Effective Assessment in Art and Design : writing learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design

This document has been written to help teachers in art and design who are writing project
briefs or unit outlines in learning outcomes form for the first time. It is not meant to be
prescriptive but rather a general guide that attempts to clarify the purposes of outcome-led
learning and identify some of the pitfalls you might encounter.
You will find that the most successful examples of outcome-led learning come from
competency-based learning where it is relatively straightforward for students to provide
evidence of their learning because the outcomes are almost always skills oriented.
Increasingly, universities are adopting the learning outcomes approach (student-centred) in
preference to the aims and objectives approach (teacher-centred). Many examples now exist
of text-based subjects working with learning outcomes. One of the major challenges for them
is to take the term 'understanding' and redefine it in terms of more specific measurable
cognitive (thinking) outcomes. In art and design our challenge is greater because we work
with rather more ambiguous terms such as 'creativity', 'imagination', 'originality' etc as well as
'understanding'. A significant challenge for you then will be to articulate learning outcomes in
a way which promotes these important cognitive attributes but at the same time provides
some useful methods of measuring their achievement.

Produced as part of the ADC-LTSN Learning and Teaching Fund project: Effective Assessment in Art and Design