Authentic assessment

Authenticity in Assessment provides an example of assessment best practice that recognises the importance of evolving assessment practices across the year levels: from first year assessment, when

students have their entire undergraduate studies before them, to final year, the brink of professional practice.

This is an outstanding example of a carefully designed, strategic assessment regime that is thoroughly integrated with teaching and learning goals. The features include:

- the use of assessment in first year as a foundational tool to establish student study habits  and skills;

- the evolution of assessment tasks by fourth year to reflect the world of professional practice and to allow students to demonstrate their integration of knowledge and skills;

- the careful weighting of assessment tasks to indicate the value attached to particular tasks;

- the well-structured inclusion of group work;

- the concern for student and staff workloads;

- the recognition of student diversity, in particular the needs of off-campus and mature-age students; and

- the matching of assessment tasks to professional accreditation requirements.

                                                                                       by Stuart Palmer (Deakin University)

                                                                Source : James, R. McInnes, C. & Devlin, M. (2002)

Citation from literature:

Biggs, J.B., & Tang, C. (2007).

We need some sort of 'performance of understanding' (see pp. 74-6) that reflects the kind of understanding that requires an active demonstration of the knowledge in question, as opposed to talking or writing about it. This is referred to as 'authentic assessment' (Torrance 1994; Wiggins 1989). The term 'authentic' assessment may imply that all other forms of assessment are inauthentic, so many prefer the term 'performance assessment' (Moss 1992).

Authentic assessment directly engages the student with functioning knowledge in its context, decontextualized assessment is more suitable for declarative knowledge.

 

Herrington, Oliver & Reeves (2002)

-    Authentic activities have real world relevance:Activities match as nearly as possible the real world tasks of professionals in practice rather than decontextualised or classroom based tasks.

-    Authentic activities are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity: Problems inherent in the activities are ill-defined and open to multiple interpretations rather than easily solved by the application of existing algorithms. Learners must identify their own unique tasks and subtasks in order to complete the major task.

-    Authentic activities comprise complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time: Activities are completed in days, weeks and months rather than minutes or hours. They require significant investment of time and intellectual resources.

-    Authentic activities provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources: The task affords learners the opportunity to examine the problem from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives, rather than allowing a single perspective that learners must imitate to be successful. The use of a variety of resources rather than a limited number of preselected references requires students to detect relevant from irrelevant information.

-    Authentic activities provide the opportunity to collaborate: Collaboration is integral to the task, both within the course and the real world, rather than achievable by an individual learner.  

-    Authentic activities provide the opportunity to reflect: Activities need to enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning both individually and socially.

-    Authentic activities can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain specific outcomes: Activities encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and enable students to play diverse roles thus building robust expertise rather than knowledge limited to a single well-defined field or domain.

-    Authentic activities are seamlessly integrated with assessment: Assessment of activities is seamlessly integrated with the major task in a manner that reflects real world assessment, rather than separate artificial assessment removed from the nature of the task.

-    Authentic activities create polished products valuable in their own right rather than as preparation for something else: Activities culminate in the creation of a whole product rather than an exercise or sub-step in preparation for something else.

-    Authentic activities allow competing solutions and diversity of outcome: Activities allow a range and diversity of outcomes open to multiple solutions of an original nature, rather than a single correct response obtained by the application of rules and procedures.