That time has come once again: course registration. It is a process that each Boston College student must undergo, a stressful one that requires thought, inquiry, and planning. Perhaps the biggest concern for choosing a potential class is the nagging question of selecting a professor. Today, fellow students are depending on one another to help with that choice.
Everyone has had less than desirable experiences with instructors in the past. A good number of the professors here, due to the breadth of the campus and student enrollment, can be faceless entities whom individual students know next to nothing about, thus throwing another kink into the registration process. Word of mouth among BC students has proven to be a great way to find out which teachers come highly recommended, while warning students about other professors whom it would be wiser to avoid at all costs. Students can go online to hear their fellow students' opinions, and use the Undergraduate Government of Boston College's teacher grading tool, PEPs.
PEPs (Professor Evaluation Profiles), first introduced in 1999, are an online service provided by the UGBC as a public method of professor evaluation. Students can comment on such criteria as teaching style and course load and provide analysis of the professors' strengths or weaknesses and the student's overall impression of him/her. Students can refine their search of the PEP database by specifying the academic department, professor, the course, or all three, and the results offer a fairly comprehensive listing of the professors and what courses they teach.
The statistics for the PEP resource show that there are over 9,600 submitted PEPs in the database, quite a substantial number; approximately 74 percent of BC professors come recommended by students, an indication of the overall positive quality of professors at the University.
The PEPs are a highly useful resource available to the students at BC; who better to rely on for opinions of professors than your peers?
The evaluations of the various professors allow each student to gauge the value of taking classes with certain professors, ones who know the course material well and are able to relate with their students certainly make classes less cumbersome and more enjoyable.
A majority of BC students seem aware of the PEP system both from word of mouth and promotion by the UGBC. Bryan Irace, the UGBC's director of computer technology and A&S '08, finds the PEPs useful because of their specific applicability to BC.
"I think the PEPs are an invaluable resource, and while many schools resort to RateMyProfessor.com or something of the like, it's nice to know that we have our own exclusive, tailored, and personal system," Irace said.
"I think the student body is extremely aware of the PEPs, and as such, BC students have a leg up on those attending other schools in terms of making sure they get exactly what they want out of their college experience."
Many students seem to be doing just that. A great deal utilize the PEPs during course registration, hoping to know as much about unknown professors as possible. Students praise the resource for what it provides and expressed relief to be able to scope out their prospective professors by way of other BC students and steer clear of those less than desirables. Portia Wills, A&S '10, said that the PEPs helped her differentiate between potential class experiences. "In the beginning, I had some really bad professors," Willis said, "and after hearing of the PEPs from other people, I've been using them ever since in order to help avoid any repeat experiences."
Despite the usefulness of the PEPs, for some students they are not the ultimate factor in making course decisions. Nicholas Courtney, A&S '09, sees them only as a "useful starting place."
"However, I personally don't rely on them for my ultimate decision," he said. "I usually talk to people who have taken classes in that department, and I think the PEPs are just one aspect of choosing the right professor."
The PEP database has recently undergone a bit of revamping by Samantha Lipscomb, director of design for the UGBC and A&S '10, who was once worked under Irace and has been steadily working to straighten out the minor problems and design flaws. One of the more prominent problems with upkeep comes in switching the present server technology to an up-to-date one more in line with the BC servers. It is currently unclear if the new server will be able to handle the PEP system, not to mention the difficulty of implementing it. There are significant back end issues to the database that further complicate matters as well, making it more difficult to incorporate or add anything new, which Irace and Lipscomb are working on as best they can.
The face of the database has been made sleeker and more appealing, and Lipscomb plans on addressing other system issues in a timely manner.
The system issues that exist are relatively small, such as the inclusion of professors who are no longer at BC, listings under incorrect departments, the absence of relatively new faculty, and some cases where a professor will have only a small sample of PEPs, thus making the system unreliable for gauging student opinion. Both Irace and Lipscomb are currently working on deleting old professors from the system and adding new professors through cross-checking and notifications from graduate students, in addition to working out the minor details to provide a more streamlined and efficient system.
While there are a great number of submitted PEPs, it is unclear what types of students are making the submissions. When asked if the same BC students tend to submit the majority of the PEPs, Lipscomb said, "We don't necessarily know which students are submitting, whether they are graduates or undergraduates, and we don't necessarily know if the same people form the majority of the submissions, but one way to get around that could be to add a survey to the PEP database in order to more accurately determine who is utilizing this resource. For those median students not at the extremes in regards to liking or disliking a professor, it might take either a really good or bad experience to motivate them to submit a PEP."
Not only do these evaluations help fellow BC students in the long run, they also serve to improve and maintain the quality of the education. Professors often use student critiques to revamp their teaching methods and the way they conduct their courses.
Many professors seemed unfazed by criticism as long as the student does not resort to bitter, personal attacks, or inappropriate language. Professor Michael Keith of the communications department deemed the PEPs a "good, democratic outlet for the students to articulate their opinions and valuable for stepping outside oneself and seeing how you are perceived by the students."
The UGBC web site states that the PEPs aren't a "place to vent your anger at your teachers." Such attacks "will not be tolerated" and "any unconstructive, mean, or slanderous entries will be removed" from the system by its administrators.
Every PEP submission is first screened for inappropriate language, overly insulting tones, or general irrelevance to either the course or professor, so submissions determined to be such aren't even allowed to be published.
Inevitably, some improper submissions do slip past the eyes of the screeners due to the overwhelming amount of submissions, and in such cases, students are relied upon to catch and flag them.
When utilizing the PEP resource, a student should keep in mind that what they say could be of great help to a BC student down the line.
Professor Robert Muller of the computer science department noted that not all students use the PEPs, instead inspiring students with extreme opinions to write in.
"They tend to draw outlier views, those students who either really hate or love the course, but the students in the median really have no motivation to report anything," Muller said. "We're always working to improve courses and the best resource is input from students." The PEP resource is a complicated system with its share of flaws, but it nonetheless provides a valuable service for all BC students to utilize.
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