Korean University Students’ Attitudes towards Anonymous Peer Critiques in Graphic Design Education

Critiquing is an essential teaching and learning tool in design education. Different types of critiques create various outcomes. Many design educators have examined a wide range of critique types for their learning advantages. In particular, peer critique is more effective for removing students’ emotional pressure than more formal critiques. However, peer critique is still considered to create emotional burdens or unfair evaluations among peers. To overcome this drawback of peer critiques, educators in language disciplines often use anonymous feedback. Yet, anonymous critique's learning outcomes have not been extensively discussed in design education. Therefore, this study aims to qualitatively investigate how graphic design students perceive the learning benefits and drawbacks of anonymous critiques with peers as critique providers and receivers. We implemented two anonymous critiques using rubrics in a senior graphic design class for the spring semester of 2015 at K university. After each critique session, students completed self-assessment reports based on the critique comments they received. For outcome measurement, we conducted three focus group interviews with thirteen students. The questionnaires focus on how these students as critique providers and receivers perceive the learning benefits and drawbacks of anonymous and face-to-face critiques. Our findings align with the previous literature reviews; students, as a critique provider, perceive anonymous critiques as useful for removing an emotional burden and conveying their objective ideas. However, they criticized this type of critique as it consumes excessive amounts of time and also produces another type of emotional burden due to the obligation of writing it. On the other hand, as a critique receiver, they shared positive experiences of being able to keep the critique records and repeat learning as well as receive constructive and comprehensive opinions. The learning drawbacks of receiving this type of critique include receiving insincere critiques or not being able to interact with critiquers. Lastly, we provided teaching guidelines for an effective anonymous design critique. By understanding these anonymous critique outcomes, design educators would be able to have a more systematic approach when conducting anonymous critique sessions.