Feedback + Critique Part 3

Alchemy 6-26-2022

Welcome to the final installment of my Human-Centered Systems Thinking project! I'm excited to share this final phase. Thanks so much for all your questions! Keep sending them my way, I'm always happy to chat systems with you! 

This final part of the project involves dissecting stakeholder interviews to discover a point of leverage for change. Leverage points can be found in many places within systems but when it comes to possible prototyping solutions to complex problems, leverage points that offer the opportunity for high impact and ease of implementation are key. 

After evaluating potential leverage points for change, I determined that experimenting with feedback expectations in the classroom met both the requirements for impact and ease of implementation, as well as the potential for scale. 

To address critique expectations for both instructors and students, time will be dedicated at the beginning of each course.  This time will be instructor-led and include education and examples on the four feedback quadrants, guidelines surrounding how to provide Safe + Useful feedback, but also the benefits of this using this quadrant. The consequences of not participating within the expected boundaries of the desired quadrant will be spelled out for both instructor and students. 

Perhaps the most important part of this set-aside time will be for the instructor to share in the vulnerability of what it can feel like for one's passion and life's work to be publicly evaluated under the microscope. To address this shared vulnerability, the prototype relies on the instructor sharing with the class some of their best and worst student ratings and discussing where they fall in the feedback quadrant. 

Yikes! 

For many instructors, this may feel like a big leap, and yeah it is asking a lot. But critiques ask a lot from all parties involved. Students can learn a great deal from understanding that the critique process is a lifelong part of being a professional artist. There will always be unwelcome and inappropriate feedback. It happens throughout one's career. Instructors modeling that feedback of all kinds is survivable and also still a part of their professional lives as both artists and instructors is invaluable. 

Additionally, instructors bringing in student ratings puts some accountability for inappropriate ratings back on students. Student ratings are no longer an undercurrent of the system but are now out in the open in the classroom as part of the overall feedback process of the course. 

I wish I could say that I was sure of the impact of this prototype! Prototypes are experiments and truth be told, this prototype could work toward positive change in the system or simply strengthen the status quo. 
 

What I do know, is that healthy systems function like a wheel. While complex, at their core systems should function like simple machines - smoothly, with all parts connected and moving together with momentum and potential. While this potential can stall, it can be regained by understanding how the simple machine works and what it needs to move smoothly once again. Sometimes wheels move in the opposite direction with potential for dysfunction. With maintenance of all the connected parts and again, understanding how the nature of the wheel works, a push back in the desired direction will redirect momentum.

Ideally, the complexity of fine arts classroom critiques will function like a wheel. The feedback process will be smooth, predictable and well understood by instructor and students. Rules of etiquette will be clear and the difference between useful and honest versus useless and attacking feedback will be understood by all stakeholders. 

Instructors will be able to fulfill the mission of the class by preparing students for a career in the fine arts and fostering their skill and talent while not be in fear that this fulfillment will risk their employment. The university will be supportive of instructors when they are faced with poor ratings and create a campus wide training for students and instructors about feedback expectations and best practices. Including what kinds of instructor feedback actually facilitate change. Students will understand that useful feedback is honest and meant to help improve their work and the work of the instructors. And this improvement will help prepare them for a career in fine arts. Additionally, their ability to participate in useful and meaningful critique exchanges with instructors and other students will inform their abilities and general work skills for years to come.

xxx

LAS