Affordances and negotiations of the digital reputation society: a case study of RateMyProfessors.com

Yoon, Kyong

doi:10.1080/10304312.2014.968525

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…University SET functions to provide formative feedback about teaching to professors and university administrators (Benton & Cashin, 2014). Ratings for hotness and difficulty, however, suggest a very different purpose for RMP-one that places a premium on easy grades rather than learning (Yoon, 2015). That the demographic patterns related to university SET did not extend to attitudes toward RMP in this sample suggests that those who evaluate professors on RMP do not reflect those professors' overall population of students.…”

Section: Rmp Use Belief and Participant Demographicsmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Research findings regarding RMP's former easiness, helpfulness, clarity, and hotness scores also advance reasons for concern regarding its validity. Easy professors, for example, receive higher quality scores (Rizvi, 2015;Rosen 2018) and are more likely to have their classes recommended to others (Yoon, 2015). Moreover, "hot" professors receive higher clarity, helpfulness, and overall quality scores than their "not hot" peers (Felton et al, 2004;Riniolo et al, 2006;Rosen, 2018;Theyson, 2015).…”

Section: Rmp's Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, "hot" professors receive higher clarity, helpfulness, and overall quality scores than their "not hot" peers (Felton et al, 2004;Riniolo et al, 2006;Rosen, 2018;Theyson, 2015). These findings have led many to question if RMP evaluations represent anything related to student learning given that they seem to place higher importance on easiness and attractiveness than on being challenged to learn and grow (e.g., Yoon, 2015). Some assert that RMP's evaluations represent student consumerism; moreover, the website serves as a destination for students who wish to shop for professors and a degree (Davison & Price, 2009).…”

Section: Rmp's Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Ratemyprofessors.com and University Student Evaluations of Teaching on Students’ Course Decision-Making and Self-Efficacy

Boswell

2020

hlrc

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This study investigated effects of Ratemyprofessors.com and university student evaluations of teaching on students’ course decision making and self-efficacy in an ethnically diverse undergraduate sample. It also investigated if these effects were impacted by evaluation positivity. Additionally, the study explored if attitudes toward Ratemyprofessors.com was related to student gender, college class, and age. Participants were 73 undergraduates who were exposed to positive and negative evaluations about fictitious professors; participants were informed that the evaluations originated from RMP or university student evaluations of teaching. Evaluation positivity but not type influenced students’ intention to enroll in the professor’s course, but not how seriously they would consider the feedback. Evaluation positivity also influenced self-efficacy. Beliefs about and use of Ratemyprofessors.com were not related to student gender, college class, or age. Implications for student course decision making and self-efficacy for university students, faculty, and administrators are discussed.

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Section: Rmp Use Belief and Participant Demographicsmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Rmp's Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rmp's Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Ratemyprofessors.com and University Student Evaluations of Teaching on Students’ Course Decision-Making and Self-Efficacy

Boswell

2020

hlrc

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“…It is promised that my digital utterance will be amplified -"the world" will come to "know" what this particular insitution is like. This could be described as a universe of reputation, as an extension to previous work on the "digital 'reputation' economy" (Hearn, 2010) and the "digital reputation society" (Yoon, 2015). The evaluator becomes, in the production of an evaluation, a "'prosumer' of data related to the reputation of others", to be consumed by others (Yoon, 2015, p. 109).…”

Section: Digital Voice: a Conceptmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Ontological Plurality of Digital Voice: A Schizoanalysis of Rate My Professors and Rate My Teachers

Mayes

2018

Principles of Transversality in Globalization and Education

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Online evaluations (like Rate My Professors and Rate My Teachers) have been celebrated as forming wider publics and modes of accountability beyond the institution, and critiqued as reinforcing consumeristic pedagogical relations. This chapter takes up the websites Rate My Professors and Rate My Teachers as empirical entry points to a conceptual discussion, after Félix Guattari, of the ontological plurality of digital voice, and its associated refrains and universes of reference. I turn attention from analysis of the effects of these digitized student evaluations to the moment of their formation -for example, when a student's finger clicks on a particular star rating. Refusing to separate human bodies from objects, environment and affects, inside from outside, 'real' from 'digital', I consider how emerging modes of online student evaluations of teaching shift individual and collective relations to 'expression' and subjectivity. This chapter also explores the transversal possibilities of de-subjectification offered in when the digital is understood as intercesseur: intersection/ intercession.

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“…As Delloracas argues, reputation mechanisms enable websites and online platforms to build trust between peers within online networks (e.g., buyers and sellers on eBay), by facilitating transactions through feedback mechanisms such as ratings (Delloracas, 2006). Yoon (2015) develops this idea more broadly, arguing that reputation systems operate as a social, technological and cultural form of the digital reputation society, whereby web users become co-producers of spaces in which reputation plays an important role in ranking and rating schemes on the web. For Scott and Orlikowski, these kinds of web-based evaluation schemes constitute a socio-technical form of knowledge production (2012), meaning that users and the technical website infrastructure interact to generate knowledge about the options on offer, which both presupposes and produces reputation.…”

Section: Choice and Web Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technologies of choice: The shaping of choice on the World Wide Web

Graham¹

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Nowadays, choice is a ubiquitous aspect of everyday life. The emergence of the web has contributed to this explosion of choice, providing a seemingly endless landscape of goods and services to choose from. Whilst choice is held to be fundamental to individual freedom, wellbeing and self-identity, we currently have little understanding about how websites shape or govern choice, and what this might mean for individuals and society. This thesis undertakes a foundational examination of how choice is shaped in online spaces with respect to the design features and architecture of websites. Websites, or parts thereof, that are designed to enable users to navigate choice and compare between options to make decisions, are defined in this study as 'Technologies of Choice' (ToC).In undertaking the study, a phased, mixed methods approach was used. Drawing on several fields of literature, including science and technology studies, Foucaultian social theory, current and emerging social perspectives of choice, and Internet studies, a conceptual framework was developed for examining how choice is constructed and governed on the web. The ToC conceptual framework has four over-arching dimensions: 'Having Choice', 'Facilitating Choice', 'Knowledge Production', and 'Configuring Users'. The conceptual framework was then elaborated through an analysis of websites, resulting in 12 'sub-dimensions' and 56 'features'. The 12 sub-dimensions categorise sets of ToC features that shape choice in particular ways, for example, the 'scale' at which choice is provided or the different 'characteristics of commensurability' that make comparisons possible.Following this, the resulting conceptual framework was applied as an analytical tool to categorise 500 top-ranking websites, using content analysis. Of these 500 websites, 193 (or 39%) were identified as 'ToC websites'. The features of these 193 websites were analysed using descriptive statistics, multiple correspondence analysis, and hierarchical clustering, in order to determine the scale and patterns of distribution of ToC on the web, including whether there are broader 'types' of ToC that shape choice differently. ToC are found to be widespread on the web, constituting a kind of 'infrastructure of modernity'. Whilst ToC are predominantly observed in the commercial settings of recreational services and personal goods, the thesis shows that they are also found in other contexts, including consumer information, health and social care, and in different countries. Although the choice-making literature focuses on comparisons between 'products', the study finds that ToC more commonly enable comparisons between private services (67% of ToC sites) than private goods (42% of ToC sites). Similarly, choice is not always global: a third of ToC websites scale down the options on offer, for example to a particular brand (e.g. Virgin Media or BMW).Despite the ubiquity of ToC, the thesis finds diversity in their design. ToC features are not deployed uniformly on the web: some features are widely used (...

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Affordances and negotiations of the digital reputation society: a case study of RateMyProfessors.com

Cited by 3 publications

References 25 publications

Effects of Ratemyprofessors.com and University Student Evaluations of Teaching on Students’ Course Decision-Making and Self-Efficacy

Effects of Ratemyprofessors.com and University Student Evaluations of Teaching on Students’ Course Decision-Making and Self-Efficacy

The Ontological Plurality of Digital Voice: A Schizoanalysis of Rate My Professors and Rate My Teachers

Technologies of choice: The shaping of choice on the World Wide Web

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