?

OurUMD, Koofers, and RateMyProfessor among popular third party sites where students can submit reviews for their professors

-discuss how these sites are more likely to present a large amount of negative reviews of professors as the reviews are more questionable. No incentives, such as avoiding reminder emails from the University, which can result in more people looking to voice their negative views

Studies show positive reviews reflect positive correlation to student’s academic success

-I have a study that addresses student reviews and will discuss the findings here

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0260293980230207

Student evaluation practices have changed over time
-Here I will address research on how Student Evaluation of College Teachings has changed over time in a time line type info graphic
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3200/CTCH.52.4.134-141

Additionally, I have found the following post from a statistics professor at Berkley which discusses how numerical evaluations of professors can often misrepresent the actual effectiveness of a professor, rather they often are impacted by factors such as ethnicity, gender and attractiveness.  I plan to incorporate this discussion of the different types of reviews that are conducted and how the method can affect the authenticity of the results and thus how helpful the reviews are for future students.

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2013/10/14/do-student-evaluations-measure-teaching-effectiveness/