Design Studio - Evaluation Series

Starting this evening and continuing throughout the week, Nate and I will be taking a closer look at the Design Studio Evaluation process and possible ways to improve it. We have to give credit where credit is due - this series is borrowing from Erik's Design a Day Series. But neither Nate or myself are very good designers, so we'll be presenting a series of examples to improve the evaluation process and help students improve during design studio.

Nate and I plan to keep in mind the following guidelines when rethinking the evaluation system:

• Design Studio is still a class - which means the new system must be able to assign a reasonable grade to each student.
• We need to focus on improvement - If a student is learning and applying course material, then they will show improvement.
• Students should work on their projects as much as possible, so there needs to be low overhead in an improved evaluation system.

Evals have come a long way since we began Design Studio, and we want to keep improving the process. Improving the evaluation system would lead to better feedback, which will help students get better and increase the probability of project success.

Later tonight, we will post a review of the current evaluation system and the road map for the rest of the week. Please leave comments - we want to hear as many different viewpoints as possible.