Slashdot Mirror
TeacherReviews.com Forced Offline
MrCawfee writes "Dylan Greene's site Teacher Reviews which allows students to post reviews of their professors. The site was taken down because a professor complained about comments made against him, and threatened to sue. Here is an exerpt from his blog: 'Yesterday and tonight I talked with a professor who was extremely upset with what written about him on TeacherReviews. He had several inappropriate reviews that made unfounded accusations and inappropriate untruthful remarks such as calling him "Bipolar Paranoid Schitzophrenic."' You can read his blog here."
Once profs have tenure their incentive to teach better is dramatically reduced. If they can get more grants doing research with no chance of being fired for imcompentent teaching then you can believe the grants will come first.
This becomes especially easy if the students can't voice their discretions publically. I don't think a single university publically displays the stats of student reviews after a semester with a prof. The profs can complain all they want but in the long run it's the students who will suffer.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I have some real sympathy for being able to "shop" online to get info about courses and teachers. But I'm a college prof myself, and have sat on a number of personnel committees, and have read a *lot* of student comments over the years. Many of those comments - perhaps most - are intelligent, or plausible, or reasonable expressions of feelings. Sometimes more than one of these. But sometimes they are simply irresponsible - 'get another career,' 'you shouldn't be allowed to teach anyone, anywere,'and sadly, a lot of 'you #@$$!, get #%&*$#.' Insults, psychiatric diagnoses, speculations about home life - these are rare, but not rare enough. It's bad enough that these go into personnel files and get read by peers and supervisors (yes, they really are, and they really matter). But at least these people understand what sorts of things, good and bad, students will say anonymously. Unmoderated posting of these things on the internet is a bad idea, personally damaging, and maybe harmful to careers.
I'm sympathetic to the prof, especially if he's new faculty. This could be the only exposure that his potential students get to him. A determined effort to slander his teaching ability -- when very people know him anyway -- could literally ruin his career, as tenure decisions are made in part on teaching ability.
I can't think of a scenario in which someone's career could be ruined by a Slashdot troll.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Another decent teacher review site is RateMyProfessors.com - it's got moderation, to avoid issues like this; Bascially, the intent of the moderation is to remove libel (saying someone has a psychiatric condition on a whim without proof definately isn't legal...), but leave pretty much anything else that describes in some way the teacher and their class.
Schools already have the resources to provide information in a much more reliable way. All they have to do is take the end-of-course data that they share with the professor, and publish it. If they got an average of 1.34 out of 5, that's an irrefutable fact and therefore no libel charge can come of that.... and that's really all the students need to know.
My anti college site is offline too - for the same reasons. The forums and content got too hot for the administration and they wanted to go to court. I did once - and won hands down - but I was still out the money. So, in the end they still win. Cause they have the tuition of thousands of students and I don't. There is no free speech in America anymore unless you are rich. Any one that tells you other wise is a liar, wrong or both.
The evaluations are presented as a series of statements, which the student ranks from 1 (bad) to 5 (good). They post the average rating for each statement, organized by course and/or instructor. The information is restricted to University affialiates, so heres an example of an evaluation summary for a random professor (name removed):
Course: Honors Calculus II, section xxx
Students Responded: 13
Students Enrolled : 19
Overall, this was an excellent course. 4.43 A-
Overall, the instructor was an excellent teacher. 4.85 A
I learned a great deal from this course. 4.31 A-
I had a strong desire to take this course. 3.60 B
The workload for this course was (5=LIGHT...1=HEAVY) 2.81 C
Students felt comfortable asking questions. 4.31 A-
Graded assignments reflected the material covered. 4.06 B+
The grades in this course were fairly determined 4.30 A-
Students' difficulty with the material was recognized. 3.67 B
My expected grade in this course is (5=A...1=E) 4.21 A-
The course requirements were clearly defined. 4.25 A-
The instructor presented material clearly in lectures/discussions. 4.69 A
Generally speaking, students are fair with the evaluations (unless the prof is just awful...) - I really like that they ask several questions about the professor and the course (rather than simply "How was the professor? 1-5"; it helps to make more objective decisions about the course and the professor. The questions depend on the department (Elec. Engin. and Comp. Sci. has 20-30 evaluation statments for some courses).
Oddly enough, the worst professor I've ever had told us that 'we didn't need to come to class' for one of the last days of the course. Turns out he gave out evaluations that day, and very few people were in class. The next term, somebody checked the evaluation stats for the class, and saw that while there were only a few people in class that day, 100+ students responded with evaluations (with VERY high ratings). He told the department, and an investigation revealted that the professor filled out the forms himself (with very high ratings, of course). He was promptly fired. Sweet, sweet revenge :-p