Developing a Sustainable Lighting Education Survey of students at school or college

[uniglamLETLDT]

I am currently preparing a paper for presentation at the Professional Lighting Design Convention in October and am looking for input from the many Control Booth members who are currently at school and college.

Many students study lighting at school or college. This survey seeks to discover an understanding of what you have and what you intend to study in the future.

Please take your time to visit https://spreadsheets...QOFplZWJDOFE6MQ

Your assistance is appreciated!

 

[Footer]

Re: Developing a Sustainable Lighting Education Survey of students at school or colle

You might want to make a few edits to your survey. It is of course highly skewed towards saying that college don't teach the other types of lighting design besides theatre. That is very true, however, you should probably weight your survey on the survey taker. By saying the survey is for school OR college students, you are going to get skewed results. In high school/prep school very few if any programs are teaching anything besides theatre. Many colleges/university are teaching other career paths depending on the level of the program. Also, you are not gauging the study with what level of schooling the person has completed. Right now, you will get the results you want but they are going to be pretty much useless. Instead, get more information about the taker, IE current level of education, current type of program they are enrolled in, and location/country of the individual.

Saying that a freshman in high school is not exposed to event lighting vs saying that a 4th year college student is not exposed to event lighting is a totally different ball game. Right now, your survey does not differentiate between the two.

 

[LXPlot]

Re: Developing a Sustainable Lighting Education Survey of students at school or colle

I'm an HS student, and would like to say a few things. For one thing, a few of those categories could have been set up to allow for multiple answers, like saying that I've talked with both school college counselors and my parents about college.

Also, the idea of me answering questions based on numbers would be much easier if you could please number the questions.

The question that I believe is number 13 would make more sense if it were to say "entertainment" rather than "architectural."

If this paper is presented to some very important people and make sure the grammar and spelling are perfect. Saying things like "do you inted to study" takes some authority from your voice, and even if your results are vital.

 

[chausman]

I would suggest you look at something like Qualtrics. It got very confusing to be jumping from question to question depending on your answer and Qualtrics will let you make it more "stream-lined".

Other then that, I agree that some of the questions should be set up so that you can select more then one, Question 3 for example. I also agree with Footer that you need to know what level the person taking the test will be at. Asking an undergrad student if they will be "considering studying lighting design at an undergraduate level is redundant. Most of the survey seems to be assuming more high school level, not college.

I would edit Question 7 to be "think" or "believe" instead of "realize" because you are asking their opinion, not what they have been told.

Thats just my 2¢.
No, I'm not involved with Qualtrics other then just playing with it a little.

 

[museav]

Re: Developing a Sustainable Lighting Education Survey of students at school or colle

Long past being a student but very interesting to me as what I do has involved working with a variety of lighting designers. I think it may be summed up in having worked in a firm where the 'lighting designers' had nothing to do with theatrical applications and 'performance lighting' was handled as part of the theatre design services. And it was the architectural lighting staff that was involved in industry efforts related to sustainable lighting and AV/videoconferencing illumination. Totally different staff with quite different educational and professional backgrounds.

At another past employer general illumination was handled by the Electrical Engineering staff while the lighting design practice focused on specialty architectural lighting including exterior lighting. More similarity there in terms of education and backgrounds but with significantly different focus and professional experience.

Probably because of our roles and backgrounds my experience actually differs from Footer's and I have probably encountered more lighting designers who work in general illumination or architectural lighting and come from Electrical Engineering, Architectural Engineering, Architecture and Interior Design backgrounds in my work than I have theatrical or performance lighting designers with backgrounds in theatre or production. And seemingly left out in the survey are designers for video, film and other forms of production lighting, with whom I have also worked.