Andrew Fann Professor Arnold HONR-1104-H04 8 November 2011 My previous understanding of a website such as ratemyprofessors.

com, was that for the most part it was a very reliable source and one of the only ones you could use in college to get an idea about what to expect from a teacher. I thought that most of the post on the website sounded reasonable and that it was trustworthy source. Yes, some of the post and ratings were totally different than the majority of the other posts, but those seemed to be isolated instances and meant little to my decision on whether a teacher was good or not. The two articles did raise some good questions about the validity of rating websites. It is clear that there are some issues with these websites, but I think that even though some posts may be totally false, most of the posts are still reliable. They still give you a good idea about the professors overall teaching ratings. In the future, I will be sure to examine and watch out for posts that may be completely wrong especially if I had one of the professors someone else had and can tell whether what they said was factual or not. What I found most interesting about the articles, in particular was the fact that professors have deliberately took time out of their day to go online and write negative posts and ratings about their colleagues. That seems to be a childish thing to do for anyone, especially a college professor. I agree with the conclusions in the A Fractal Thinker Looks At Student Ratings, in particular part about how for the most part student ratings are a valid way of assessing student satisfaction. This to me means that rating

websites such as ratemyprofessors.com are valid to a point and trustworthy, as long as you are able to sort through the posts that are more factual than others.