Quasi-Experts’ Assessments of Creative Products: An Evaluation Using a Sample of Design Students
Kuan Chen Tsai *
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, City University of Macau, China
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The current study was designed to examine the possible use of quasi-experts (design-college students) to assess creative products (four-frame comic strips). The research questions we sought to answer were: (a) Can the consensual assessment technique (CAT) yield reliable ratings when quasi-experts are used as judges? And (b) can quasi-expert provides reliable ratings of comic strips across raters and across multiple comic strips? The results of our experiment using quasi-expert judges of visual creativity show significant positive correlations among the 10 rated comic strips across our five criteria of creativity. Another important finding is that the CAT is suitable for use with design students in a Chinese context. The current study indicated that art educators should encourage their art students to play the role of art critics, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each other’s work more frequently.
Keywords: Creativity, quasi-experts, art and design education, Chinese students, CAT