Pre-Planning for Better Building Performance

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Achieving cost-effective design education: highest quality graduates for least resources and cost

The primary purpose of this paper is to show how results of recent original basic empirical research into the mental processes of various types of creativity apply to design education. The intent of the paper is to help overcome entrenched suspicion about creativity as too imprecise for pragmatic design such as in engineering. The paper makes no claim to contributing anything new to recent literature about best practices in education in general. Instead, the paper makes an original contribution to understanding relationships between the mental processes of creativity and design processes (particularly engineering and related "pragmatic" design fields) and how recognition and development of the underlying creative processes can contribute to greatly improved best-practices and cost benefits in design education. The paper shows how the various combinations of creative thinking processes are directly relevant in varying ways to all design, then goes on to show how these creative thinking processes can be assessed transparently and can make innovative and significant contributions to increasing design ability in students and graduates, and to meeting educational objectives of best practice, and institutional objectives of accountability and efficiency

Profiling designers as a basis for assessing design performance

To distinguish between designers who are successful as individual designers and designers who are successful members of design teams, with particular reference to multi-disciplinary design teams (MDDTs). The most significant anomalies are that high levels of success are generally not consistent with high levels of expertise, and (by corollary) that high levels of expertise are often detrimental to success, in both individual and team design situations. The success profiles concept challenges conventional design education paradigms and provides an alternative basis for reviewing and evaluating our curriculum and assessment protocols for all design disciplines

Participants perceptions of fair and valid assessment in tertiary music education

This chapter reports on the views of a selection of Bachelor of Music students and their teachers at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (QCGU), providing important insights into how current assessment practices influence student learning in the Australian context, and with particular reference to the Threshold Learning Outcomes for the Creative and Performing Arts. Themes addressed include the role of teacher feedback, experience with self- and peer assessment, the role of exemplars in standards-based assessment, balancing holistic and criteria-based assessment practices, subjectivity in assessing conceptualization in creative works, and the role of tacit knowledge in students fully understanding and applying assessment criteria. Results of focus group sessions with students in the Performance, Musical Theatre and Composition streams of the Bachelor of Music degree, reveal that participants are enthusiastic about ensuring that assessment practices and teacher feedback enhances their growth as musicians, ultimately enabling them to become self-regulated learners. Their teachers are equally concerned about providing their students with high professional standards as reference points for their musical growth, and ensuring that summative assessments of musical performances are fair and valid