I hate feedback surveys.
In no way, shape, or form has an LLM or AI tool been used in the creation, review, editing, or publishing of this blog post. I take full accountability for the following inevitable mistakes of being a human.
All musings are my own and they do not reflect that of PureGradient as a whole, or any of my other endeavours.
Teaching is a science. Each encounter is an experiment. Data can therefore be used as a metric of success (or failure) of said experiment. While I understand the need for data collection at the end of an experiment, why is a digital survey necessary to understand the audience's engagement and understanding? What happened to the human element?
After attending a conference in which feedback surveys seemed to be the primary source of closure for each presenter, I found it only natural to reflect on the now outdated custom of walking up to the presenting stranger and saying, "well done, I thoroughly enjoyed that". From a community that emphasises engagement and interaction, we seem to not acknowledge our own blunder of substituting a handshake and comradery with a few check boxes on a screen.
Our own allowance of digital tools to infiltrate each human interaction has ushered in the current downfall of social skills. We prioritise the comfort of anonymity over the possibility of connection.
The creation of a "safe space" is increasingly being thought of solely digital. We as humans are no longer given the opportunity to provide that for each other and thus are losing the ability for empathy and understanding of each other's experience.
If we continuously look for outside validation and suggestion to sway the material we teach and the ideas we disseminate, at what point do they stop being our own. I do not want a talk given by the consolidation of suggestions but rather the original thoughts of the presenter. Since when did we lose confidence in our own presentation of knowledge that we need constant feedback on what can be done differently?
And if you say, "wait, much of our funding depends on the popularity of our material, we need surveys to quantify this.", my retort lies in the age-old metric of success — participants that want more will express it, they will recommend it. There should be no question of success to funders if the audience is shouting "encore". (Metaphorically speaking, of course).
To bring it home, I refuse to take part in any feedback survey. I don't want that to be mistaken as laziness or antipathy. While having the opportunity to be a participant in these spaces is a luxury, I do not feel that my opinion sitting as a data point is of any use to the betterment of teaching as a science, or to my fellow presenter. I will make it a point to reach out carefully, in words and not clicks, in human connection and not digital noise, and express how they impacted my thinking, and hopefully my actions. And in this, I hope that we may turn this around, prioritise each other over each other's data.