Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem?

I was interested to read this article by Allan Davies because when reading student briefs on the courses I have worked on I have often been confused about learning outcomes, assessment criteria and grade descriptors, what are they and what differentiates them from each other.

This is what I thought before starting to read the article.

• Learning Outcomes: describe what students should be able to do.
• Assessment Criteria: describe how this will be judged.
• Grade Descriptors: indicate what is required for the award of grades.

How is it that students can go through their University course without understanding learning outcomes or assessment criteria but still manage to succeed and get good grades?

 Students have Learning outcomes and assessment criteria deciphered and translated by academic and technical staff and so can continue to progress. WHY DO STAFF NEED TO EXPLAIN BRIEFS? THEY SHOULD BE CLEAR

I think it’s partly because students quickly realise that as long as they start producing some sort of tangible response to University briefs and projects they will be helped and guided by staff in tutorials and crits. Do staff fully understand the outcomes and assessments they are teaching or do they disregard them?

Learning outcomes like Intuition inventiveness imagination visualisation risk-taking are difficult to measure and assess because they are about Understanding and understanding can develop in different directions making it difficult to assess

If a learning outcome is too specific the resulting student work will be prescriptive predictable.

Students are encouraged to make and solve their own problems but at the same time are graded and assessed by staff.

The language of learning outcomes and assessment must be common across courses and institutions

 I think Davies

is saying students must know what they are being asked to achieve. Develop an idea of what they are learning and how they will go about it and develop personal responses. 

The nature of the assessment criteria needs to differentiate different levels of achievement without resort to the terms already used by the outcomes Biggs (2003)

I am more confused after reading this article.

Davies is advocating meaningfulness rather than measurability.

 I think everyone would agree that students should have a meaningful education on art and design courses but how we can grade this is not really any clearer to me. I have for a while now thought that Art and Design University courses should be pass/fail.

I have never been asked in a job interview what grade I achieved at BA or MA level and for me neither course was about achieving a particular grade.

 I have been asked to present my portfolio of designs, something I would not have been able to do without studying on the courses I attended. I have also worked with very talented designers who have no university training and with designers who studied on unrelated courses. I agree with Davies that University art and design students and courses should be measured on their meaningfulness but I’m no clearer on how that would translate into grades.