A lesson in iteration

This is my first semester as a full time faculty member at a university. At this university the professors use the same books for their course and often similar assignments.
To make sure that I was in proper alignment with my coworkers and perhaps more importantly my department chair, I basically just tweaked his syllabus for each course and moved on.  Now that I'm nearing the end of the semester and grading the finals I'm seeing holes in "my" instructions to my students.

For one assignment they are asked to do 30 hours of observation in local public schools, an activity that many of them seemed to enjoy. As they progressed in the 30 hours students were supposed to write a field lab, which included description of their daily activities. Unfortunately this is precisely what I am getting. Just a vague description "they went over the math homework," "The teachers only have a break or prep time during P.E. or specials."  This is "fine" but I find myself wondering, in the wake of all that we have discussed over the semester and how emotional and vocal my students often are about things like the lack of prep time -- where are their comments? Where is the emotion and reflection?  --- Its not there and its not there because I didn't put it there.

So this brings me to iteration...In games and game designing, players and designers are able to create something  - a game board perhaps - then they play - they find the errors and then keep the good parts, toss the rest, redesign and then play...this happens until the designers are happy.   Then they let players loose on it, and again keep the good parts and toss the rest or find ways to make the problems less of an issue by giving better instructions.

Escher's Draft of a rhomboid tesselation

This is now my new mission...not only do I have to make it writing intensive but I have to toss what isn't working: the instructions on the daily observations, the detailing about what a cover page should and should not be, etc. But this isn't limited to assignments - I feel like the students went out into the world and had experiences but never had the opportunity to share or express. This too should be changed and since I start this process all over again January 9th, I better start cracking.

Waterfall, Escher