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All data is critical to informing my teaching and I'm alarmed that other teachers might say otherwise. If we're not planning curriculum on the basis of student need something is seriously awry.As well as being a teacher, I am a curriculum leader and I strongly advocate for assessment as, of and for learning.The diagnostic or 'assessment of' learning helps me to evaluate the effectiveness of the unit I have just delivered and track cohorts of children.Assessment for learning at the commencement of a unit of study helps me to determine the various starting points of all my students, and to adapt the curriculum according to their needs, interests and learning preferences.Assessment as learning occurs all day, every day in my classroom, and is probably the most powerful in terms of how I plan for and deliver a truly personalised curriculum.I use various methods for assessing the students' formative development, and encourage self and peer assessment.I would also add that analysis of formal testing results is one of the weakest and least helpful ways of assessing student achievement and need. This form of assessment, as I said earlier, is really only useful for tracking cohorts and trends across time.In order to determine and then aim to address individual needs, teachers need to observe, question, discuss, provide multi-modal opportunities for students to demonstrate their understandings and include the students in measuring their own development.

I teach Design 166 at the University of Washington during Spring quarter. I’ve taught the course in some form since 2002.It’s a class covering the foundations of design—an introduction to formal composition in two and three dimensions. It’s also an introduction to how designers work (i.e., how designers solve problems, what is a iterative design process, etc.).Most of the students taking the class (~75-80%) want to become UW Design majors (Visual Communication Design, Industrial Design or Interaction Design). If students receive a 3.7 or better in the course, they are automatically accepted into the Design majors. Students who receive less than a 3.7 can still apply for Design by taking our annual Undergraduate Entrance Workshop.To answer your questions about “how hard it is”—I’ve posted a screen snapshot of the official UW course evaluation from Spring 2016, see: https://www.washington.edu/cec/d/DESIGN166A2165.htmlYou’ll notice that the score for “challenging” is pretty high—4.85 out of 5.Most students do report that this is a challenging (but rewarding) course.At the end of the quarter, I survey students and ask what advice they would give future students who are thinking about taking Design 166. Many students do note that the class is very time-consuming:I have compiled all of the advice from past students into a 2-page handout, which you can download here: http://faculty.washington.edu/kcheng/166/AdviceFor166Students.pdfMuch of the advice does concern time management—do not procrastinate, make time for the class, etc.: (screenshot below)In terms of self-reported hours, the median time spent by students seems in-line with other UW averages—about 2 hours per week for each credit hour (it’s a 5-credit course, so the median time spent is 10 hours per week):Personally, I think that Design 166 is challenging for two main reasons:It’s project-based, and therefore relatively self-directed.In Design 166, students complete three different design projects (3–4 weeks each). Students are given a general design brief for each project, which does set forth criteria for success—but there are multiple ways to have a successful project. There is no single “right answer”.Therefore, to have a good solution, students need to have a personal vision/idea for their design, and be passionate about developing and improving the final execution.Many students report that this is a new method of learning for them—they are more used to reading an assigned text, and answering questions about what they’ve read. In that context, there is often is a “right answer”—and students are not necessarily required to be original/novel or persistent/self-directed.It requires being able to receive and act upon criticism.Most design studios (including Design 166) use the critique method—faculty/TAs/peers evaluate and discuss student work. While many students enjoy critique, it can be a difficult learning environment because:—It’s painful to hear your work criticized (some students reject negative feedback or get depressed and stop working on their project)—Critiques can be confusing (sometimes people disagree about merits/failures of the work; it’s hard to understand what people are really thinking vs. what they literally say)—Sometimes your work is ignored (not much is said about your project)—Not all the feedback you get is useful (not all reviewers have good judgement; some suggestions are bad/wrong)These critique problems can be overcome if a student is motivated. Motivated students are persistent in asking questions/soliciting feedback, even from apathetic audiences. Motivated students also keep working—they make multiple ideas/design variations, so they “cover all bases.” Often it seems that these persistent students are intrinsically self-motivated—they enjoy the activity of designing enough that they don’t get depressed or discouraged about negative feedback—they just “get back on the horse” after failing. Talent helps too (of course), but persistence and grit are both major factors at this freshmen level.If a student can get past these two main challenges and learn to work under these constraints, it can be a fulfilling course! Many of our design majors switched into UW Design because they really enjoyed the Design 166 course. I very much enjoy seeing these students get the “design virus”—and I enjoy teaching the course each year.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But few will admit enjoying it, for fear of being perceived as unserious about research. It’s odd, since the three standard categories of academic life (teaching, research, and service/administration) are so varied and have so much in common.It’s normal to divide academic work into three categories. They differ in their visibility, reward structure, and prestige. Research sits at the top of the pile. In the most highly valued, and it plays the greatest role in hiring, promotions, funding, and other forms of recognition. Teaching comes next. It’s something that everybody understands that professors do. Everybody understands that it’s necessary and useful, but it’s less highly valued, and being a star in the classroom gets little recognition, and even arouses some suspicion. ‘Service’ or ‘administration’ is a catch-all for pretty much everything else. It covers a lot of different things. It is widely looked down upon as something between a necessary evil and a nuisance, which stands in the way of “real work” (= research). When done well, it is often warmly appreciated, but generally on a local level and without much visibility or lasting recognition.There’s really a lot of overlap between the three areas. All require creative problem solving and thinking on your feet. All require people skills, sometimes dealing with difficult or obstructive people. Even the most solitary forms of research require you to work with other humans sooner or later. And collaboration is the default in most areas of research nowadays, whether explicitly or implicitly. All require effective communication. All require learning new things. And all sometimes force you to deal with bizarre rules.There are frustrations in all areas. Nobody likes doing things that seem like pointless busy-work. Nobody likes doing things that are unlikely to be valued or appreciated. Few people enjoy delivering or receiving bad news. There’s busy work involved in doing those extra analyses that the reviewer demanded in order to get your paper accepted. I’ve never heard anybody say that they enjoyed dealing with cases of academic dishonesty in their classes. And nobody gets a thrill out of filling out forms and reports that are unlikely to ever be read. (My university used to have a faculty evaluation form that we would fill out every year that included checkboxes for any major prizes that we might have won. Every year I had to apologetically check the box that said that, unfortunately, I had yet again failed to win a Nobel Prize.)There are also moments of great satisfaction in all areas. In research it can come in making a discovery, or explaining it well, or in receiving recognition for it (via a publication, or an appreciative audience, or many other ways). Or it can come through identifying a problem that isn’t yet solved but with your reach. In teaching it comes from seeing students make progress. Often the greatest satisfaction comes not from the most talented students, but from the ones who are benefiting the most. In administration it also comes from doing things that make a difference: finding a creative solution to an organizational or funding challenge; finding an agreeable resolution to a disagreement; creating new opportunities that benefit students, colleagues, or the public. And in each case there are many other examples.A big difference between research, teaching, and service/admin is that they involve working with different sets of people, and you have different levels of control over who you work with. In research you get to choose the community of peers that you associate with, and you can choose to be more or less closely connected with them. They might include colleagues or students from your institutions, or they might all be far away. This community tends to be stable across many years, and often builds on connections that you made as a graduate student. In teaching you generally don’t get to choose who enrolls in your classes, and there’s variation in how much choice you have in who you serve in an advising role. This community changes faster: there are some students who you barely get to know before the semester is over; there are others who you get to know over the course of a few years. All at least have a passing interest in your expertise (well, sometimes a grudging disinterest is as good as it gets). In service/admin it is a huge mix. You could be working with people who you’ve worked with productively over many years. Or you could be thrown together with people who you’ve never met, who resent being with you as much as your worst students, and who have an even bigger sense of entitlement than those students.There’s also a big difference in the preparation that you get for different types of work. A PhD is supposed to prepare you to be an expert researcher, and most people spend decades building on that training. Professors sometimes receive training in teaching, but it’s always far less than the training they receive in research. And training in the skills needed for other activities is almost non-existent. You’re unlikely to be hired as a professor if you don’t have demonstrated talent as a researchers. You’re supposed to show skills in teaching, but accommodations will be made if you’re a great researcher. But skills in other areas are rarely considered in hiring, so there are many people who are really not very good beyond research and teaching, or who actively cultivate being bad at administration, as a way of avoiding it. Needing to work with people like that contributes to the distaste that many feel for admin.Research is often regarded as the most noble calling of a professor. It involves the pursuit of truth, the life of the mind, unconnected from trivial worldly concerns. That’s a little ironic, given that it’s the most rewarded academic pursuit, the one that leads to the greatest personal acclaim, remuneration, and overall clout. In some respects, other aspects of academic life that are necessary but unheralded are noble.Personally, I enjoy all three areas. I find certain aspects of all of them annoying, and I find other aspects of each of them very satisfying. There are some aspects of research that I enjoy a lot less enjoyable than some aspects of administration. They are all very varied. I’m perhaps fortunate that I mostly really like the people who I work with in teaching, research, and administration, and I’m sure that contributes to overall satisfaction. Professors who don’t get along with their institutional colleagues are less likely to enjoy admin. And professors who feel out of place in their research community but get along with their institutional colleagues might find more satisfaction in administration. But they might be reluctant to admit that, as there is a certain stigma associated with spending more time on administration, as it is often regarded as conceding failure in research.The values surrounding research, teaching, and administration/service are heavily influenced by academic acculturation. Professors start their academic life as research students, in an environment where little other than research matters. Some of the strongest peer connections are established at the same time, and they are to people who you remain connected to largely via research, and who are mostly aware only of what you do in research. Your graduate school buddies generally have no idea how you are as a teacher, and don’t even know whether you spend much of your time in administration. The labels don’t help either. The terms “administration” and “service” have neutral to negative connotations, and don’t convey any need for creativity or talent. Ironically, most academics also strongly support the notion of academic self-governance, but they often resent the responsibilities that come with that.