The process from teaching to assessing students’ designerly and creative ways of working in higher education

This study investigates how the use of visual facilitation, sketching, and animation-based sketching combined with peer-feedback sessions can create exploratory approaches for students developing communication design in Higher Education. Firstly, the paper gives an introduction to the development of educational design revolving these iterative visual approaches. Secondly, the paper analyses the students’ production and utilization of these design- and creative methods. Furthermore, assessment and evaluation of the students’ use of these methods in Higher Education is analysed and discussed. The empirical data consists of fieldwork conducted during a 10 ECTS credit course titled ‘Communication Design: Experiences, Time, and Space’. The course is part of the bachelor’s degree in Communication and Digital Media within Humanities at Aalborg University, Denmark. Thus, the students were not especially trained in using drawing and sketching as academic tools prior to this course. The purpose of the study was to explore how to establish space for joint design inquiry among students by introducing visual methods as tools for enhancing idea generation and group dialogues. The students’ challenge was to contribute to the international art center, Copenhagen Contemporary, and help the museum achieve the goal of making their exhibition, ‘Heirloom’ by Larissa Sansour based on her Palestinian upbringing, more accessible to visitors. Students’ suggestions included audio-visual installations and props supporting visitors’ dialogues and reflections after attending the exhibition. Based on qualitative empirical data conducted from the teaching and exam situations, findings showed how the students’ production and utilization of iterative design- and visual methods enhanced their understanding of artist Larissa Sansour’s pieces in ‘Heirloom’. At first, the artist’s addressing the current political Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as universally human issues such as identity work and sense of belonging, was abstruse and difficult for the students to grasp. However, by working with visual methods through different design phases, the students were able to reflect, discuss and express central elements from the exhibition in their communication designs. The analysis of students’ final examinations showed that the student groups had different approaches to utilization of visual materials in the exam situation identified as the limited-, the hesitant- and the confident approach. Thus, the examiners and teachers had an important role of acknowledging and supporting the students’ use of visual materials in the exam situations. When included in the dialogues, the students’ visual materializations of their design processes and ideas created a joint reference point for further methodological discussion between students and examiners. Based on the findings, the paper ends by outlining different suggestions for redesign of final examination to support the students’ use of visual materials in exam situations.