Students' Talk about the Climate of Feedback Interventions in the Critique

Abstract

Similar to many courses in communication, oral communication is central to the learning goals in the discipline of design. Design critiques, the primary communication activity in design classrooms, occur in every studio course multiple times. One key feature of the critique, as an oral genre, is the amount of time and emphasis placed on feedback. The feedback intervention process within the critique plays a large role in determining the overall communicative climate of the teaching and learning event. The purpose of this study was to explore how students talk about the communication climate of the critique and the feedback within it. Drawing on feedback intervention theory and using an ethnographic interviewing framework, we conducted in-depth interviews of students in design studios. Results of this study identified four ways students characterized the critique climate and six kinds of feedback students suggested contribute to a climate for learning. Discussion suggests that feedback intervention spaces (specifically those focused on oral genres) are dialectical and relational spaces*necessitating attention not only to the cognitive processes of feedback (as feedback intervention theory suggests), but also to the emergent relational tensions that demand communicative energy within the feedback intervention process.

Lessons from art and design education: The role of in-process critique in the creative inquiry process.

“…Related to the research on feedback, there is a growing body of research on the influence of critique, and especially peer critique, on creativity in art and design education (e.g.. Budge, Neale, & Lynas, 2013;Dannels, Housley Gaffney, & Norris Martin, 2011;Gray, 2013;Percy, 2004;Schrand & Eliason, 2012). For example.…”

An Exploratory Study of Power Dynamics and Feedback in Design Reviews

“…As we think of improving design reviews for students, it is important to recognize the diversity of student experience in design reviews: there are several different modes of interaction among students and reviewers (Frederickson, 1990), and even students who describe their experiences of design review climate similarly had different affective outlooks on that climate (Dannels et al, 2011). These findings indicated that there are elements of design reviews that affect student experience beyond attitudes or actions alone.…”

“…More recently, the drive for deeper understanding of the role of feedback in design reviews has included a series of papers by Dannels, Housley Gaffney, and Martin which identified common types of design review feedback , explored the deeper meanings of feedback beyond its relationship to a project (Dannels, Housley Gaffney, & Martin, 2008), and examined student perspectives on how feedback contributed to design review climate (Dannels, Housley Gaffney, & Martin, 2011). Central to this research was a critical approach to analyzing design review communication, where feedback was considered as a communication tool for both project and relational information.…”

“…There was a climate of Collaboration (Dannels et al, 2011) between the ID student and instructor: they worked together to create new feedback that neither of them alone could generate. The mutual use of Identity Invoking feedback in the ID review reinforces this climate, as both the student and instructor acknowledged the other's personal and professional experiences as industrial designers.…”

interpretative phenomenological study of effective individual interventions by live-in residence life professionals

“…Feedback interventions have been studied in a variety of situations within higher education, such as the performance of college students in design studios (Dannels, Housley Gaffney & Norris Martin, 2011) and for students who were mandated to undergo a substance abuse program due to violations of alcohol or drug policies in their residence halls (Mun, White & Morgan, 2009;Lojewski, Rotunda & Arruda, 2010). Mun, White, and Morgan (2009) used both written and motivational interviewing as feedback interventions to determine if gender differences existed for each strategy for students mandated to participate in alcohol assistance programs after violating college alcohol policies.…”