The Impact of Assessment Modes on Collaborative Group Design Projects Establishing best-practice principles for the teaching and assessment of group design projects
المؤلف:
Richard Tucker
المصدر:
Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment
الجزء والصفحة:
P215-C19
2025-07-08
471
The Impact of Assessment Modes on Collaborative Group Design Projects
Establishing best-practice principles for the teaching and assessment of group design projects
Architects need collaborative skills to negotiate an infinite number of design options within a building design process that can include over fifty kinds of participants and consultants (Cuff, 1991). Yet while a significant body of research exists relating to the teaching of problem-based group work (Sanz-Menendez, 2000; Grigg et al., 2003), the focus of this research has rarely been the student design studio. Only the Clients and Users in Design Education (CUDE) project at the Sheffield University School of Architecture has looked at the issue of teaching team-working skills in the design studio (Fisher, 2000). The findings of the CUDE research are, however, untested elsewhere as a measure of student performance in team assessed design projects versus performance in individually assessed projects. A Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant (STALG) funded project at Deakin University that aims at "Establishing Best-Practice Principles for the Teaching of Group Design Projects" is attempting to redress this shortcoming by observing, recording and analyzing student performance and feedback in group and in individual design units. The following is a position which describes the background, methodology and preliminary results of this research project.
The STALG project builds on collaborate research between the School of Architecture and a Deakin University teaching and learning support service (Deakin Learning Services) that in 2004 identified the need for additional resources to assist in group teaching (Anderson, 2004). The beginnings of the STALG group learning project were prompted by a situation likely all too familiar to those teaching design. Due to limited funds for sessional teaching staff, each member of the third-year 2003 cohort at Deakin could expect a maximum of eight minutes per week one-to-one teaching time. In common with many other schools across Australasia, Deakin students could not therefore rely solely on one-to-one contact time with tutors to advance their designs. There is of course one easy solution to this problem and that is for tutors to review fewer assignments, but in greater depth, by setting group design projects.
Rather than spreading their time thinly, therefore, over a large number of individual projects, an increasing number of lecturers are setting group projects. This allows them to co-ordinate longer and more in-depth review sessions on a smaller number of assignment submissions. However, while the group model may reflect the realities of the design process in professional practice, the approach is not without its shortcomings as a teaching and learning archetype for the assessment of individual student skill competencies. Hence, what is clear is the need for a readily adoptable andragogy for the teaching and assessment of group design projects. In the experience of design teachers at Deakin, the issue of 'fair' assessment in team design projects is one of great concern to academics and students alike. Here, the success of cooperative learning often hinges on students' perceptions of whether the assessment accurately reflects their individual comparative performance. Research at Deakin, therefore, is implementing and evaluating two forms of assessment. The first is on-line peer-assessment, which is being developed to allow students to appraise one another's performance in a group within the secure and anonymous environment of a web portal. The second is continuous assessment, namely the continuous assessment of the design process. Continuous assessment of process offers an alternative to the assessment model common to most student design projects where achievement is largely assessed by evaluating the end-product of de sign as represented by a final submission. As we shall see, peer assessment and continuous assessment are very much interdependent models; for as peer assessment evaluates the design process throughout the project rather than an end product, it is process too that is evaluated by continuous assessment.
The 2005 STALG funded group learning project addressed its principal research questions through three forms of evaluation: formative evaluation through questionnaires, summative evaluation through reflective portfolio assessment and analysis, and illuminative evaluation through focus group discussions, observation of tutorials and analysis of student work. Two cohorts were closely observed taking part in two group design projects with highly contrasting programs and structures. In the third-year studio the project observed was the Atelier Geelong studio - which was worked on by teams of five, compared to teams of three in 2003 and in teams of six and seven in 2004. The 2005 fourth-year Urbanheart studio formed a comparative cohort that operated a number of two, three, and four-person group projects. Nine teams in Atelier Geelong and Urbanheart were observed in order to evaluate communication between students in the studio using an observation template that recorded individual contributions. We shall, however, confine ourselves to an analysis solely of the 2005 Atelier Geelong project, for it is here where assessment has been a focus.
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