In my second post I discovered that a lack of knowledge about social media, professional introversion, working environment restrictions and blurring between personal and private lives were the four significant factors behind the reasons behind the slow adoption of social media with professors at universities. I also highlighted that a tipping point is not on the horizon where professors would have been forced to adopt social media in their teaching, but rather there are certain chunks of the social media spectrum, such as twitter that are being more readily adopted. In this blog post I will investigate one particular platform called ratemyprofessor.com which appears to have the mysterious power to make professors respond to student’s ratings. I will also highlight some of the better ways in which social media can be used responsibly and usefully by professors.
www.Ratemyprofessor.com is actually run by MTV networks which may explain its success at drawing in numerous reviews of professors at universities in the US and now the UK. The platform is extremely potent at delivering a healthy dose of rather personal exploitations about professors, but crucially the reviews are now being taken very seriously. The journal ‘Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education’ found that “these rating could actually aid in the hiring and promotion of university professors in the future” and more worryingly, “Students who post ratings may be regarded as experts who have had significant experience with the professors.” The problem is that there is no way of ever knowing whether the review is accurate or if the student just has a personal distaste to the professor.
For many years professors have hidden behind the corporate logo of universities which has offered them some online protection, but www.ratemyprofessor.com has bonded a direct link between student and professor with the consequence of leaving their personal brand open. Conversations about professor’s skills will happen with or without their input so the choice to become involved was removed. Negative reviews may mean less people taking their classes and more importantly may dry up funding for research and reduce their worth as academics, so protecting their personal brand on this platform has become very important.
Whether or not posting replies and video interviews to students through www.ratemyprofessor.com is a good strategy or not; it does show that the attack on their personal brand has been taken seriously and it appears that some professors are becoming defensive and may now take further steps to strengthen their brand both offline and now online. Obviously this is a choice, but it would be interesting to see if careful and sensitive use of social media technologies would improve not only professor ratings but also impact positively upon their personal brand.
Here are just a few examples of how social media could be adopted by professors. Micro blogging platforms such as twitter seem an ideal way to communicate not only with students, but also with fellow professors to collaborate and bounce ideas. Professional platforms such LinkedIn are powerful ways to broadcast achievements and could help to mediate negative reviews on Ratemyprofessor whilst finding new contacts. Personal blogs (if used carefully) could be used to host information about classes and to encourage constructive feedback, become more transparent and test ideas with a greater audience. Lectures could be recorded as podcasts and broadcast through a blog. There is also the potential to use platforms such as Ning to create dedicated communities with the sole purpose for teaching materials and conversations. A professor at Auburn University created a Ning network which she claimed “transformed her classroom by tearing down the walls a bit”, so it’s clear that there are some really low hanging fruit to be picked.
I am overall rather pleased that over the course of my research I found no universal tipping point for professors within social media as those forced into conversations won’t be able to add as much to conversations as those who are genuinely interested. Apart from rating sites like www.ratemyprofessor.com my research over the last week has largely shown that there aren’t huge consequences for not adopting social media, but rather there are plenty of opportunities that are being missed. There will come a time when professors need to integrate some form of social media into research and teaching but I now think this will be an extremely slow and phased process.
