Creativity & Innovation Toolkit

Guidelines for assessing students' creativity

1. Offer students as wide a range of assessment options as possible
2. Specify each aspect of creativity that will be assessed
3. Allow enough time to assess the creative elements in each assignment
4. Let students know the criteria
5. Show students how their expectations and your expectations align

Allow enough time to assess the creative elements in each assignment

Assessing creativity is hard work and time consuming. Students need a lot of formative feedback along the way, so you cannot rely on a final, end-of-project summative assessment on which to award grades. It can often be difficult to assess creative work objectively. Often, your own preferences and taste need to be put aside and the work viewed as a whole, on its own merit, but just as often these preferences and tastes emerge only after vast professional experience – hence the ‘Gestalt’ qualities assessed in design assignments (for instance, examine how the professional/academic sees the work against the backdrop of the field or domain, and its contemporary setting. Whatever the field or discipline, however, if your original criteria were valid and aligned to the learning objectives, your task will be easier.