Introduction & Background:
Students start the course with Unit 1: Creative direction. This is not a making project but a project where students are asked to make a proposal to bring back to life a defunct brand or a fashion house. This includes detailed research, creative direction, design direction and video communications. The project lasts from November until the end of January. Students get 2-3 design tutorials, technical support in creating digital worlds and narratives and supporting lectures about sustainability and values in practice.
Evaluation:
Many submitted projects have been unexpectedly poor in quality, giving us, tutors and assessors, the impression that students may not fully understand what is expected of them or what constitutes a successful project and strong outcome. This raises an important question: If the submitted work is substandard, are students truly learning? Additionally, are tutorials an effective method of teaching in this context? While a few students performed well during tutorials and produced high-quality work, their final submissions often lacked evidence of key components, that were shown during tutorials and tutors remember discussing them but were not included in final portfolio. Overall, many projects seemed to lack dedication and a fully developed ideas, suggesting a need to reassess how students engage with the learning process and project expectations.
Moving Forward:
Brief: When writing a brief, I will make sure that the learning outcomes are not ambiguous and during the briefings, encourage discussion about the expectations and LOs, making sure students understand them. I did consider showing an exemplary project, which would avoid confusion and offer more clarity, but I am worried that this would give outcomes that are too prescriptive and not original. It is a complex situation of telling students what to do but not really telling them how to do it and expecting them to perform well.
As discussed by Davies in the text Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What is the recurring problem? where he says: “In terms of meaningfulness, they [learning outcomes] equate to the notion of ‘understanding’, a cognitive term which is regarded as too complex and which should be substituted by other, more measurable, terms such as, ‘explain’, ‘analyse’, etc. Another drawback in the use for these terms, acknowledged by Biggs (2003), is that they are regarded as ‘divergent’ and as such do not invite one appropriate answer but a range of possibilities.
Group tutorials: Organise group tutorials to support peer-to-peer learning. Combining student slots will also allow students to spend more time with the tutor and offer space for creative discussions and mid-process feedback. Students will be more aware of what other students are doing for any future collaborations.
Assessment as learning: Instead of submitting projects online, and asking tutors to write feedback individually, organise a crit and ask students to present in front of the tutors and peers. Each student will have an opportunity to see other projects and hear immediate feedback, and this should hopefully enable thinking, learning and understanding of what the level of expected outcomes is. This will also raise the bar on the quality of presentations and support competitiveness.
The crit should also offer some support to tutors. Their feedback should be collected by someone taking notes and sharing them with students via the assessment. The assessment would be done quicker, saving everyone precious time.
References:
Davies, A. (2012) Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem? Available at: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/networks/issue-18-july-2012/learning-outcomes-and-assessment-criteria-in-art-and-design.-whats-the-recurring-problem
Biggs, JB (2003) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, SRHE & OU Press.
Stephens, T., Staddon, E., Course Designer: Designing Inclusive Assessment, The Exchange, UAL