Authentic assessment

1. Assessment is either ‘authentic’ or ‘non-authentic’ – it cannot be both.

Response: Authenticity in assessment is a continuum based on appropriateness.

2. An educator must be a master of the concept of authentic assessment before they can use it.

Response: Most educators already have some experience with authentic assessment in their teaching practice.

3. Tasks that are not original, creative and fun are not authentic

Response: The point of authentic assessment is that learning resembles ‘real world’ work which is not always exciting.

4. All authentic tasks are complex and elaborate, not simple and straightforward.

Response: There can be obvious opportunities for making learning more authentic.

Assessment can be considered authentic when the outcomes measured represent appropriate, meaningful, significant and worthwhile forms of accomplishment and the kinds of mastery demonstrated by successful practitioners. In short, when the task challenges a learner to demonstrate knowledge or skill that is needed to negotiate the requirements of a real-life setting, it may be considered authentic (UQ Teaching and Learning Plan 2018–2021).

There are many different ideas about what defines authentic assessment, which can be confusing when you are planning your assessment tasks. It may be easier to think about authentic assessment as an ‘umbrella term for several important pedagogical strategies that seek to immerse learners in environments where they can gain highly practical, lifelong learning skills…’ (Adams Becker et al. 2018).     

Higher education has shifted from an objective and standardised testing assessment culture to one that encourages:

• Students being responsible for their own learning
• Interpretation, performance and collaboration
• Use of higher order cognition skills
• Various assessment formats
• Formative (multiple touch points with educator) and summative purposes
• A focus on learning and competence development (Gulikers et al. 2004).
   

While we can predict some attributes, knowledge and skills that students will need in their future work life there are others that are unknown (Boud & Falchikov, 2006). As educators, we need to help students to be lifelong learners. An important benefit of using authentic assessment is the opportunity for students to learn soft skills and capabilities, often known as the twenty-first-century skills, which include:

Ways of thinking

1.  Creativity and innovation
2.  Critical thinking, problem-solving, decision making
3.  Learning to learn, metacognition

Ways of working

4.  Communication
5.  Collaboration (teamwork)

Tools for working

6.  Information literacy
7.  ICT literacy

Living in the world

8.  Citizenship – local and global
9.  Life and career
10.  Personal and social responsibility – including cultural awareness and competence (Binkley et al. 2012).

An active learning and student-centred approach to teaching and learning highlights the need for authentic assessment, which is linked to course learning outcomes and authentic learning activities and resources. 

It can be helpful to think about authentic assessment as a continuum of different task types, primarily undertaken in a university-based context on one end to primarily workplace-based on the other end. Table 1 (below) provides a non-exhaustive list of examples of authentic assessment types on the continuum, that involve low to high activity, such as progressing from an MCQ exam, to negotiated assessment, and problem-based tasks or case studies. The year level of the students, the discipline threshold concepts, assessment security and the mapping of assessment tasks across the relevant course, major or program are also important factors to consider in planning your authentic assessment tasks.

Table 1: Some examples of authentic assessment types across a continuum of activity

• Discuss ideas with colleagues from your discipline and industry
• Reflect on the suitability of publicised examples of authentic assessment for your course
• Explore the UQ Assessment Ideas Factory database
• Ask your outreach librarian, local learning designer or ITaLI learning designer for assistance.