How Business Students Use Online Faculty Evaluations and Business Faculty’s Perception of Their Students’ Usage

Abstract

Student evaluations are an important aspect of business pedagogy. Social media-based evaluations, such as RateMyProfessors.com, empower students to evaluate faculty anonymously. A perusal of the literature indicates little to no prior research conducted on faculty perceptions of student usage of online evaluations. We posit that business students embody unique characteristics that influence their usage. We examine whether business students use RateMyProfessors.com in an ethical manner (i.e., honestly and without grade-related bias) and moderately (i.e., not only to rant or rave), whether gender differences exist in evaluations, and how confident students are in their evaluative abilities. We also posit that business faculty will understand how their students use online faculty evaluations. We summarize and discuss the empirical analysis of the hypotheses.