HOW CAN WE ENSURE OUR ASSESSMENT PRACTICES CONTRIBUTE TO THE LONG TERM LEARNING OF DESIGN STUDENTS?

Traditional design assessment practices are problematic as they typically occur at the end of a course and often rely on marking an artefact or outcome as measurement of a student’s achievement in that course. This limits the possibility for transferral of learning to a future context such as the workplace, as learning is restricted to that which is required to pass the course. Recent PhD design research list discussions also suggest that this kind of assessment is not a reliable indicator of student achievement in certain desired, less tangible aspects of design, such as scholarly enquiry, critical self-reflection and articulation of iterative creative rationales that support decision-making.

The paper draws on the notion of sustainable assessment to foster long-term learning (Boud & Falchikov forthcoming), that shifts the focus of assessment from measurement to ‘informing judgement’ and has two functions – one is to inform students how to judge what they learn, why they learn it and how they learn it, and the other is the act of forming judgement on their learning to assist learning beyond the institution.
The paper will argue the possibilities for sustainable assessment practices to enhance the long term learning of design students by offering teachers alternative approaches to constructing assessment tasks that go beyond the traditional functions of measuring achievement for certification in a course, and providing feedback for immediate learning in a project. Boud suggests students suffer the ‘effects of assessment’ (forthcoming), as they experience assessment as something that is done to them at the end of a project, rather than something they do for themselves as they learn. The paper will argue that by applying sustainable assessment principles for the purpose of ‘informing judgement’, teachers can assist design students to internalise acts of self-regulation and critical self-reflection in a more authentic judgement of learning, which will be useful as they prepare to enter a profession in which they will continue to learn.

To support the argument for sustainable assessment practices in design education, practical examples from a graphic design undergraduate course will suggest possibilities for informing student judgement about immediate and future learning. ‘Alternative’ methods such as self, peer and group assessment, and tools such as journals, feedback and portfolios will be critiqued from within a sustainable assessment framework.

Boud, D. & Falchikov, N. (forthcoming), ‘Reframing assessment as if learning was important’, in Rethinking Assessment for Higher Education: For the Longer Term, Routledge, London.