"He will crush you like an academic ninja!": Exploring teacher ratings on ratemyprofessors.com

This study examines students' motives for use and perceptions of the web site http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/, one of the main sites that allow students to post anonymous ratings of college professors in the United States and Canada. The contents of comments posted to the web site are examined for relationships to numerical ratings on the site and motivations expressed by students for participating in the rating process. Qualitative (focus group interviews) and quantitative (content analysis) investigations are presented. Students' motives for accessing Ratemyprofessors.com include information seeking, convenience, and interpersonal utility. As regards teacher ratings, the results indicate that students were primarily concerned with issues such as instructor competence and the classroom experience.