May 03 2007
Reviews and Ratings – is this going too far?
Over in the U.S. they seem to have an active culture of reviewing businesses, be it restaurants, tradesmen, retail outlets and the like.
Popular sites such as Yelp, Judy’s book and recently their Yellow Pages joined the review market (any one for a roach in their food?)
Yesterday, Valerie Koo from Enterprise wrote a post about reviews, referrals and ramblings – how the public can rate your business which started with
“In today’s environment, the customer certainly reigns supreme. And their opinion matters more than ever before. Not just as feedback for you to improve your products and services, but also in internet reviews, blog posts, and forums, where a good experience – or bad one – is there for the whole world to read.“
Very true. One only has to read Duncan’s frustrated post about Retravision Bunbury to see how we like to air our grievances.
Valerie goes on to mention Ebay, Amazon and Rave About It as examples of how we are embracing the “rating” culture.
She also adds
“I think reviews and referrals are great. I certainly do a lot of research this way before I make a major purchase. But the problem is that most reviews are anonymous. Sure, the reviewer uses a screen name but there is no simple way to know whether the reviewer is bona fide, a cranky former employee of a competitor playing dirty.”
How much emphasis would you place on a business review? What if you could see how many reviews a reviewer had given, would that increase their importance? What if reviews were weighted, giving frequent reviewers more priority?
Rating Australian Teachers
But I wonder if the following is taking the concept too far.
The SMH has an article today about the furore being caused by a website (un-named in the article) called Rate My Teachers whereby Australian students can visit and anonymously rate and review their teachers and principals. There are hundreds of Aussie schools listed with one Melbourne (private) school leading the pack. This is one review I found
“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Obviously he couldn’t. Unfortunately, he can’t really teach either. IMHO he’s just not interested in teaching or in his students – and it really shows. “
Obviously, it would be very hurtful as a teacher to have to read comments like this about yourself. Generally, a business is the sum of all its employees, but this is personal.
The comments aren’t all bad, actually surprisingly balanced
“Nice bloke, knows alot about his sport. Very happy enthusiastic. Great guy to have a chat too. Knows how to handle a class. Students respect him.”
“The best english teacher I never had…. Unfortunatly =(“
Apparently, as the website is hosted in the US, the best the NSW Education Department can do is block access from schools.
The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the Federal Government should block access to “scurrilous American websites”.
Somehow, I can’t see the public accepting that.
My thought is that you’re not going to stop kids rubbishing their teachers, but having it in one centralised location draws a lot of attention. There are strict rules – you would just hope these are stringently enforced.
What do you think? As a parent, would you place any importance on the comments placed there? Would you bother going to the site? Could it be used as a way of vetting schools prior to sending a student? Could principals or teachers use this information for improving performance? Do you think individual feedback is just plain wrong?
11 Responses to “Reviews and Ratings – is this going too far?”
Hmm, maybe it is something we need to have? Students don’t really have much of a voice, no matter what people say, and when they complain about someones teaching they are either ignored or told something will happen, which it never does. Whats so wrong with it? Students are the only people that really know what goes on in the class, so giving them a voice is the only one for everyone else to know. And if teachers teach well, then they have nothing to fear.
The sites rules and strictly enforced, but there are sometimes lapses. All the comments are moderated by students or parents, and they are only human. Thats why the site encourges its visiters to “flag” any comment they think breaks the rules, and it will be re-reviewed. So its not that bad after all really 😉
Hi Student
You make a very valid point from a student’s perspective. I’ve known teachers who come across as wonderful to the parents, but you get a whole different perspective from the kids – so you ARE the best to know what goes on in the classroom.
I guess my concern is that there could be a tendency for kids to be unduly harsh on a teacher because of, say, a personal conflict, but I guess if other students are motivated to write positive comments then it’s all relative.
You obviously have experience with the site – do you find many parents get involved?
“The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the Federal Government should block access to “scurrilous American websites”.”
Ah, when will the ‘older’ generation learn. Blocking websites is never a solution to anything because the users will always find another way to post the content, especially given how tech-savvy the current and upcoming generations are and will be. Fix the problem at its root, and embrace technology as a tool, rather than an annoyance and encumberance. It won’t go away anytime soon.
Scarily enough, I wouldn’t put it past the state or federal governments to block websites state/country-wide, especially with the equally-outdated powerful groups they try to appease. They’ve already set a precedent by blocking websites at school (and they all use crappy blocking software that blocks proxy-style sites, including freetranslation.com because you can ‘translate’ a site to bypass the filters, but not google’s cache or archive.org – go figure).
The comments you quoted aren’t derogatory comments or threats (e.g. my teacher’s a fat bastard who smells – feel free to remove if you want to, I tried to make it as ‘nice’ as possible), they’re legitimate comments. Ok, maybe there will be a few derogatory ones that slip through, but on the whole, students wanted a way to speak out and they’ve found it. How else are they to speak out? I’ve had some bad teachers before, so I can relate, but I never got into the bitch about people thing.
Isn’t the internet evil, the world was so much better without it 😛
WP obviously didn’t like my humour – it stripped out the fake HTML-style tags!
Yes, the last line was scarasm.
So, what’s next? My Space, Face Book, You Tube ????????
Teachers are a vital cog in the development of our children. Yes, it is an underpaid, demanding and often stressful profession but so what? Teachers should be subject to the same scrutiny, criticism, praise etc as everybody else.
It’s bad enough that the various sports codes ban their registered members from criticising officials, do we now go a step further and gag the kids.
The kids are the ones who will be passing the laws in the near future people so lets at least give them the right to free speech.
Didn’t I hear something about free speech last Anzac Day….? I think I did.
Hi Sam and FB
I hear from my kids that school’s attempts to block various sites are incredibly ineffective – I guess it makes them feel more secure and “responsible”.
I appreciate what you’re saying about kids having a place to “speak out”
Thanks for stopping by
Nice post – i give it 4 out of 5.
The problem with the ratings system is it is all subjective. A teacher that is strict is going to score lower in many cases than one that has no control and lets students do what they like. Certainly at the time i was student a million years ago i would have rated some teachers lower and most of them in the end taught me more than i learnt from who would have been higher.
Hehe – so good of you to start with a rating 😉
I just wonder if we don’t give kids enough credit, in this regard?
I remember having a favourite history teacher who took a term off (and history was never my favourite subject). In her place we got a humourless, structured disciplinarian (way past what we thought should have been her retirement age which probably meant she was about 50)!
I didn’t like her much personally, but I learned so much and found a respect for (Australian) history that I never had – and for the teacher herself.
Of course, that was “a million years ago” too
Really interesting post, Meg. There are a few similar sites in the U.S. and Canada to rate physicians: ratemydoctor.net and ratemds.com. It must be very discouraging for beleaguered doctors and teachers to be subjected to public report cards, mostly rated anonymously, and most tending to be negative, with no opportunity to respond to the criticisms. I’m glad they don’t have a site for my profession …. yet!
As a teacher I am quite comfortable with this type of thing. Students will rate us anyway whether it is online or elsewhere. As with anything in society there is a beneficial way to do things and a destructive way. We can only hope that this sort of site doesn’t degenerate into the latter.
Hi Sharon
I didn’t realise there were specific sites for doctors too. It would be tough to have to read unjustified criticism.
Hey Coach
Thanks for giving a teacher’s perspective. (I actually have a graduate diploma in teaching (primary), but have never taught formally). Interesting for you to say you’re comfortable with it – do you think yours would be the minority opinion? I do agree that it could be beneficial if done correctly.
By the way, did YOU have any feedback on the site?