Assessing quality of student learning in design

This paper is about ongoing action research on developing pedagogy to teach a basic design module in multidisciplinary university setting. Over the past few years changes were made to teaching approaches, curriculum and learning environment for this module to improve quality of student learning. Most of these changes were made based on quality of student learning outcome. Initially, assessment of student learning was mostly based on teacher's perception. It soon became evident that this method of student learning assessment is very subjective and may lead to teacher-centered learning. Research evidence points out that teacher-centered learning environment encourage students to take surface learning approach [1]. Which is not desirable because, approach that a student takes to learning has an impact on the quality of that learning [2]. In short, a deep approach is characterized by student's attempt to make sense of the subject. A surface approach is characterized by student learning by rote. In this paper results of recent study on relationship between method of assessment and students approaches to learning approaches are shared.