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[aegi3]

Hello.  I'm new to this list so please forgive me if this message is posted twice. I just wrote a message and it seems to have been lost.

Anyway, here is my question. Has anyone ever rated themselves on Rate My Professor? I feel silly about this but I tried it once for fun, and then I got a bit carried away.  My reviews were good (smiley face) save for some negative comments in my first year of teaching.

I was and continue to be extremely anxious about my job (I'm not tenured) and although I received glowing student evals and a wonderful faculty eval last year, this was not always the case.

I was also wondering if you could get in trouble with your institution for doing this.  I noticed that my profile is now "Restricted."  I feel like and idiot and will never do it again.

Has anyone ever done this?

[dismal_sci]

Curious - how many posts did you add for yourself?  I'm trying to imagine what "carried away" means.

I'm the kind of person who would add a post or two for myself but I haven't got around to it yet.

[aegi3]

During my first year I did it a bunch of times (six maybe?) to get my profile up to a smiley face.  After that, I did it maybe two or three times in three years.  This is soooooooo embarrassing.  But now I'm actually worried that I might get "in trouble."

[yemaya]

If you did something like slipping evaluation forms into your institution's evaluation process or doctored their evaluations and got caught, they might have something to say about it.  However, RMP isn't affiliated with your institution, so they can't really do anything about you tinkering with your score.  (If they could even prove it was you messing with your ratings.)  Most people realize that RMP is a joke.  Some institutions may look at ratings for hiring, but if a university was ever to use them to deny someone tenure, they'd be setting themselves up for a lawsuit.  Good or bad, RMP comments are unsubstantiated.

[aegi3]

Thanks for the feeback.  I guess I was concerned because there was one case of a prof getting fired (he was tenured) because he wrote horrible things about many of his colleagues on RMP.  RMP turned him in  (they log addresses) and that was it for him.  I couldn't access the full article on the chronicle b/c I don't subscribe, but that was the main point.  Of course I haven't hurt anyone so I suppose my situation is somewhat different.

[oldfullprof]

Thanks for the feeback.  I guess I was concerned because there was one case of a prof getting fired (he was tenured) because he wrote horrible things about many of his colleagues on RMP.  RMP turned him in  (they log addresses) and that was it for him.  I couldn't access the full article on the chronicle b/c I don't subscribe, but that was the main point.  Of course I haven't hurt anyone so I suppose my situation is somewhat different.

RMP denies that this actually happened.

[athena1]

I've written my own ratings. It tends to be the unhappy students who write them anyway. Might as well skew the thing in your favor. I don't worry about it in the least. I've written numerous positive ratings about friends as well LOL.

[neutralname]

Chill out.  RMP has no integrity, so add as many ratings as you want.  Indeed, I think academics should do what they can to undermine RMP in subversive actions. 

I have taken to adding famous figures to different departments.  I'm considering adding Leonardo Fibonacci to our Math Dept, Immanuel Kant to the Philosophy Dept, Emile Durkheim to Sociology, and of course Gustave Flaubert to French.  Don't worry, they'll get glowing ratings.

Maybe I'll do the same for other schools too.

[oldfullprof]

Update:  RMP says that it was the university's own IT people who identified the person.  It did happen, but it was his own uni that caught it.  The article is on RMP now.

[yemaya]

Update:  RMP says that it was the university's own IT people who identified the person.  It did happen, but it was his own uni that caught it.  The article is on RMP now.

The guy was slandering other professors, not monkeying with his own ratings. (It's hard to imagine that anyone's going to mind if you write nice things about your colleagues.)   Plus, he did it on a university-owned computer.  No wonder the university was a bit tweaked.

Anyone with half a brain knows that every time you post on the internet, there are no guarantes that the content will remain 100% anonymous.  (Much like our students who carry on side conversations during lecture think that they're faceless.)  If you're giving yourself rave reviews on your own time and computer, it's a completely different thing.  University administrations have much better things to do with their time. 

[nofreelunch]

I think you really should be embarrassed. I have received some posts I don't agree with but I would never boost my ratings with false posts.

Have some integrity. We are teachers. (I do give you credit for coming forward and admitting it).

Say what you will, but from what I can see, and from the conversations I have had with students,
RMP is actually not bad at providing fairly accurate information to students (provided there are more than just a few ratings). If you are getting criticized read the criticisms and change if needed.

[merce]

Oh fiddle dee dee No free lunch!

You can't speak of RMP and integrity at once.
RMP is like those horoscope or tarot reading things that stress they are for entertainment purposes only; there is no pretense of objectivity or professionalism involved.

Post for yourself. I wonder how to do it actually. I only have a couple of posts. One good one AWFUL and it's already put me at a negative blue man sad face. I know exactly who wrote it too, poor girl. 

[keystonegal]

Well ... I've never posted for me, but I did help out a couple of new faculty members by saying some glowing things about them on RMP ... what I said was true and based on formal observations.

Don't feel badly about rating yourself, in fact, it may help students come into your class with a positive bias towards you. For that, RMP may actually have a real benefit.

[marcus_welby]

You really should be confident enough about your own abilities as an academic to not have to engage in this kind of behaviour.

A casual review of RMP suggests some students provide multiple ratings of professors, good and bad.  There are also ratings/comments that appear to come from other colleagues.  And, of course, we now know there are people who rate themselves.

I think you would do better to ignore RMP than to enage in this kind of sophomoric behaviour.

 

[hal2001]

I have to agree that RMP may be fun but likely never caries much weight - at schools where teaching counts, they have better and more serious ways of assessing teaching quality; and in many environments, teaching really does not come into play in evaluation of faculty performance.