This article examines the deliberations and actions of a group of communication design educators in replacing discretionary grading in eight core units of a design course with a combination of pass/fail grading, rich formative feedback and a reinvigorated studio environment. The changes sought to better focus students on their creative process and improve their awareness of their acquisition of attributes, skills and knowledge along the path to becoming work-ready graduates. The traditional studio model of graphic design education approaches student learning through immersion in practice, imagining novice designers absorbing abilities and dispositions through experimentation and proximity to discipline experts and peers. If this model ever truly operated in Australia’s design schools, it has been eviscerated by the massification, marketization and rationalization of tertiary education since the early 1990s. Australian design education now operates with significantly reduced contact hours, tightly scheduled classes and standardized administrative, classroom and assessment practices that do not effectively model professional practice and limit students’ development of creative confidence. Another barrier to fostering students’ design acumen is their frequent fixation on grades as markers of success. We looked to removing grades to revitalize students’ flagging creative ambitions within the constraints of a tertiary education system we could not change. In stressing that a move to pass/fail grading is not an action to be taken lightly, we discuss our research into its advantages and disadvantages, the integral reconceptualization of learning and teaching approaches required to make the change and the challenges in implementation. This included understanding how students and staff interacted in the studio, their emotional and philosophical attachment to graded assessment, the effort required to communicate the changes to staff and students and developing resources to combat the fragmentation of the educational experience, which risks stripping change of its meaning and purpose.

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