Post Class Surveys

I just finished teaching a month of classes for NSDF.  They collect survey responses at the end of each class, which I think is a great idea.  That is something that I always planned to do when I was running Music City Motion (but I never actually did it) and I think is a good idea for every event, with the following caveat: make sure it’s a useful survey.

The results from the class I taught were mixed, most people had good reactions to the class, a few had stellar reactions and a few were disappointed to varying degrees.  That didn’t bother me much (though my partner was quite upset that we didn’t get rave reviews from everyone).  What bothered me, is that because of the way the survey was formatted, I can’t use the results to learn or improve anything.  

All I know from the survey is that a certain percent of the students were “very satisfied” with the class, yet a few of those “very satisfied” students thought our teaching was confusing and unorganized (which I will admit, there were times when I was confusing and unorganized). We don’t even know if it was me, or my partner that was more confusing to the students (I’m guessing it was me, simply because I talked much more than she did).

If you are going to survey, which I recommend you do, survey well and prepare your survey carefully (beyond making sure that spelling and grammar are proper).  There are a few things you need to consider as you build the survey.

1. Goals for the Survey - What do you want to accomplish?  What do you hope to get from the survey results?  Do you want to know what you should change?  Do you just want an ego stroke?  Before you make your survey you need to know how you plan to use the survey, and ask your questions from that vantage point.  The more you want to get out of the survey, the more complex and deliberate your questioning needs to be.
2. Audience - How many people will take the survey?  This is important because if you can’t use the same survey with a small group as with a large group.  Small groups are more difficult to evaluate because one or two extreme opinions (positive or negative) will skew results.

   With a small group you have to have much more open ended questions (especially if you don’t want to give them a survey that is pages long) in order to get useful information.  With a larger group you can get away with fewer open questions as long as you ask specific questions that can give you what you’ve decided you want to know.

3. Precise Questions - Don’t ask a bunch of generic questions unless you want generic answers.  ”Please rate your instructors” isn’t going to tell you much unless you follow up with questions about specific areas of performance.  You could easily wind up with very high, or very low ratings on very good, or very bad instructors because one of two things dominated the opinions of the students.  Unless you break down the rating, you can’t know why the instructors got that rating, and the instructors don’t learn anything useful about how their teaching was perceived.
4. No Double Questions - Don’t lump questions together if each question could have a separate answer. “I thought the instructors were well organized and easy to understand” is a bad question because there are two parts: well organized, and easy to understand.  Each of those, while related, are different and could easily have different answers.  When you write out your survey, look for these “and” clauses.  If you’ve asked two questions either make it two questions or figure out which one you actually want to know and leave the other out.
5. Test - For my real job, I do lots of testing, split testing, multi-variate testing, etc.  I have learned the value of testing everything I do that provides me feedback, so that the feedback I get is the most useful.  That old measure twice cut once adage.

   After you’ve built your survey, give it to a sample group (I’d recommend that if you are going to survey at the end of something, midway through ask for some volunteers) and see if the responses you get are useable (you may also learn something you can improve upon before your event/class/etc is over).  If your results aren’t that helpful you’ll be able to see pretty easily which questions are at fault.  Than change them, and if you have time test again.

6. Dissect the Results - Don’t just tabulate results and report the % responses to each question.  Drop all the raw data into excel and use filters to see how answers of one question impacted the answers of another, and what the open responses you received to which kinds of satisfaction ratings etc.  That is where the real value is found.
7. Don’t Wait for Perfection - If you don’t have time to do all the above, go ahead and survey.  But promise yourself to evaluate and modify your survey with the results before you conduct your next survey.  It is often better to survey imperfectly than to not survey at all, just remember to take your results with a grain (or whole shaker) of salt.

There are many FREE resources on the web to help you build your survey.  If you just search you could probably even build your survey by just copying and rewording some of the sample questions you’ll find out there.

If you survey well, your results will be far beyond the ego stroke that most surveys provide.  You’ll learn what to change and how to change.  You’ll learn why something (or someone) is satisfactory to some and unsatisfactory to others.  And that is when a survey because useful.

Oh, the Addiction

Thanks to Reuel leaving for a month, I had the pleasure of teaching a handful of private lessons in his stay. One of the students (I’ll call her Sarah) is new to dancing completely.

Sarah is one of the reasons I love teaching. I’m not usually a big proponent of brand new swing dancers learning in a private setting for a variety of reasons, but since Nashville doesn’t really have any beginner classes available right now I didn’t refer her to a class to start with.

She showed up with all the typical trepidations of a newbie coupled with an utter lack of confidence in her own ability to keep a beat or move her body with any grace.  She claimed to be completely unable to find or keep a rhythm, but she always wanted to learn to dance, and she was finally going to do that.

In contrast to all her worries, she turned out to be a very quick study. She asked smart questions and thought through the basics with keen sophistication I don’t typically see in beginners (or even many more intermediate dancers).

After the 1st lesson I convinced her to go dancing that night with the promise that I would be there and would dance with her and answer any questions she had.  By the time I showed up at the dance (late because I’d been listening to Vanderbilt become bowl eligible for only the 2nd time in my lifetime) Sarah was drenched in sweat and barely had time to dance with me.

We had a follow up lesson a few days later and she showed up all aglow with excitement, jubilation, anticipation, all those feelings that can make one’s eyes twinkle. She was addicted, she loved it, and was desperate to learn more.

Oh if everyone would embrace being a beginner with such abandon.

Lame

I had the pleasure of DJ’ing at RHLX this past weekend (more on that later). The weekend was great fun, except for one little experience during the afternoon dance on Sunday.

The dance was in a big old gazebo with picnic tables arranged in a circle around the central support pillar, much of the dancing occurred within that circle of tables. There was the general goofiness often present at these final day afternoon dances and the tables added an extra dimension. I was swept up in the craziness of a song and playful atmosphere and careless danced right into another couple.

Fortunately it was not a serious collision, my partner dutifully warned me in time for me to put on the breaks, but not quite soon enough to avoid the collision. I turned my head an apologized (it was entirely my fault) and expected the normal “no problem,” or nod, or reciprocal apology. Instead I received a one word response, “Lame,” and a condescending head shaking!

I still kind of wish I had just stopped dancing and slugged the guy rather than ignore him. But that would merely have proved his point, I guess.

Getting onto the dance floor you’re accepting that you may get run into, no one is perfect at navigating a dance floor. What happened to courtesy in that moment? I think it highly unlikely that he’s never accidentally careened into someone else in a moment of musical inspiration (or silliness). Maybe he was an abused child.

So what’s my point? A little courtesy goes along way. Had he not responded with such a mean remark he and I might actually have become friends, I’d have apologized again to him after the dance and perhaps learned his name. But no, he insulted me, and so I chose to ignore him.

So the next time you’re run into, be a little forgiving, especially if an over the shoulder apology is thrown your way. Remember how many times you’ve bumped someone else. And of course if you do the bumping apologize, and maybe even apologize again after that dance, you never know who you might become friends with.

Tags: courtesy, lindy hop, rhlx, friends, lame, apology, swing dancing, lindy exchange, memphis

Alumni

A long time ago (in the midst of “the resurgence”) I came across a thing on the internet I’ve not been able to find that categorized Swince Dancers by class year (Freshman, Sophmore, etc.). The Alumni were listed as those who’s names you know from the “seniors”, who’s faces you only see at “special” events or when they are teaching a class.

This weekend I realized I’ve become one of them, one of those “legends” who don’t go social dancing, when they do they merely socialize dancing very little, and about the only dancing they do is while they are teaching.

In my defense this fall has been nuts. My wife moved to New York to sing and I commute up there every other weekend. I don’t get in until 11:30 on Thursday nights so there’s no Frim Fram (she lives in Inglewood and I wouldn’t get to Frim Fram from La Guardia until well after midnight anyway) and there isn’t much weekend Lindy Hop with a “reasonable” cover. The only dancing in Nashville right now is on those every other weekends I visit my wife. I didn’t plan it that way, it just happened.

Because of the money and time involved, if I go to a dance weekend (e.g. I’ve missed AVS, Southern Belle, and a few others) it means I’ve chosen to not visit my wife but go dancing rather.

This last weekend (at the Swing Smorgasbord in Cincinnati) was the first dancing I’ve done since early October teaching in Boone, and just like that weekend, the only reason I went is because I was teaching.

I used to feel some resentment towards those who were like this. Now that I am one, I feel resentment about being like this, but mostly because I resented those who were similar back when I was an absolute addict.

Tags: LindyHop, Swing Dancing, Cincy Swing, New York City, Frim Fram, Cinicinnati, Social Dance

So you think you can dance Lindy Hop

I decided to watch SYTYCD this summer after a friend showed me some of the dancing from last summer on TiVo (which btw is the greatest TV invention since the TV IMHO). I haven’t been dissapointed yet (except by the Tango choreography given to Ashlee and Rickie – I actually blame the choreographer for their early dismissal from the show) even though the Lindy Hop couple (Evita Arce and Michael Jagger – who will be at SONH this year – and again I weep, for I will miss this year again) didn’t make it into the top 20 finalists. Evita is interviewed in this latest issue of Swing Dancer Magazine FYI.

It would have been nice if they could have made the top 20, but I thought the coverage Fox gave them was good for Lindy Hop in general. My only hang up is that due to the filming techniques, their dancing looked rather flat and not very exciting though no fault of Evita and Michael.Lindy Hop made an appearance in the finals of SYTYCD last year.

Will Lindy Hop be back this year (I don’t know anything about the show’s format really)? I certainly hope so. But I don’t think Lindy Hop on TV really matters as much as many people think it does. Granted my inspiration to learn was initially the Gap Khakis Swing commercial, but I actually went out dancing because of the people, and stayed dancing because of both the music and dance and also the friends and community. To take advantage of media exposure of Lindy Hop we need to make Lindy Hop extremely accessible (not it the technical sense but in the social/heirarchical sense) to new folks. Newbies don’t stick around if they feel intimidated, out of place, etc.

technorati tags:So-You-Think-You-Can-Dance, SYTYCD, Evita-Arce, Michael-Jagger, Ashlee-and-Rickie, Lindy-Hop, Swing-Dancing, Swing-Out-New-Hampshire, SONH, Newbies