Assessing creativity: proposition

The assessment of creative works is one of the more contentious issues facing contemporary design educators. This situation was first recognised by Donald Schön in his early work on formative assessment in studio environments, and it is a problem that has, since that time, been explored by a range of scholars. In a recent study on architectural education in Australasia, Ostwald and Williams argue that the rise of quality assurance mechanisms for assessment and teaching has placed particular pressure on traditional assessment methods and processes. Traditional assessment practice has often relied on the assessors’ subjective judgement along with a tacit understanding of what is creative. This practice is inappropriate from a quality assurance perspective. However, it dramatises the contemporary shift in thinking about assessment processes, to include legal and managerial expectations. Regardless of whether these changes in educational culture are reasonable or not, the fact remains that there is increasing pressure on teaching and assessment processes, with particular issues facing the assessment of creativity. This paper discusses the issue of assessment in design education and proposes a general conceptual framework for assessing the creative works of design students. The framework, which has been developed as part of an ongoing project, is discussed in the context of design academics’ and students’ perceptions of creativity and their experiences of assessing creativity or having their creative works assessed.