All Ireland Society for Higher Education
| Name: | Nuala Hunt |
|---|---|
| Email: | huntn@ncad.ie |
| Institution: | national college of art and design |
Tim MacMahon
Introducing Learning Outcomes into undergraduate courses in Art and Design College.
Establishing challenges and emergent issues for staff as they engage with an outcomes based approach to curriculum development.
This paper intends to establish the concerns emerging for staff as they grapple with writing learning outcomes for undergraduate art and design courses and the implications for teaching and learning of an outcomes based approach. Furthermore it examines the wider art and design context including UK initiatives in this area,and will include relevant litreature review. Finally the importance of institutional setting and timing, as factors impacting on the process of embedding an outcomes based approach to curriculum will also be addressed. NCAD is a recognised college within NUI offerering undergraduate and post-graduate qaulifications in art and design. The college can trace its origins to the 18th century, as a national college, it is based in the centre of Dublin and has a student population of approximately one thousand.
The behavourist model was the primary approach to curriculum design and development at NCAD in the 1980's and 90's. Curriculum development is departmentally based and staff are involved in annual review of courses. In the recent past, NCAD introduced quality assurance and now departments are involved in self assessment processes as well as external peer review.
Artists and Designers, approach to teaching is similar but not altogether the same, as there are notable differences in terms of the end outcomes. Most often, Fine Art teaching is focused on individual students' establishing a studio practice, whereby the individual artist creates work in a studio for an audience, who will hopefully view the finished art work in an exhibition space. Designers are involved in creating objects and products for a client, the client or audience can be an important factor in shaping the final art product. Designers will work independently and in teams, they respond to project briefs and work within time-frames addressing client needs.
While approaches to teaching can differ, in an art and design college, imagination, creativity and experimentation are highly prized, the unintended and accidental is encouraged throughout the learning process. Furthermore, subjectivity and values are inherent to the subject area. In art and design teaching, creativity and originality, are difficult to define and open to multiple interpretations, but nonetheless considered as essential ingredients in teaching and learning.
In an art and design context, modularisation and learning outcomes can be regarded as a means of limiting and reducing the very thing lecturers want to encourage in their students. Modularisation is not always welcome in this context as it is viewed as imposing a straight jacket on the learning process. Consequently there is reluctance and resistance in some areas of art and design to an outcomes based approach.
Summary of the concerns staff raise as they grapple with learning outcomes: * Will it reduce and limit the possibilities of encouraging creativity and risk taking for students? * Is the language of learning outcomes, art and design friendly or is it more suited to the sciences and humanities? * Will students' only pursue stated learning outcomes and are unintended outcomes valued in the learning process? * How does one write learning outcomes that are explicit and evidence based, when previoulsy the curriculum focused on the implicit? * Is constructive alignment desireable in a situation where the implications for teaching are not fully understood?
So far, the process of introducing learning outcomes has been gradual, the appraoch incremental, with some success and some failure. In an ideal scenario and for optimum outcomes, of an outcomes based approach being delivered on at third level, one should start working with staff on new courses and work from programme learning outcomes, to individual module learning outcomes, achieving constructive alignment by starting at the end point and working backward. In reality, it is much more likely where existing courses are in place, and in order to encourage staff to participate in the process, one starts with existing courses, providing workshops on writing learning outcomes for modules/units and work the long way around to programme outcomes and constructive alignment.
Nuala Hunt, MA, MSc Head of Continuing Education