Abstract
The use and abuse of course and lecturer rating websites such as RateMyProfessors.com™ is a highly relevant topic for universities’ evaluation and assessment policies and practice. However, only a few studies have paid attention to the actual influence of teaching evaluation websites on the students themselves—that is, their perceptions of a certain course and their course choice intention at university. Findings point to the fact that positive comments on the website about professors improve students’ evaluations. However, professor evaluation websites contain two types of information: single student comments and average ratings. Research on exemplification effects has shown that single cases often have a stronger influence on recipients than more valid base rate information. We test this assumption in an experiment (n = 126) using a professor evaluation website stimulus. Results show that single comments strongly influence opinions and course choice intentions but that they are moderated by the valence of the average rating.
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Notes
The terms “rating” and “evaluation” have been subject to a discussion about the degree of interpretation that differentiates both of these constructs (see Otto et al. 2008). As we do not focus on the accuracy of websites like RateMyProfessors.com™, we keep the discussion in mind but have decided to use both terms interchangeably.
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All authors are assistant researchers at the Institute for Communication Studies and Media Research at LMU Munich.
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Scherr, S., Müller, P. & Fast, V. Single comments or average ratings: which elements of RateMyProfessors.com™ shape university students’ judgments and course choice intentions?. Educ Asse Eval Acc 25, 131–141 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-013-9164-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-013-9164-z