  University students routinely use the tools provided by online course ranking
forums to share and discuss their satisfaction with the quality of instruction
and content in a wide variety of courses. Student perception of the efficacy of
pedagogies employed in a course is a reflection of a multitude of decisions by
professors, instructional designers and university administrators. This
complexity has motivated a large body of research on the utility, reliability,
and behavioral correlates of course rankings. There is, however, little
investigation of the (potential) implicit student bias on these forums towards
desirable course outcomes at the institution level. To that end, we examine the
connection between course outcomes (student-reported GPA) and the overall
ranking of the primary course instructor, as well as rating disparity by nature
of course outcomes, based on data from two popular academic rating forums. Our
experiments with ranking data about over ten thousand courses taught at
Virginia Tech and its 25 SCHEV-approved peer institutions indicate that there
is a discernible albeit complex bias towards course outcomes in the professor
ratings registered by students.
