Closing the Feedback Loop
Wired has a story about the influence of the RateMyProfessors web site. The site's popularity causes embarrassment and declining enrollment for profs with bad ratings.
Colleges have had ratings systems for years, but it was never clear from the student's perspective that these resulted in any kind of action. Sites like RateMyProfessors introduce transparency to the process. By basing enrollment decisions on this information students add real weight to their feedback. Now their feedback cannot be ignored.
Some professors, probably the bad ones, aren't happy about their new informed, empowered customers -- I mean students. They aren't the only ones. The WSJ reports on doctors resorting to lawsuits to remove negative reviews from the internet. It seems that in order to thrive in the age of internet transparency many professions will have to learn skills that they haven't traditionally needed, such as marketing and customer service.
Perhaps some academics will have to concentrate more on returning graded homework on time and less on their patent and publishing portfolios. Perhaps my doctor won't leave me cooling my heels in his waiting room quite so long. Can this be a bad thing?
I had one doctor that would keep me waiting for no less than an hour even when I showed up half an hour late just to avoid it. It only got worse as her husband was a dentists and shared the same office so instead of nice relaxing elevator music - I got to sit and wait to the sound of drilling. Needless to say I didn't stay long but a ratemydoctor site would have been nice to visit before hand.
By John on October 19th, 2005 at 5:00 pm