Class activity reflection: grading art (assessment)

In class on Thursday, we did an activity where we brainstormed solutions for an art teacher's grading system. I used to be an art major, and I have been in art classes my entire life. I have seen assessment and grading done a variety of ways on a such a subjective group of work.

One thing that we did in high school was either write a justification for the work that we were doing, or we would get up and explain the work to our teacher and classmates at the end of the grading period. It did not matter how much work was produced, but if we were in class every day actually working, and then we could explain our work well at the end of the semester, we got an A. It took the pressure off of producing a plethora of mediocre work and opened the way to being able to really spend time on specific, detailed pieces of work.

In the college art classes that I have had, the first couple semesters, we would do presentations on artists for supplemental grades. The majority of our grades came from being able to justify and explain our work during class critiques at the middle and end of the semesters. The first few semesters we had very structured directions on how many square feet of paintings we had to have complete and what the topics/subjects were. For example a group of assignments for a body of work could be to experiment with color. That absolutely looked different for every single person, but it was still really intriguing to hear every person explain how they incorporated that assignment topic into every piece (or in some cases one ginormous piece) of work.

My last semester of painting studios used an exhibition approach to assessment. We did not have any assignments or regulations at all, but we had a show at the end of the semester. If your work was phenomenal, it could be bought or noticed by other professors and artists who attended. Those were a few external motivators. Internally it was motivating to myself to make sure that I had the best work that I could have to present, so I would create tons of work all semester, and then I would chip away at the pieces that I wanted to exhibit and the pieces that were better off left in the studio.

The exhibition of my work was the most motivating and least structured of all the assessment types I have had in art. I wanted to be the best I could be and be the most true to my work, so I would work really hard to make sure that my pieces reflected that. Also knowing that everyone was going to see my work and that if I slacked it would be painfully obvious was really motivating too.