Rate My Professor (CHL instructor)

[snatchel]

I just finished doing writeups for all my professors from last semester.. gave me an idea. For anyone who has not used ratemyprofessor.com, it's a way to find out what kind of professor someone is before taking their class.. and it's anonymous. We need one for TX CHL Instructors. I would have definately gone another route had I known better beforehand. One of you computer guru's make one! lol

[Apophis]

Do you think there would be enough people taking the class to give a considerable amount of votes?

What are the statistics of how many attend a CHL class per week/month/year?

If there would be enough, that would be a pretty neat idea. :D

[snatchel]

Honestly, I have no idea on any of those. I think it could be worth it though. Look- say that your an instructor. You are trying to build your reputation as being an outstanding CHL instructor, but all you can really say is, "well.. do you know suchandsuch? he would reccomend me I think." All of it is word of mouth for the most part, a website would just pool all of it together under one roof so you can see what a bigger pool of folks think about a particular instructor. No doubt this woudln't be an overnight thing... but it has potential. Maybe I am giving one of the programmers on here a good idea to expand on themselves and make MILLIONS :)

[snatchel]

Found some numbers on DPS website.

102,000 issued CHL's for calendar year 2010 (rounded)
That makes a completely crude avg of 8,500 issued a month.

This isn't including folks that were denied after taking the class.

There are approximately 2,000 instructors to choose from, divided up over 254 (if memory serves) counties. Another crude average of 8 instructors per county to choose from.. imagine how nice it would be to see what everyone had to say about the instructor they used from their county.

[WildBill]

Found some numbers on DPS website.

102,000 issued CHL's for calendar year 2010 (rounded)
That makes a completely crude avg of 8,500 issued a month.

This isn't including folks that were denied after taking the class.

There are approximately 2,000 instructors to choose from, divided up over 254 (if memory serves) counties. Another crude average of 8 instructors per county to choose from.. imagine how nice it would be to see what everyone had to say about the instructor they used from their county.

There are many recommendations for instructors on the forum. My professor Tom Estep [ElGato] in Texas City has many good recomendations as well as my personal endorsement.

[AJ80]

I think a smart phone app would be cool.

I've never made a smart phone app before, but I recently downloaded the Android SDK and am starting to look at what it would take to develope android apps.

[Kythas]

The problem with this is like most surveys - the majority of people who take the time to complete the survey do so because they are unhappy with the product or service. This may be a very small percentage of the people who actually utilize said product or service, but if they're the only ones that fill out the survey, then the product or service will appear to have generally bad reviews.

I work with the help desk industry where it's normal for clients to be surveyed on their experience (I set up many of these surveys). The typical response rate for surveys is appx 2-4%, and typically 60% are negative.

Think about it - if you're in a restaurant and receive incredibly poor service, I'll bet you're going to notify the manager. However, if you receive average or even above average service, do you also let the manager know? Even if your service was exceptional, how many times have you told the manager how great it was? I'll bet the times you complain about poor service far outweigh the times you've ever complimented someone on great service.

Sites such as this do the same thing. Yes, there are a small percentage of people who will conscientiously review all their professors. However, the vast majority only fill out these reviews because they're upset that they didn't get the grade they wanted or just generally didn't like the professor.

I'll bet if a site were set up to rate CHL instructors it would garner the same response.

I'm not saying there's no merit to a site such as this. It would be a great way to identify the instructors who are only CHL mills. I'll bet, though, that even great instructors like Crossfire (who was mine) hasn't had 100% of her students think she was a good instructor. Those are the people who are most likely to fill out these reviews.

[AJ80]

I almost always give a positive review on surveys I take. Although 99% of those surveys are for Chick-fil-a and there is an incentive in the form of a free chicken sandwich.

I see your point though.