Also in Inside Higher Ed, a report on a study done by James Felton, a professor at Central Michigan University, finds that there is a correlation between “hotness” and “quality” on the dubious web site Ratemyprofessor.com:
As far as students — or whoever is rating professors on the open Rate My Professor site — are concerned, nothing predicts a quality instructor like hotness.
Felton found a positive correlation of 0.64 (0.00 means there is no correlaton whatsoever, and 1.0 describes a perfectly linear relationship) between the “hotness� and “quality� — quality is a composite of “helpfulness� and “clarity� — ratings on the site. “Hotness� is determined by evaluators choosing “hot� or “not hot,� with each click counting as either +1 or -1. “Quality� is on a simple 1-5 scale. (Felton may be an exception on the correlation — while he doesn’t get any hotness points from RateMyProfessors, he does well on quality.)
I wonder if, by teaching online, I can somehow increase my hotness factor….