Specification:

Assessment type:

Authentic

Learning outcome:

Attitudes

Creating a value exhibition or a public workshop is an authentic assessment method that increases the students’ awareness of how values affect the design and design process and improves their confidence and proficiency in working with values in design. The aim is to develop students’ critical analyses through a dialogue with external audiences or possible stakeholders to enhance their transferable skills and attitudes. At an exhibition or a public workshop, the students can share ideas and make their acquired knowledge explicit and visible to a community of practice. The assessment will include more voices and build a greater capacity for student learning.

Exhibitions are public demonstrations of mastery that occur at culminating moments, such as at the conclusion of a unit of study, the transition from one level of schooling to the next, and graduation. Exhibitions require students to speak publicly, use evidence, present engaging visual displays, and otherwise demonstrate mastery to educators, peers, and others from outside the everyday school community (Davidsson, 2009).Creating a value exhibition or a public workshop is an authentic assessment method that enables reflection through dialogue with external audiences or stakeholders, which supports the students in constructing knowledge and reflection collaboratively. Through the activity the students develop critical thinking and higher order learning through an understanding of values in design in relation to stakeholders or external audiences. If students do not present their designs to stakeholders or external audiences, they might lack a validation of their designs' value sensitivity.

This assessment activity allows the teacher to see whether the intended learning outcomes of the teaching activity have been achieved by asking students to create a value exhibition or public workshop based on the suggested assessment criteria listed in the teaching activity.

By asking students to organise a value exhibition or a public workshop on the basis of specified assessment criteria, the teacher can assess students' acquired attitudes in relation to the value dimension of design such as; value tensions in their design, identified harms or benefits, stakeholder analysis, etc.

After the teaching activity, ask students to demonstrate their acquired knowledge about values in design, by creating a value exhibition or a public workshop.

Instructions to the students:

Step 1:

• Prepare a demonstration of your design or project. Consider the following questions:
• • How can the external audiences or stakeholders be an active part of your demonstration?
  • How can you, through your demonstration, invite the external audiences or stakeholders to debate the topic of values in design?
  • How can you, through your demonstration, make the embodied value-oriented attitudes visible in your work?
  • What kind of artifacts, visuals, flyers do you need to demonstrate your design or product?
  • How many activities do you need in order to demonstrate your design or product?

Step 2:

• During the exhibition or public workshop, write down all your reflections, experiences, and feedback from external audiences and stakeholders.

The following steps, are optional:

Step 3:

• Share your written notes with the other students.

Step 4:

• Read the other students’ written notes, to deepen and broaden your own reflections (and revise your own notes if necessary).

In this assessment activity, it is important to focus on the students' attitudes in order to capture and address the “visible signs of learning”. The focus should be on how the students, through engaging with a community of practice, can apply or integrate their knowledge in relation to the learning goals and relevant assessment criteria. That is, are the students able to translate and reflect upon new knowledge that they have acquired through the teaching activity into real-life practice, such as an exhibition or a public workshop.

When reviewing and watching the students’ exhibitions or public workshops, it might be helpful to pay attention to the following optional proposals for focus points depending on the content of the related teaching activity:

• How broad and deep are the students' abilities to involve, conversate or debate the topic of values in design with external audiences or possible stakeholders?
• To what extent did the students meet the assessment criteria listed in the teaching activity?

For further professional development consider:

• Are there specific learning outcomes or assessment criteria that students are particularly successful/unsuccessful in demonstrating?
• Are there any exemplary exhibitions or public workshops that work particularly well in addressing learning goals and assessment criteria (consider sharing these with the students)?

Davidson, Jill (2009) Exhibitions: Connecting Classroom Assessment With Culminating Demonstrations of Mastery. Theory Into Practice, 48(1), 36-43. http://10.1080/00405840802577585