Outcomes
Students enjoyed working on the trial unit. Having experienced the trialling of new units in response to changed Achievement Standards in other subject areas, they had expected that they might work on new material. Jez explains that students had seen examples of work done in previous Year 11 DVC classes and were interested in what they would do rather than concerned about the context of a unit.
Student interest was also retained through work on varied activities. Instead of sitting at a drawing board all lesson, they might work on computer graphics, go to their drawing board and then back to computer graphics. A surprising outcome, for the teachers, was the high level of interest students had in the work of the designers and architects they looked at. Although in daily life they're surrounded by examples of architecture and product design, Jez notes that they haven't been formally exposed to it and don't really acknowledge it.
The school has a high NCEA pass rate in DVC and every student who submitted work from the Dressing Table Design unit gained at least Achieved for the internal standards. Jez comments that they were actually surprised at the quality of some work, "Top level stuff, particularly the computer-generated work". However, both teachers felt that some aspects of the unit needed tweaking. "Because we were finding our feet as well, we maybe over-emphasised some aspects and needed more emphasis on others, such as the presentation of the final drawings. We really hadn't got the balance just how we wanted; the unit was good, we just need to balance it a bit more".
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