As a Technical specialist the Learning outcomes set but the university and the course don’t have as great an impact in my teaching of the students as that of the academic core of the course.
I do feel that there is sometimes less of a barrier for students to discuss some issues with me as they know I don’t have to judge or mark their work and I get a feel for the sense of frustration as to why they received a particular grade for a given project.
There has been a growing culture of assigning metrics to education of the decades, these at their roots are well intentioned and often necessary to demonstrate a students grasp and competence of a subject. These only ever likely to increase in their range through education from primary to higher education where if you can apply a scale you can theoretically measure effectiveness. ( Addison 2014 )
The application of Learning outcomes ( LO’s ) in fields of a purely academic environment are easily applied where there is a measurable outcome of right or wrong but within the world of Art & Design these are not easy to apply. ( Davies 2012 )
In the QAA Subject review Process of 1998-2000, ( Davies 2012 ) he states that less than 43% Art schools had suitable arrangements for assessment in a manner that was easily accessible to students.
I believe students rarely ever look to the course literature for reassurance on what LO’s are expected from a body of work but rather rely on the project Briefing and tutorials to garner what’s expected of them.
There must be some level of metric should Art & Design institutions want to give graded degrees but I have felt for a long time that this not as relevant for art & design as many employers simply want to see what the graduate is capable of and very rarely take an interest in the awarded degree level.
In Addisons 2014 paper Doubting Learning Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation, he references information that talks of institutions having specialisms that base their LO’s on a more holistic sense of transferable skills and competence in discipline professionalism. ( Barnett 2006, Barrie 2007 )
Perhaps a greater focus on the journey of learning should be applied to LO’s and more formative approach where the the outcomes are less rigid and navigated more by the learner and what they want from the project.
This may not be applicable to all disciplines but the more expressive specialisms might benefit from not having LO’s dictated by central and local government and the institutional bias applied via the agenda set out by the college to demonstrate their achievement of attaining prescribed metrics. (Bourdieu & Passerson 1990).
Refrence
Barrie, S. C. (2007) A conceptual framework for the teaching and learning of generic graduate attributes, Studies In Higher Education, Vol. 32
Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J. C. (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, second edn. London: Sage
Allan Davies (2012) Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and
design. What’s the recurring problem?Issue 18: July 2012 University of Brighton Faculty of Arts
Nicholas Addison (2014) Doubting Learning Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation. 2014 The Author. iJADE © 2014 NSEAD/John Wiley & Sons Ltd