STUDENTS may be reluctant to speak up in class, but they are more than happy to express their views of their teachers anonymously online. That provides a potentially useful pool of data. With assistance from Enrico Bertini and Cristian Felix of New York University, The Economist has analysed 1,289,407 reviews of 1,066 professors and lecturers in New York state.
Most of the commentary is innocuous: professors are praised for their brilliance and generosity, and admonished for being boring or tough graders: “This prof makes u work your butt off but u still won’t get an A”. But the outliers are startling. One student complained of a professor who resembled “one of those worm guys who is always drinkin coffee” from the film “Men in Black”. More flatteringly, an adoring student termed her teacher “a philosophy love-God”, and remarked that her life’s goal was to “become the mother of his million intellectual babies”.
Students assign grades based on three criteria: “helpfulness”, “clarity” and “easiness” (the diligence and brainpower of the teachers apparently count as less...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1JkOOrN
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