She says he lied in saying that she “degraded,” and “verbally attacked” him. In the suit, Vogl-Bauer alleges that her former master’s-degree student, Anthony Llewellyn, defamed her on various teaching review and other web sites, including blogs and YouTube. The case raises questions about the line between rating and defaming one’s professor, and of what, if any, ethical and legal obligations students have in publicly assessing professors’ performance. She says it resulted in “substantial economic, reputational and emotional injuries,” and she’s seeking an unspecified amount in damages. She says the student, after being dismissed from the university, “engaged in an intentional, malicious and unprivileged campaign” throughout 2013 to besmirch her reputation. But in a civil suit filed in a Wisconsin circuit court, she says that a former student’s extensive online commentary about her teaching amounts to defamation - not protected speech. Sally Vogl-Bauer, a tenured professor of communications at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, doesn’t dispute that students retain the right to exchange opinions about professors online. ![]() But most professors now see being rated on the Internet – good or bad – as an inevitable part of the job. Others say students aren’t always the best judges of teaching ability, and that they tend to rate easier courses and professors more highly than meaningful but challenging ones. Many professors dislike instructor review websites, saying they attract disgruntled students in particular and thus offer a skewed – but very public – account of their teaching abilities.
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