Trudi Barrow - Design Education

The introduction of blended learning into my classroom and then the abrupt switch to a virtual learning curriculum has had a huge impact on how I now assess students through both formative and summative assessment. I’m very interested in exploring how digital tools can help alleviate the time pressures and work load of marking on the teacher whilst providing students with personalised, targeted feedback that leads to exceptional progress. “feedback should cause thinking. It should be focused; it should relate to the learning goals that have been shared with the students; and it should be more work for the recipient than the donor. Indeed, the whole purpose of feedback should be to increase the extent to which students are owners of their own learning,” ― Dylan Wiliam,  Embedded Formative Assessment KS3 Digitally Marked Scheme of Learning The majority of formative assessment during a KS3 DT rotation has historically been in the form of handwritten comments. I’ve also tr...

Exam boards no longer have a section of marks students can achieve for their presentation skills. My personal opinion is this is wrong as it has lead to pieces of coursework in KS4 and 5 being text heavy with often little teaching attention given to how to present ideas clearly and effectively. In professional design industries, design boards, models and portfolios are centre stage to group discussions and client pitches. To be able to effectively communicate visually is essential and goes hand in hand with creating excitement and engagement from the client. I talk about the 'wow' factor in my lessons and spend time discussing the need to 'attention grab' with the quality of presentation of design drawings. This is something students are often very confident with when using CAD but I fear hand sketching skills are taking a back seat. In my department we have recently invested in pro-markers and I have taught rendering skills to KS5 students. Not only has the presentatio...