Conference Proceeding

Freshmen’s Freehand Drawing Abilities with Multi-Media: an Analysis of Portfolios with Grading Rubrics

Ding, Suining

2011

Overview

Freshmen’s Freehand Drawing Abilities with Multi-media: an Analysis of Portfolios with Grading RubricsPurpose This paper presents the results of freehand sketching portfolio analysis. The author hastaught the freehand sketching course for the past five years. Pencil, ink and markers are threemajor media that are introduced in freehand sketching class. It is a freshmen course offeredduring the first semester for incoming interior design major students. Most of the freshmen donot have any drawing experience before they take freehand sketching class. It is required to turnin three portfolios including pencil portfolio, ink portfolio and color portfolio during thesemester. All the portfolios are evaluated by the rubrics. The author has kept all the gradingrubrics over the years. In order to get insight of freshmen’s ability with multi-media and assessthe learning outcomes, the author conducted an analysis based on the grading rubrics. The resultsof analysis provide valuable suggestions to curriculum design regarding freehand sketching.Review of Literature It is agreed by educators and practitioners that freehand sketching is a critical skill fordesigners. It is required by CIDA to incorporate illustrative sketching in interior design curriculum(CIDA Standards). Students need to be able to communicate their design ideas through graphiccommunication skills. Pable (2007) ‘s study indicated that educators and practitioners were unifiedin their positive perceptions of quick 3D sketches as a component of design process, and theybelieve that better design solutions would be generated if quick 3D sketches are used. Currently,no existing literature presents the assessment result of freshmen’s freehand sketching ability usingmulti-media after the first semester. Therefore, in order to teach sketching course more effectively,it is necessary to do an analysis or assessment of learning outcomes. The results will be a valuablereference for curriculum and course design.Process The analysis method is using rubrics in the grading sheets. The categorized data areanalyzed with percentage of frequency distributions. Subjects were chosen from the past threeyears who took the freehand sketching classes. Normally there are twenty students in each classsession. The class is offered in both fall and spring semesters. All the students are freshmenmajoring in interior design and some of them are majoring in architectural engineeringtechnology. Subjects’ portfolios were analyzed based on the grading rubrics. The commonrubrics for three portfolios are value, line quality, perspective, materials presentation anddrawing composition. The data were summarized based on the rubrics of three portfolios.Summary of the Results The results revealed that the ability of presenting appropriate value in the drawing is aweakness for all these media at the end of the semester. Another finding of this analysis is thatthe ability to draw accurate perspectives still needs to be further developed. Pencil portfoliopresented better understanding of value than ink portfolio. Color portfolio presented better skillsof drawing perspectives. This can be explained by the nature of the class progress that the colorportfolio is the last portfolio during the semester. As conclusions of this analysis,recommendations were made for future freehand sketching class improvement.Referenceshttp://www.accredit-id.org/accredmanual.pdfPabel, J. (2007). Quick Three-Dimensional Sketches: Educator and Practitioners’ Use, PersonalCompetency, and Perceptions of interior Design Student Preparedness. Proceedings. pp. 271-278. 2007 Interior Design Educators Council International Conference, Austin, TX.

• Publisher: American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE
• Subject: Ability / Analysis / Building engineers / Color / Curricula / Curriculum development / Data quality / Design standards / Education / Frequency distribution / Interior design / International conferences / Learning / Learning outcomes / Literary criticism / Literature reviews / Mass media / Multimedia / Perceptions / Portfolios / Sketches / Students / Teachers / Writers