Reading: Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem?, Allan Davies (2012)
This article discusses the development of learning outcomes, and more specifically in relation to the specification of the assessment criteria in art and design education. It emphasizes the importance of aligning learning outcomes with assessment criteria and providing clarity for students. It also discusses challenges in articulating outcomes and criteria in creative disciplines like art and design, where the focus is often on intuition, imagination, and creativity, which are difficult to measure.
Davies suggests a need for meaningfulness over measurability in learning outcomes and assessment criteria, highlighting the importance of student understanding and engagement in the learning process, and proposes strategies for improving the coherence and effectiveness of assessment practices in art and design education.
Drawing on Bigg’s book, Teaching for Quality Learning at University (2003) and Bloom’s taxonomy (1956), Davies discusses the integration of assessment policies and learning outcomes in universities, and the challenges faced in the art and design education in particular. The author questions the insistence on measurable learning outcomes in creative arts education, arguing that terms like “imagination” and “creativity” may not be accurately transferrable to quantifiable assessment.
Through his model (exemplified in Fig.1 for a graphic design course), Davies explores the importance of the student experience, not only in understanding assessment criteria and learning outcomes, but also in the meaningfulness of it and its level of engagement with knowledge. The model is based in the idea of the ‘spiral’ curriculum, by which as students progress, they not only become more proficient in making and observing, say, they also get better at integrating these abilities and in more complex contexts.
Here the ‘key words’ act like criteria layers to help determine the experiential engagement with knowledge. These keywords should be y are derived from the student experience of the subject but opposed to Bigg’s (2003) and Blooms (1956) suggested taxonomies, Davies’ model requires them to be generated from observations of the structure of the learning outcomes of the discipline in context.
Reflection #4
Following this reading, and workshop 4 session, I reflect on a few aspects in relation to learning outcome (LO) definition and assessment.
Firstly, I appreciate how outcome-based learning design can support inclusivity, as it focuses on the result of the learning process instead of the process itself, leaving the latter to a more flexible and individual approach. While I embrace this as the right way forward, I also recognise some potential challenges generated from stating learning outcomes.
One of the biggest is the risk of over-specifying the intended results, as it might compromise student’s curiosity, intuition and creativity, in conflict with the Creative Attributes Framework (CAF). LOs can be simplistic and limiting, de-emphasising collateral learning, beyond the curriculum.
On the other hand, having ambiguous learning outcomes can certainly be counterproductive: from the student’s perspective, it pre-sets a sense of confusion around the expectations on the unit or learning contents; but also, from the tutor perspective, it hinders the mapping of all the overarching, defining features of the teaching and learning process. This is, stablishing the correlations between LOs, assessment criteria and descriptors, which helps ensure consistency in the teaching and learning design and plan
Davies’ framework for defining learning outcomes provides, to some extent, measurability by the implementation of knowledge and experiential layers, which facilitates the alignment of outcomes and assessment criteria, and in practice, might support a better definition of supportive materials and systems needed – for example, briefings, tutorials or feedback sessions -, and their implementation.
However, Davies’ suggestions do not contemplate the opposite challenge, being mindful of creative attributes (ACF) being potentially undermined. In order to preserve student’s agency on their own learning process – and outcome-, it would be interesting to include them in the exercise of defining what the intended result of a particular content, unit or course is. It could work as an additional level to the LOs, defined at an individual level, as a form of setting up realist expectations -or goals- for their own learning process. Equally, allowing flexibility for curiosity and exploration along the way, it might also be beneficial to encourage them to perform to equivalent exercise at the end of the learning experience, where they would analyse and identified their own learning outcomes, as an open and un-structured self-assessment.
References
Biggs, JB (2003) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, SRHE & OU Press.
Bloom, B.S. et al. (1956) Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals: Handbook I, Cognitive Domain, New York, David McKay.
Davies, A. and Reid, A. (2000) ‘Uncovering Problematics in Design Education: Learning and the Design Entity’, in Swann, C. & Young, E. (eds) Re-Inventing Design Education in the
Davies, A. (2012). Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem? Networks, Issue 18. http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/networks/issue-18-july-2012/learning-outcomes-and-assessment-criteria-in-art-and-design.-whats-the-recurring-problem
Digital Creative Attributes Framework, University of the Arts London, 2024. https://dcaf.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
Orón Semper, J.V., Blasco, M. Revealing the Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education. Stud Philos Educ 37, 481–498 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9608-5
QAA (2000) ‘Art and Design Subject Overview Report 1998/2000’.
QAA (2011) ‘Outcomes from Institutional Audit (2007-09): Assessment and Feedback’, 3rd Series.
Rowntree, D. (1987), Assessing students: how shall we know them? London, Kogan Page (revised edition)
Snyder, B. R. (1971). The Hidden Curriculum. United States: Knopf.