Category: Uncategorised

Context: Traditional Assessment Models

Traditional assessment methods in design education often feel rigid, focusing on final outcomes rather than the process of learning itself. These models tend to prioritize summative evaluations, standardized criteria, and numerical grades—approaches that can inadvertently stifle creativity and critical thinking. In design, where personal expression and subjective interpretation are central to the practice, such frameworks often fail to capture the depth and complexity of student learning. Brown and Glasner (1999) noted that traditional models typically emphasize measuring knowledge acquisition through objective testing, overlooking the nuanced development of critical thinking and reflective skills.

For many students, particularly those from diverse cultural backgrounds, these conventional methods can feel alienating. The emphasis on a one-size-fits-all, Western-centric approach to assessment fails to recognize the multiplicity of learning styles and the different ways students express their creativity. I’ve found, through my own experience, that this doesn’t just hinder creativity but creates barriers to deeper learning and reflection, as the process becomes overshadowed by grades rather than growth.

Evaluation

The more I’ve reflected on my teaching and the feedback from students, the clearer it becomes: traditional assessment models don’t encourage the kind of learning environment I want to create. Harris (2022) offers an interesting perspective on the power of silence in learning, especially for introverted students. “Silence can be a powerful space for reflection, not an absence of learning” (p. 102). This was a turning point for me; it made me reconsider how we often equate participation with verbal expression, leaving little room for students who process deeply in quieter ways. It’s a reminder that assessment should be about growth, not just vocal engagement.

This idea resonates with the principles of dialogic assessment that Alexander (2024) discusses. Dialogic assessment shifts the focus from judgment to conversation, allowing for reciprocal feedback and critical dialogue. Alexander describes this as “enhancing thinking and understanding by promoting cumulative, reciprocal, and supportive exchanges” (p. 15). This approach not only benefits students in developing their critical thinking skills, but it also invites a more collaborative, less hierarchical form of learning, one that I’ve come to believe is more effective.

bell hooks (2003) advocates for education as a “practice of freedom”—a way of teaching that encourages critical thinking, hope, and community. For me, this is what education should aim for: a shared journey where learning is seen as transformative, not transactional. When we move beyond judgment and embrace dialogue, assessment becomes a tool for growth rather than a measure of how well we’ve conformed to established norms.

Implications

Based on these reflections, it’s clear that we need a shift in how we approach assessment. Here are some specific changes I’ve been working towards:

• Redefining Assessment Criteria: I aim to move away from rigid rubrics that only value end products, toward criteria that acknowledge the process, critical thinking, and cultural contexts.
• Encouraging Reflective Dialogue: I want to create more opportunities for students to engage in reflective conversations about their work. These dialogues should allow students to see their creative process as just as valuable as the final result.
• Inclusive Feedback Mechanisms: I am developing feedback practices that recognize the diverse ways students learn and express themselves. This is about making sure no one feels overlooked or unheard in the process.
• Decentralizing Authority: Rather than seeing myself as the sole authority, I strive to position myself as a facilitator, encouraging peer-to-peer feedback and collaborative assessment practices.

Action Plan

As an Associate Lecturer, I’m working to implement these changes within my own teaching environment, focusing on the areas where I can have the most impact: individual tutorials, group tutorials, formative assessments, and summative assessments.

In individual tutorials, I make sure to explain the five learning outcomes of the UAL system clearly, so students can connect their creative process to the assessment criteria. This helps them understand that their work is not just evaluated in terms of the final product but also the critical engagement and reflection that went into it.

For formative assessments, I incorporate peer learning strategies that encourage students to engage in dialogues that critique and reflect on each other’s work. This not only decentralizes the traditional top-down feedback model but also helps students develop critical thinking skills in a reciprocal, supportive environment. I plan to hold structured peer review sessions, where feedback is presented as a collaborative, growth-oriented process.

In summative assessments, I’ve started asking students to submit self-evaluations alongside their projects. This encourages them to critically assess their own learning journey, reflect on the process, and articulate areas for growth. When giving feedback, I focus on encouraging dialogue, emphasizing both their strengths and areas for development.

References:

Alexander, R. (2024) Dialogic Teaching Bibliography. Available at: https://robinalexander.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Alexander-dialogic-teaching-bibliography-June-2024.pdf (Accessed: 2 February 2025).

hooks, b. (2003) Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge.

Brown, S. and Glasner, A. (1999) Assessment Matters in Higher Education: Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Harris, K. (2022) ‘Embracing the silence: introverted learning and the online classroom’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 5(1), pp. 101–104. Available at: https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/article

Teaching Context

Since 2022, I have been immersed in the world of design education, with a background in graphic design (BFA, United States) and visual communication (MA, United Kingdom). Growing up in the Pearl River Delta area in South China, my cultural lens is shaped by the rapid urbanization and the intersection of traditional and contemporary influences in the region. This context—rooted in the complexities of my cultural background—has pushed me to embrace graphic design as a critical and investigative practice, moving away from its often reductionist role as a commercial or aesthetic service.

In my teaching, I aim to engage students in a practice that is experimental, diverse, and rooted in critical thinking. My approach integrates various learning environments, providing students with the flexibility to experiment and question the conventions of design. It’s not just about learning how to produce aesthetically pleasing work but understanding design as an exploratory tool for deeper social and cultural questions.

Evaluation

Design education is often entrenched in a set of global assumptions that, at times, stifle new ways of thinking and doing. Graphic design be reimagined as research rather than mere output production: “graphic design can function as a form of research and investigation, pushing the boundaries of its discipline to create meaningful, thought-provoking work that engages with larger societal questions” (Van der Velden, 2006). This resonates deeply with how I see the role of design in my classroom: as an inquiry-driven practice that provokes thought, challenges norms, and opens up new avenues of reflection.

Yet, there is still a pervasive struggle for students to step outside traditional, commercial design paradigms. The feedback I have received often points to the difficulty in breaking free from familiar templates of commercial success. As one student mentioned, “Learning to view design as a way to challenge societal issues was a huge shift. It’s no longer just about making things look nice but engaging in a critical dialogue through design.” These sentiments reinforce the importance of a shift toward critical design pedagogy.

Designer and Educator Danah Abdulla sheds light on an important challenge that persists in design education today: the dominance of Eurocentric frameworks that marginalize voices from non-Western perspectives. In Design Struggles, Abdulla writes, “design is often shaped by dominant global perspectives, which exclude alternative epistemologies and cultural understandings” (Abdulla, 2021). This critique echoes in my experience working with students from various global contexts, especially those from the Global South, who often feel disconnected from a curriculum that doesn’t reflect their own cultural narratives. In response, I have deliberately integrated decolonial perspectives into my teaching, urging students to critique design as a vehicle for perpetuating or resisting power structures.

In design research and curriculum design, figures like Giovanni Anceschi and Massimo Botta’s call for an inclusive, cross-border approach to design research. They argue that, “these multiple approaches reflect the complexity and evolving nature of the design discipline” (Anceschi & Botta, 2021). This notion has propelled me to encourage students to work collaboratively with peers from diverse cultural and geographical contexts, forming a rich exchange of ideas that transcends boundaries and offers alternative ways of thinking about design.

Implications

The evolution of my teaching practice underscores the need for a global redesign of design pedagogy—one that embraces diverse methodologies, challenges cultural monopolies, and allows students to confront the intersections between design, culture, and politics. This evolution also means expanding the scope of design education to be more inclusive, critical, and interdisciplinary. A key implication here is the need to rethink design as an active site of resistance, not just a passive response to consumer demands.

Action Plan

1. Broaden Curriculum Content: Move beyond Western-centric design narratives by introducing global design case studies, especially from marginalized communities and cultures. This will provide students with a richer understanding of design’s role in different cultural and political contexts.
   
2. Building International Collaborations: Build partnerships with design schools in the Global South and other underrepresented regions to expand students’ worldviews and to reinforce cross-border collaborations that reflect a more nuanced approach to design.
   
3. Embed Critical and Decolonial Thinking: Encourage students to explore design as a tool for social transformation. This includes analyzing how design can both reproduce and challenge power structures, ultimately empowering students to reshape the design discipline through critical engagement.
   
4. Cultivate an Inquiry-Based Approach: provoke the notion that design is about asking big questions, not just providing solutions. By embracing speculative design, as Dunne and Raby suggest, students will be better equipped to use design to propose alternatives to the status quo (Dunne & Raby, 2013).
   

References:

Abdulla, D. (2021). Disciplinary Disobedience. In C. Mareis & N. Paim (Eds.), Design Struggles: Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives (pp. 40-55). Valiz.

Anceschi, G. & Botta, M. (2021). “Hypermodern? Perspectives for the Design Education, Research and Practice.” In Multiple Ways to Design Research: Research Cases that Reshape the Design Discipline (pp. 18-35). Swiss Design Network. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/88840515/Multiple_Ways_to_Design_Research_Research_cases_that_reshape_the_design_discipline [Accessed 1 February 2025].

Dunne, D., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press.

Van der Velden, D. (2006). Research and Destroy: Graphic Design as Investigation. [online] Available at: https://readings.design/PDF/vanderVelden_research-distroy.pdf [Accessed 1 February 2025].

On Reading ‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti‐Colonial Solidarity by Polly Savage

“The Russians had learnt design from infancy, they had grown up knowing how to draw, to work with watercolours, gouache, clay.”

I thought about my own experience, starting technical training as a child. My father, a skilled draftsman, had been taught in the Soviet realist tradition—crosshatching, shading, every detail of a live portrait meticulously captured. I remember him showing me his techniques, his insistence that the drawing should be precise, each line steady and measured. His guidance, however, was never patient, often sharp, focused on the way my drawings wavered, out of proportion or lacking a firm hand.

His sketchbook, a relic of those days, still sits in his hometown of Qingdao. My aunt keeps it on a shelf, among other mementos: a clay portrait head, a strand of rosemary beads from my grandmother who passed away years ago, and old photographs of my grandfather, who retired from the navy. Qingdao itself, a city shaped by colonial history and now famous for its brewery, feels like a bridge between past and present, where the marks of foreign influence linger beneath the surface of everyday life.

When I reflect on Qingdao, it’s a city defined by the scars of colonialism. It’s strange how history operates in layers, like the sketches in my father’s book—sometimes the lines are clear, other times they blur. But within those layers, the past shapes the present in subtle and powerful ways.

Reading Polly Savage’s ‘The New Life’, I was struck by the parallels between the experiences of Mozambican art students in the USSR and my own journey through design education. Savage (2022) discusses how these students navigated the contradictions of learning in a space that offered both solidarity and subtle forms of control, reflecting broader tensions in decolonial movements. Similarly, I find myself questioning the structures within which I teach, recognizing how pedagogical frameworks can both empower and constrain.

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) resonates deeply here. Freire emphasizes that “Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (Freire, 1970, p. 34). This insight compels me to consider how my teaching can transcend traditional, hierarchical models and instead foster critical, reflective practices among students.

In reflecting on these readings, I recognize that my approach to design education must continuously interrogate its own assumptions. Decolonising the University (Bhambra et al., 2018) argues for dismantling Eurocentric epistemologies in favor of more inclusive, pluralistic frameworks. This challenges me to rethink not just what I teach, but how I teach—ensuring that my pedagogy remains attentive to diverse histories, perspectives, and ways of knowing.

References:

Bhambra, G. K., Gebrial, D., & Nişancıoğlu, K. (2018). Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Available at: https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf [Accessed 1 Feb. 2025].

Savage, P. (2022). ‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity. Art History, 45(1), pp. 126-145.

I’m Can Yang, an associate lecturer at the Royal College of Art’s MA Visual Communication program (0.5) and Chelsea College of Arts’ Graduate Diploma Graphic Design program. My teaching focuses on cultivating critical dialogue and collaborative learning, encouraging participants to question conventional norms while developing their unique voices and perspectives.

My practice is dedicated to creating frameworks for collective thinking and being through collaborative activities, workshops, and open-ended conversations. These engagements are informed by a continuous exploration of new media and visual language studies, creating dialogical spaces for meaningful interaction.