Assessing Creativity through Common Consensus
"This is a good exhibition, very creative work, isn't it?" I remark when attending an exhibition with a friend. "I think it's lousy and unimaginative," my friend comments.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Many people have similar experiences when discussing a piece of creative art work with others - people hold different views on creativity. For example, some regard Picasso as a very creative artist while others may have a completely different idea about him and his works. Different viewers will interpret a given work of art from various perspectives. Such interpretations will likely differ from each other (Efland 2002). As pointed out by Treffinger, "creativity has always been an elusive concept for which there is no single, universally accepted definition" (1999, p.35). It is so esoteric that some even argue this phenomenon cannot be studied and measured scientifically. Thus what will happen when it comes to assessing a student's creative outcomes? What exactly do teachers assess and how do they measure creativity?
Creative outcomes can take many forms including: a painting, a book, a piece of music, a solution to a hypothetical problem. Another possible creative outcome can be film. Film as one of the art forms, is a complexly structured domain. Learning filmmaking often draws upon knowledge from different domains of art such as visual arts, language arts, dramaturgy as well as other fields of knowledge, such as cultural issues and social issues.
Filmmaking is a complicated process, too. First a script has to be written. Then the director has to interpret and transform the script into segments of images and sounds (preproduction phase). The interpretation then needs to be realized and shot on film or video (production phase). Afterwards, the shots have to be structured in a particular way to deliver the idea and the emotion, and music and sound effects have to be added to enhance the emotion and define the tone (post production phase). Only when a film has been edited in the post-production phase can this creative work appear in a truly coherent form.
In filmmaking, one's creativity is reflected through the completed film or video work. In the college where I am teaching, film or video work is assessed mainly from three aspects: creativity, technical fluency and professional attitude. While the latter two aspects seem more obvious and objective, creativity is always vague and subjective. There are clearly identified criteria under the categories of technical fluency (such as use of camera, editing skill, etc.) and professional attitude (e.g. problem-solving ability, meeting set deadlines, cooperation with team members, etc.). However, there are no specific criteria listed under creativity. The judgements for creativity are, at best, implicit. Often the assessment for creativity relies on the expertise as well as the personal taste of an individual assessor. No objective criteria are stated. For example, in assessing the creativity of a short film, one lecturer may focus on the content while another may place emphasis on the visual expression. Hence, there may be a big difference in the grades two different assessors may give for creativity in the same film project.
Students can easily feel confused about what is actually being assessed in a project in terms of creativity. This lack of stated criteria creates two problems. On one hand, the results of the assessment may not be consistent and may not truly reflect a student's creative quality. On the other hand, the results are unlikely to serve the purpose of informing students about how they can improve their creative ability. Is it possible to improve how creativity is assessed?
When studying for my Master's degree, I decided to unveil the seemingly mysterious phenomenon of creativity by paying attention to it and reflecting on it in the daily practice of my teaching in the environment where I was involved. It turned out to be an inspiring and encouraging experience and I would like to share my discoveries.
The process of the study was divided into 3 stages:
1. To identify the appropriate criteria for assessing creativity in filmmaking.
2. To develop an assessment rubric incorporating the criteria.
3. To apply the rubric to assess the creativity in 23 students' film projects.
