Department Heads and Faculty Revise PIE for More Objectivity

Following the initial trials of the Student Council (StuCo) proposed Post-Instructional Evaluation (PIE) surveys in the winter and spring of last year, the department chairs and faculty have revised and tweaked the evaluation to eliminate subjectivity, ambiguity and unnecessary cumbersomeness. The revamped PIE surveys will be used for the upcoming end-of-term course evaluations this fall.

Changes to PIE include the separation of coach, teacher and music instructor evaluations as well as a space for assistant coach evaluations. Some questions have been streamlined, and the survey, which is now several questions shorter, was modified to focus more on the basic responsibilities of teachers, rather than general evaluative feedback that may be susceptible to outside factors.

The changes were enacted to restore the original intent of PIE: to provide an easy, quick and productive space for students to give constructive and objective feedback for the improvement of courses.

“It’s required of all kids, so we’re cautious about making it too long.”

The PIE surveys, which StuCo proposed to faculty two years ago, were enacted last year. Students are required at the end of each term to fill out the evaluation for academic course as well as for sports and music classes. After submission, teachers and department chairs can review the results and address prevalent concerns. Director of Studies Brooks Moriarty elaborated, noting that the intent behind PIE is to provide a useful tool to track progress and gather information about course performances. “At its best, PIE can help a teacher and department see something they may not have understood fully about the student experience,” Moriarity said.

Several shortfalls in the system, however, emerged during the previous administrations of the PIE. Mathematics Department Chair Eric Bergofsky explained that the administration is still working on getting “the right instrument.” According to Bergofsky, the PIE used last year was too long, and too many of the questions were of a subjective nature rather than an objective one, which was the original intent of the StuCo proposal.

History instructor Amy Schwartz echoed those complaints concerning subjectivity, sharing that from her own experience, she has discovered that the more evaluative comment sections of PIE have been “easily abused” by students, especially those who dislike or misunderstand their teacher or who are unhappy with their grade.

According to Moriarty, last spring, some students used PIE to say some “hurtful and ungracious” comments about their teachers. English instructor Jane Cadwell said that, shielded behind the cloak of anonymity, students said “certain things that [they] wouldn’t say if [their names] were attached to it.” This type of feedback, Moriarty said, does not improve teaching. Rather, it only confuses and hurts teachers. “When a student is not [mature with the PIE], it can be hurtful and distressing to teachers who labor for many long hours, give up their weekends, go without sleep and in other ways, sacrifice themselves for their students,” Schwartz said. “It can feel like a swift kick in the ribs coming at the end of a long, exhausting term.”

As a result, many faculty members felt that the survey should be revised and reverted to more basic questions devoid of subjectivity. This fall’s PIE has been adjusted to those concerns and, according to Dean of Faculty Ethan Shapiro, will “hit on objective criteria that should be fairly black and white.” The revised PIE will be focused on teachers’ adherence to responsibilities at the most basic level, such as those outlined in the Academy-wide guidelines. At the same time, the PIE will have a comment section at the end of the survey to provide room for students to write more thoughtfully about their experiences, if desired.

This fall’s revised survey has been adjusted for the minor concerns surrounding PIE, but several larger, overarching problems with the system remain. Some students have expressed concerns regarding the extent of accountability teachers have with PIE evaluations.

Upper Caroline Davis said that the workings of the process, once submitted to the faculty, are not clear to students. “I’m not totally clear on just what happens to [the PIEs]. I’m not sure how a complaint would get handled, and I think it could be explained better,” Davis said. “With more refinement, I believe it would work really well.”

Former English Department Chair and English instructor Lundy Smith said that as far as he is aware, there is no formal process in place currently to check the responsiveness of teachers to concerns raised in the PIEs.

At the same time, Smith defused worries, explaining that conversations would occur on an individual basis and the areas targeted in the survey are more “nuts and bolts questions” that target easy and necessary changes. Smith reported that he has never had to deal with a serious complaint in the past.

Bergofsky expanded on Smith’s point, saying that the current system inherently encompasses accountability, since the higher administration oversees the results. “They wanted to give some feedback on these items to reach the department chair level, if not higher, so that if there were teachers not doing those things students felt their opinion would be seen,” Bergofsky said.

Another concern about the PIE was its genericness. Currently, there are only three different subsets of PIE: classes, physical education/sports and music lessons/ensembles. According to Moriarty, grouping surveys into these general compartments has led to trouble eliciting useful feedback. Currently, the PIE lacks the specificity necessary to tackle the heart of problems in individual departments and classes.

“Unfortunately, creating one mechanism to elicit feedback means that the surveys are rather generic,” Moriarty said. “Personally, I would like to see each department craft questions that would provide more meaningful feedback, and perhaps we can get there sometime soon.”

Others suggested a return to the end-of-course evaluations initiated in 1976. These surveys were individualized by each teacher for their respective classes. Due to a schedule change in 2002, however, these evaluations fell out of favor and were forgotten by many, although not all, faculty. Schwartz is one of the few remaining faculty members who administers an end-of-course evaluation for her classes. She said the evaluation has been a useful tool over the years for gathering detailed student feedback each term. “I find these evaluations much more informative and useful than PIE. I tend to think PIE is for administrators’ use and my own assessment is for my own use,” Schwartz said.

In revitalizing this idea, Bergofsky explained that the administration hopes to provide a feedback system, reflective of Schwartz's success, that would be “even more informative.”

Shapiro, although supportive of the return to individualized end-of-course evaluations, pointed out that those surveys will have to be a separate entity to PIE, which must follow the original wishes of the StuCo proposal and act as a general feedback system. “Teachers can still give end of course evaluations that are more class specific and less about what Student Council was after,” Shapiro said. “So I don’t know that we’ll make PIE bigger. It’s required of all kids, so we’re cautious about making it too long.”

Overall, Smith explained that all their efforts are to appease the student body and that the student body’s opinion will continue to hold precedence in decisions concerning PIE. Through these changes and discussions, faculty hope to provide a system true to the students’ wishes, even if that poses some difficulties. “We went back and forth to come up with a program that suited what StuCo wanted. It’s a little cumbersome, but we’re just trying to fulfill the original charge,” Smith said.