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.

Review: Lindy Focus VII

I love Lindy Focus. Every fall I look for their announcements and anticipate a wonderful time with dear friends and acquaintances from all over the South East (and increasingly from beyond). I love the dances, the classes, the music, and the organizers.

This was my 5th year attending, and for the first unfortunate time, this was the first year that did not exceed my experience of the previous year. I still thoroughly enjoyed myself; I had fantastic dances, “sat” in on some fascinating classes, and danced to fabulous music. I missed the awesome distinctively southern atmosphere of past years though.

The biggest contributing factor, I think, was the teacher lineup. For the first time Lindy Focus became a “Rockstar” event. The teachers read like a who’s who of the hottest names in Lindy Hop right now. This is a big departure from all previous years when South East regional instructors dominated the lineup with a few from outside the region. That resulted in a big difference at the dances as the Rockstars were (typically) noticeably absent from the dances most of the week and when they were present most were quite exclusive with their dancing (except for the New Year’s dance).

There were some notable exceptions. I was very impressed with Ursula Lederberger whom I watched dance with students nonstop the whole week, and Evita Arce, Bill Borgita, Laura Glaess, Mike Roberts, David Madison, and Andrew Sutton were all generous and gracious with their time.

Something that I had always loved about Lindy Focus being a regional event was that the barrier between students and instructors was minimal by nature of the regional-ness (to coin my own adjective) of the instructors. I was sad that was missing from year. (A brief aside, this is also one of my favorite aspects of Swingout New Hampshire, that the instructors are present and social with the students all week)

I only took a few classes, some were excellent, one I was quite disappointed by. The excellent ones were the two performance classes taught by Nathan and Evita. The class was made of a diverse mixture of levels, and was taught beautifully. I have never before seen a performance class of such caliber. Nathan and Evita are masters of craft of teaching choreography. They created a group routine that masterfully showed off the group, diminished the weakness of the dancing of some members (without resorting to “hiding” them), and allowed the attention to be drawn to the stonger dancers without “showcasing” them). In every sense it was a group performance rather than a group performing individual choreography.

The other choreography class I took was the Tranky Doo taught by Aba Browning and Bobby White. This was a tough class for them to teach, it was the end of the long week and was a 90 minute class. As the time wound down the energy wallowed. It was far from an ideal setting for teaching, especially individual choreography. With that in mind, the class wasn’t bad. It started very strong and they were able to pull it all together in the end, and they never “lost” the class, but it was a struggle.

I also jumped in a the class that Marty and Kelly taught the 4b group (the advanced performance dancers). I had high expectations for this class and it just didn’t live up to what I hoped for. It wasn’t a bad class, it just wasn’t really good. The explanations were vague, it felt hodgepodge with little conviction, or passion, more like a toss off class that they didn’t really care about and put together at the last minute.

The last class I literally sat in on, it was an elective taught by Gina Helfrich and Evin Galang (little known fact, Evin and – at the time Noel, now Noah – were my very first ever teachers). I wish I had been there for the full class, they were teaching some stuff I haven’t seen taught in along while and I think is sadly missing from current Lindy Hop repertoire.

The final weakness of Lindy Focus VII I’ll mention was the bands. None of the bands were bad, all of them were excellent on their own. The problem I had is that they were all cut from the same cloth (except for Crysta Bell and the Jons). Everything was small band, bouncy music, that only barely feels like Lindy Hop. If it weren’t for the DJs (who were extraordinarily picked and planned by Rob Moreland) there wouldn’t have been any big bands – no Basie, no Ellington, no Ella, no anything remotely like that. But the DJ’s delivered, and kept the floor dancing far more than you nearly ever see when the band goes on break.

So what were the things I loved about Lindy Focus VII?

• The DJ’s
• Nathan and Evita’s class
• The New Year’s Eve Show (Nathan and Evita, Mike and Laura, the one man dance, the girls routine, Andrew and Karen’s routine)
• The Boilermaker Jazz Band
• Mark Kapner, Sarah Munsell, Megan Adair performance
• Tremendous competitions
• Michael and Jaya

The vision continues to evolve for Lindy Focus. Michael and Jaya should be proud of their product, it is an excellently run event that delivers everything they promise. The differences I had with this year’s version are merely preferences and I’m excited to see what they will try next year. I’ll be there again most likely, and I hope to dance with you there.

Variety – why so little in Lindy Hop (or where did the groove go?)

Maybe this is just me, maybe it’s due to my absence the last year, but…

All or nothing at all… why is that the theme for so many Lindy Hop events (even scenes)? What happened to events with a huge variety, specifically, I mean, in the music (there is bunch of variety in the classes, but it almost all revolves around the same music). It seems that the music is all of one kind or all of another, especially blues or hot/classic jazz right now. I see very little in between anymore (I acknowledge that it does – it seems to be a niche though, now)

I don’t recall the last time I danced all night to a heavy groove between 120 and 160. I don’t typically want to do that all night, but neither do I want to spend all night dancing at 180 plus to lo-fi records, or spend my whole evening below 100; However I’ve seen a lot of 180+ or 100- only weekends lately and not very many that cover the whole spectrum.

For me, a perfect night of dancing would include both extremes, and the middle. It seems so few organizers appreciate the middle anymore. I miss dancing to a deep grooving swing, that’s so nice to do and it’s so accessible. Where did it go? Won’t somebody please bring back Smooth Sailing, Splanky, Satin Doll, or Shiny Stockings – at least occasionally?

Maybe this has to do with dancing trends. Not too long ago everyone was trying to be all smooth and slick, now dancing like you just stepped off the screen of a ’30s/’40s flick is what we all aspire too. When I started dancing I learned to loathe “hollywood style” in favor of “modern” savoy style (or more accurately described as wiggle hop).

Here’s my question… how hard is it adapt your dancing to a variety of music? Is it that difficult to go from blues, to jammin’, to balboa, to a heavy pulse in 3 hours of music? Are we, as a community, not capable, or too lazy, or just unwilling?

I’ve had more than a couple friends all but quit dancing because they’re tired of the monopoly one style of music has exerted on their scenes, again either blues or hot/classic jazz at the moment. Bring back the variety and I would wager that more people will come out more regularly, and the ones who stomp off in a huff, probably weren’t all that much fun to dance with anyway – if they danced with anyone but themselves.

Variety is the spice of life, Lindy Hop included

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