Prior today’s session I read the paper called ‘Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem?’ by Allan Davies, Independent Consultant. This paper is a critical reflection on the development of learning outcomes, outcome-led learning and assessment criteria in art and design.
Despite working in an academic job for many years I had difficulties to follow the text and language until the author started speaking specifically about art and design education, then it made all more sense to me. The text describes how assessment criteria have been existing for a long time in universities while learning outcomes, a much more recent phenomenon, had to find a way of fitting in.
Getting the language right in learning outcomes is the key as they need to be to an extent generic but also not too generic as they have to remain meaningful. They also need to relate to assessment criteria and vice versa. Allan Davies continues that often specific terms are used in learning outcomes which are difficult for students to understand if they have not been inducted into the language of the discipline.
This confirms that language differs depending on discipline and context. It becomes particularly apparent when foreigners prefer to continue speaking in the foreign language because of the specific terms of the discipline which they have not learned in their mother tongue.
Looking in particular at the UAL assessment system which has developed 5 assessment criteria – enquiry, knowledge, process, communication and realisation – for the whole of UAL and related learning outcomes which at least in fashion are all consistent across all fashion pathways it seems very refined and coherent. When I have been external examiner for the MA Fashion programme at RCA, I realised that their learning outcomes were far too long-winded and unclear and written by the course leader and one other tutor.
The whole system at RCA in comparison to UAL appeared much less grounded and importantly much less consistent as each programme must have got different learning outcomes and very different languages. The strong sense of aspiration for parity at UAL cannot be the same at RCA.
The key paragraphs that resonated the most with me are the following:
A lack of clarity in the learning outcomes, it seems, does not mean that students are not clear about what they have to do. Indeed, learning outcomes, ambiguous or otherwise, appear to be no substitute for established learner support systems and other frameworks that help students understand what they have to do in order to successfully complete a programme of work.
Briefs and briefings are familiar in art and design along with tutorials, interim crits and feedback forums. It is during these supportive scenarios that art and design students formulate their intentions and actions and come to understand what ‘imagination’, ‘creativity’, ‘risk-taking’, etc, (the very terms regarded as potentially ambiguous) actually mean for them.
I very much agree with the above because a lot of students don’t even know the learning outcomes or don’t try to understand them fully. In my experience the students don’t look at learning outcomes until the particular project is completed and they receive their written feedback and grade alongside the stated learning outcomes. At times the students start comparing the learning outcomes with their grade and physical project outcome but even then, most of the time they focus on the tutors’ written feedback.
On the BA Fashion Womenswear, we have numerous supportive methods in place to ensure that the students understand what they have to do to successfully complete the project. As we primarily teach one-to-one the students get several individual feedback opportunities a week, we do interim crits, we write simplified documents or emails explaining what is expected etc.
Appropriate
Returning to my starting point of the importance of language I just want to briefly look at the word ‘appropriate’. During our Wednesday session we had a brief discussion on the chat about the word ‘appropriate’. One of my peers thought that the word ‘appropriate’ is vague and meaningless which made me laugh because I very much agreed but still use the word frequently.
I remember making consciously the decision about starting to use the word because it constituted to me the only alternative to the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. As I don’t like using the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in relation to creative practice I was relieved having had found the word ‘appropriate’. However, I would argue that the word might not create the same internal reaction in me as it does to my peer despite having lived in England more than half of my life.
Another example of processing language differently is that I also remember discovering ‘key words’ for writing feedback many years ago when I was involved with writing units, learning outcomes and assessment criteria for adult education with regards to the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) at the Mary Ward Centre. This felt like a relief similar as when I had discovered the word ‘appropriate’.