The end of tough love in art and design? How can compassionate approaches be effective in feedback and assessment?

How do we keep students engaged and attending? Will too much kindness kill creative motivation and give students an easy ride’?

Using compassionate language within the vocabulary of briefing, assessment and feedback structures has on the one hand been called ‘too soft’ (WonkHE, 2022). Yet others call for a lighter approach and to eliminate summative grading (Blum, S.D. 2020).

In this participatory discussion, we look at examples where compassionate prompts (UAL 2022) have been applied in dialogue with students and compare results against the research.