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Criticizing "learning victory": Students can rate teachers anonymously in a new app

2019-11-15T19:16:54.348Z


Everyone can log in - and everyone can read along: On Friday, an app went online, where students can rate their teachers anonymously. Trade unionists are appalled.



Are my teachers on time? Are you fair and respectful? Patiently? Who can motivate well and who can not? From now on, students will be able to publicly announce and compare their answers to these questions through an app called "Learning Victory". The 17-year-old Viennese student Benjamin Hadrigan has launched the app. She's online since this friday.

Users can register there with their phone number and rate teachers anonymously at German and Austrian schools. In a total of eight categories - including fairness, respect, preparation and assertiveness - they can award one to five stars. The teachers are listed with their full names. They can not comment on their reviews.

"We want to give students in the 21st century finally a voice, so they can help shape," said Hadrigan on Friday the SPIEGEL. He believes that there are many dedicated teachers who are glad that their achievements are now recognized and made public. And who gets a bad rating, will try to improve his teaching.

Trade unionists in Germany and Austria, on the other hand, are outraged. The app destroys the relationship between teachers and their students and is "not likely to drive school development forward," says Ilka Hoffmann, education expert of the Union of Education and Science (GEW).

Concerns about personality rights

Although feedback between students and teachers is important, it should be done in face-to-face conversations or through "grief boxes" at schools, says Hoffmann. Public evaluation portals such as "learning victory" rejects the GEW.

Paul Kimberger, chairman of the Austrian trade union compulsory school teachers, announces that he wants to prevent the app by all legal means. He has concerns about privacy rights and privacy.

Platforms on which teachers can be assessed are a sensitive issue. In August, such a platform was launched in Hamburg. There, however, the feedback is only intended for the respective teacher and is only queried within the class. Nevertheless, the Hamburg Teachers Association was skeptical - also because of the amount of data that is collected there.

Interview with Benjamin Hadrigan

DPABore Learning "Teachers should be paid for their students' achievements"

"Learning victory" is reminiscent of the website spickmich.de, which employed about ten years ago numerous courts in Germany. Again and again, teachers tried unsuccessfully to defend themselves by legal means against the sometimes defaming comments on the page. In August 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe finally rejected a complaint against the portal. In the meantime the site has been discontinued.

No comments, but also little control

On "learning victory" students - unlike spickmich.de at that time - can not upload comments about their teachers, but only rate them on the basis of the given criteria. However, there is no control as to whether the evaluators are actually students of the school concerned - and whether they themselves have experienced the teacher they are evaluating in the classroom.

To put it in a nutshell, even a neighbor who has been annoyed by a teacher can ultimately judge this negatively via the app. 17-year-old founder Hadrigan sees this as unproblematic: "We assume that the students are so fair that they only rate the teacher they really have," he says. Students can suggest new teachers in the app. Then check if these teachers were actually teaching at the school, says Hadrigan.

Each user can only rate the teachers at a single school. If a student changes schools, they can enter this independently in the app. Previous assessments concerning teachers at another school are then deleted.

Hadrigan had already at 14 years, as headmaster of his former high school, to introduce an in-school teacher assessment, it says in a press release to the start of "learning victory". He failed, however - and now translate his request "on a larger scale". A law firm specializing in media law and a "consortium of private investors" support him according to the announcement.

The young Austrian had also published a book on learning with social networks in March. In a SPIEGEL interview, he also asked to pay teachers according to the performance of their students.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-11-15

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