Students who want to learn about a professor before taking his or her class have few options. If you don’t know someone who has taken the professor’s class, or have time to speak with the professor beforehand, you have to cross your fingers and hope the teacher is who you’re looking for.

In the last few years, some college students with Web expertise have given the rest of us another option. Web sites like RateMyProfesssors.com and TeacherReviews.com provide anonymous evaluations of teachers from hundreds of schools, including NIU.

“I got the idea for the site in December of 1998 after taking a class with a particularly dastardly professor who routinely left students in tears and genuinely seemed to enjoy it,” said John Swapceinski, founder of RateMyProfessors.com. “None of my friends warned me about her ahead of time, and later I thought to myself, ‘If only there was a Web site.’”

Swapceinski started the site in May of 1999 as he graduated from San Jose State University in California. Since its launch, the site has collected nearly 230,000 reviews of professors at 1,777 schools. Swapceinski said the site is getting more than 100,000 visitors per month.

Web sites like RateMyProfessors.com may be popular, but are they helpful?

“It’s really difficult to tell what the ratings mean and what the people who rated…were thinking,” said Brian Thornton, associate professor of communication. He thinks the site might not provide a fair evaluation for every teacher.

“The difficult thing about teaching is that sometimes you have to assume the role of the drill sergeant,” Thornton said. “And a lot of times, if you were to go into the Army and ask the privates what they think of the drill sergeant they probably wouldn’t think too highly of them.”

For some students like Mike Kwain, a junior history major, the Web sites aren’t a true reflection of teachers.

“Obviously, it’s not foolproof,” he said. “People could mess around and write something bad because they didn’t like the teacher as a person, not because of their teaching tactics.”

Sophomore biology major Eric Althoff doesn’t think that negative reviews are a problem, however.

“I think you might be able to tell who’s just being stupid,” Althoff said. “Most people are going to say if they like the teacher, or if they have some reason for not liking him they’ll give good reasons.”

Thornton isn’t the only professor who thinks sites like these can be misleading.

“I’ve gotten quite a few angry e-mails from professors over the years, many threatening legal action,” Swapceinski said. “Nothing has come of it yet.”

In fact, some professors seem to favor the idea.

“Surprisingly, there are several professors who actually link to my site from their own Web pages,” Swapceinski said.

Web sites might be a mixed blessing when it comes to learning about teachers, but there are some tried-and-true methods of finding the best instructor.

“I think, really, the best way for a student to know about a teacher is to go and watch their class,” Thornton said.