Reducing stress for student journalists

As a student in JOUR 214 and 414, I noticed that stress levels in the class were high. I asked students, currently in the class or who'd taken it one quarter previously, to fill out a survey about their stress levels and causes of stress. In order to prevent unconscious negative bias because of the nature of a survey about stress, I included questions about student satisfaction levels and causes of satisfaction. The majority of students rated stress at an eight or ten out of ten. Satisfaction levels were more varied; most students rated their satisfaction at a four, five, or nine. Two questions in the survey asked students to rank parts of the class from causing the least stress or satisfaction to causing the most stress or satisfaction. According to their responses, students experienced the most stress from time commitment/workload, understanding standards, and deadlines. Students experienced the most satisfaction from interviewing sources. Because these questions were ranked rather than rated, students felt they did not represent their stress/satisfaction fully. Based on the survey, I created possible solutions to stress, hosted a focus group about those solutions, and presented them to Professor Betsy O'Donovan. She chose to change the one story a week requirement to a version of specifications grading, add more detailed guidance to the the syllabus, pre-assign beats, host twice-weekly editor check ins, and create pre-recorded problem solving videos. The survey will be released again this quarter to examine the effectiveness of those solutions.