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.

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

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

Harvest Moon Melee, Conclusions

Saturday night competitions at HMM 2007 included the Lindy Hop Jam, Social Dance (Jack and Jill) Finals, and Non Swing. The non-swing was most definitely the highlight event of the weekend. Hilarity was the m.o. and many a team brought that to the table.

The Lindy Hop Jam was the redux version of the Charleston Jam from Friday night, albeit with more appropriate music. As with the Lindy Hop, there were some very impressive moments. I fondly recall the team antics of OCD, Big George, and especially the Tiny Bunch. After Battle of the Cities I had intended to orchestrate some group play, but completely forgot until the nights of. ah well.

The Social Dance Finals were typical Jack and Jill jam style Finals, the exception being that the couple from prelims were judged and qualified for finals as a couple. The dancing was good and tight, and a who’s who of Atlanta and especially Big George. If I recall right, of 7 couples, 4 had a Big George member and there were 6 total Atlanta representatives.

I most impressed, throughout the whole weekend, with how the non-swing was accomplished. Each team randomly drew a genre of music (a la So You Think You Can Dance). The first round was preceded with 50 minutes of time to work on things, then performance. The second round music was drawn at the conclusion of the first round, and teams had approximately 5 minutes to prepare for that. Creativity was certainly the name of the game, especially for round two as there was hardly any time to put something together – it was nearly contact improv.

The scoring of the weekend went thusly. Teams were given relative placement for each event by the judges. Those placements were then grouped together for the weekend, as relative placements as if each contest had been a judge. And viola – the winners:1st  Big George Savoy Bouncers,  2nd Tiny Bunch, 3rd Swing Blade(s of Glory). We (SBG) were quite surprised and thrilled to have placed at all. We had three goals going into HMM. 1) Have fun 2) Avoid Injuries 3) Place higher than last. We accomplished 1 and 2 as well.

Harvest Moon Melee, day 1

It’s the break between classes and the evening dance, the completion of the first 24 hours of the Harvest Moon Melee in Nashville, TN.  The one thing I hate about competition centered weekends is the lack of social dance time, because even when it’s time for social dancing, many of the competitors are actually working out final details for the upcoming comps, or busy nursing the bruised egos from the previous competition.

Last night was tons of fun, apart from the not enough social dancing time (which for me is also attributable for an hour at Waffle House and then an “early” trip home from the late night).   The evening opened with the Showcase (team routine) division. There are 7 teams here: Big George Savoy Bouncers (Atlanta, GA), Knoxvillians – though they insisted on the pronunciation of Knoxvillains (Knoxville, TN), Swing Blade(s of Glory) – the location of the parentheses is paramount (Nashville, TN), Whitey’s Cindy Loppers – which I think is the best name here (Nashville, TN), Orlando City Dippers – OCD… hehehe (Orlando, FL),  Tiny Bunch (Atlanta, GA), and last but not least – Stomp House (Raleigh, NC).

I’ll get into to routines more once they are posted on YouTube, but everybody brought “IT”! They were all great and they all displayed their teams quite well. Whitey’s Cindy Loppers was by far the most fun and entertaining with their review of the 80’s.

After the Showcase was the Charleston Jam, which unfortunately didn’t really get to truly jamming tempos until near the end. The fault I really found with the tempos was not simply because the songs were slower and so really rocking out was difficult, but because there were so few round in which to dance. On our team for one, not everyone even got to dance because there just weren’t enough rotations because the songs were so slow that a half hour went by with not enough 8 counts. This is not to say that there weren’t poignant moments, there were some spectacular dances during this jam.

The final event of the evening was the Sudden Death Social Dance Competition Challenge. I really liked how the organizers pulled this one off. They did it Jack and Jill style in that partners were randomly paired. All the competitors got a number in their packet. You danced with the other person who got the same number, and each number was given a heat to dance in. Last night was only the prelims and it was 4 heats of 3 songs danced all skate (I wouldn’t want to be the judges). Finals will be tonight and will be jam style.

Classes today were great. I taught a beginning class with a helper (Kristy White) who I’d never gotten to teach with before. It was quite fun and the class went well. Then I jumped in on the performance track and was able to catch a class with Bobby and Kate who are always terrific and have great material. The last class was aerials with Jill and Kerry and that also went quite well.