Friday 16 December 2011

A Doubtful Show of Hands


Each year university students are requested to fill out questionnaires about the ‘student experience’ - questions relating to their satisfaction with a range of areas from staff approachability or the resources of the courses they take, to their overall satisfaction. Last year the course I run received an embarrassingly low percentage for “organisation”. Overall we received a satisfaction rating of 91% so it wasn’t entirely bad news but, despite the fact that it is almost taken for granted that fine art courses are poorly organised, this year I’ve been determined to keep a better eye on things.

A few weeks ago I asked a group of students how they felt about the organisation of a recent project. I was met by a wall of screwed up faces and wobbling hands clearly meant to communicate uneasiness with the question. Shocked that I could have made such a universal hash of timetabling the workshops, the online resources and tutorials etc. I asked for a little more clarification about what aspects of organisation were least satisfactory. It turned out that every last student had thought I’d meant their own organisation.

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