The Problem With Instructions

One of the most difficult parts of creating assignments is writing the guidelines. No matter how clear I think they are, students will always bring to my attention some aspect that they find confusing.

Sometimes, the confusion has to do with minor inconsistencies–fair enough, I should have proofread more thoroughly or double-checked the syllabus. But many more students approach me not because my instructions didn’t contain exact parameters for success. They know what I’m grading, because I provide a rubric. And I know they have the information and skills they need to achieve the highest levels on the rubric (at least, they do if they were engaging in class and completing the readings). But they don’t have a recipe to follow to achieve high marks, because part of what I’m grading is the ability to make judgement calls.

I want them to judge, for example, what information is appropriate to include in a particular email and what they should leave out. I want them to analyze their audience and decide what’s relevant instead of waiting for me to tell them exactly what points they should cover. I want them to pay more attention to their argument than to whether they are two words over the suggested word count.

Instructions are definitely important. Knowing how to follow instructions and how to find help if the instructions are unclear are key life skills. As someone writing instructions, it’s on me to make sure my instructions are clear and informative.

But learning how to follow instructions isn’t enough. The best colleagues, friends, and partners are also able to operate competently without instructions because they have the skills to assess the situation and decide what to do.

That’s why I hate professors who teach students to do the opposite: who punish students for thinking about what the instructions they were given actually mean.

OK, “hate” is a strong word; I’m sure those instructors are lovely people etc. etc. But when your former students pepper me with trivial questions (What font should I use? What size should it be? Should my headings be 18 point or 20 point?) because you docked them marks for using their judgement, you’re doing everyone a disservice.

If you told students to print their names in a certain size so everyone’s nametag would look the same, but they found that they needed to make that text larger or smaller to make their name fit properly, that’s on you. Because what you really wanted was an particular aesthetic result, not an ugly layout that followed your instructions to the letter. You’re the one who didn’t consider that names can be shorter or longer than an arbitrary number of characters, or can contain non-alphanumeric characters, or…

I’m sure instructors who do this have reasons they consider to be good, but from my perspective, teaching classes on practical communication, they’re sabotaging their students’ success.*

See, exercising judgement is very difficult. It’s a skill learned through experience and trial and error. But good judgement and the confidence to use it allows people to successfully navigate professional and personal situations.

For example, when I was a Girl Guide, I remember finishing some complicated cooking activity that left a huge mess. Like, the church kitchen was a disaster area, and we had only twenty minutes to clean it all. Wanting to be helpful, I stood there as the adults ran around stacking and soaping and wiping and asked one of our leaders what I should do. “Sarah,” she told me in exasperation, “don’t ask, just do something.”

At the time, I was young enough that I assumed I had to follow an adult’s instructions — that I wasn’t allowed to figure out things for myself and that if I tried, I’d get in the adults’ way. I felt annoyed because I legitimately didn’t know what to do and I’d been told off for doing the wrong thing before. In learning situations, it’s definitely important to make sure that learners have the tools and support they need to attempt judgements and to fail.

But she was right: as anyone who’s ever been in a crisis or just overwhelmed with work knows, “what can I do to help?” is a question that feels like even more work. That’s because deciding what work needs to be done and planning how to do it most effectively is itself work.** That’s why “manager” is a job.

OK employees, partners, and friends do what they’re told. Excellent employees, partners, and friends are able to do what they haven’t been told, in an appropriate way, at an appropriate time.

Easier said than done right? But there are a lot of situations I’ve seen it be crucial for success. Like…

… the first-year student I’d help in my calculus tutorials who’d had the top math mark in high school but was struggling in university because all he’d been taught to do was memorize key words and sets of instructions without understanding the principles behind them.

… the new writers I see (and have been) looking for objective rules to follow that will lead them to success but don’t yet have the experience necessary to understand that the rules are more like tools and consequently focus on minor details like how exactly to punctuate the salutation in their query letter or the precise optimal age and gender of their main character.

… the residents of a shared living space (housemates, roommates, family, partners, whatever) who all become unhappy because the individual(s) with the skills, experience, and/or cultural expectations to make judgement calls end up doing most of the housework and telling other resident(s) what to do.

… the educators who struggle to deviate from a strict lesson plan even when it becomes apparent that the design of the plan isn’t effective for this specific class of learners, frustrating everyone and preventing the learners from making progress.

I could go on. I’m sure you could too.

And I get it: teaching good judgement is difficult, because judgement comes through experience and is context-dependent. You can’t simply follow an algorithm–just ask Siri or Alexa (but make sure to use simple phrases and ask only questions that could be answered in the first few lines of a related Wikipedia entry. Zing!)

Learning good judgement almost always requires space to fail, something that many places of education simply don’t make room for. My communication classes are a heckuva safer space to fail than the job market, but that’s no solace to students trying to keep their GPA up. In an ideal world, students would have all the time they needed, and there’d be no stigma attached to re-taking a course, but students have timelines and budgets and careers and families. Neither of us has control over the way the Western higher-education culture sets up our course to be a hurdle, not an opportunity, for them.

So that leads me back to the balancing act that is instructions. No matter how many dry-runs or examples or practice sessions we go through in class, I’ve got to hit that sweet spot between “way too vague” and “spoon-feeding.” I do my best to keep my guidelines specific and clear, but, as in all things, it’s a matter of judgement.

* I mean, sure, there are plenty of bosses and friends out there who care more about whether you did things exactly the way they said than whether you did things effectively, but that very preference tells you that those people don’t themselves have good judgement. And, true, inexperienced people need to consider that maybe they don’t yet have the experience to make helpful judgements in brand-new scenarios. But that’s also a judgement call–being able to judge whether or not you have the knowledge and the standing to make appropriate decisions.

** As the comic suggests, household management in Western culture tends to be disproportionately gendered, which is another issue entirely.