Assessment

Specific skills achieved by students in the art + design program have been documented in an assessment matrix available in the department and include:

• Students apply media, techniques and processes with sufficient skill, confidence and sensitivity that their intentions are carried out in their artworks.

• Students conceive and create works of visual art that demonstrate an understanding of how the communication of their ideas relates to the media, techniques and processes they use.

• Students communicate ideas regularly at a high level of effectiveness in at least one visual arts medium. For example – “I am printmaker.” “I am painter.”

• Students initiate, define, and solve challenging visual arts problems independently using intellectual skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

• Students demonstrate the ability to form and defend judgments about the characteristics and structures to accomplish commercial, personal, communal, or other purposes of art.

• Students evaluate the effectiveness of artworks in terms of organizational structures and functions.

• Students create artworks that use organizational principles and functions to solve specific visual arts problems.

• Students demonstrate the ability to compare two or more perspectives about the use of organizational principles and functions in artwork and to defend personal evaluations of these perspectives.

• Students create multiple solutions to specific visual arts problems that demonstrate competence in producing effective relationships between structural choices and artistic functions.

• Students reflect on how artworks differ visually, spatially, temporally, and functionally, and describe how these are related to history and culture.

• Students apply subjects, symbols, and ideas in their artworks and use the skills gained to solve problems in daily life.

• Students describe the origins of specific images and ideas and explain why they are of value in their artwork and in the work of others.

• Students evaluate and defend the validity of sources for content and the manner in which subject matter, symbols, and images are used in the students' works and in significant works by others.

• Students differentiate among a variety of historical and cultural contexts in terms of characteristics and purposes of works of art.

• Students describe the function and explore the meaning of specific art objects within varied cultures, times, and places.

• Students analyze relationships of works of art to one another in terms of history, aesthetics, and culture, justifying conclusions made in the analysis and using conclusions to inform their own art making.

• Students analyze and interpret artworks for relationships among form, context, purposes, and critical models, showing understanding of the work of critics, historians, aestheticians, and artists.

• Students analyze common characteristics of visual arts evident across time and among cultural/ethnic groups to formulate analyses, evaluations, and interpretations of meaning.