Authentic Assessment
The Value of Authentic Assessment
Assessment is a central element in teaching and learning. It allows the students to demonstrate their understanding and mastery of the knowledge and skills. It also gives the teacher an opportunity to evaluate and improve the student’s learning success. During the pandemic, the use of authentic assessment in teaching has become more and more popular. Simply put, authentic assessment requires students to perform or create a meaningful product using real-life simulations. Authentic assessment can be applied in many teaching fields.
Importance of authentic assessment
Authentic assessment refers to activities that require the application of knowledge and skills in real-world situations or problems instead of merely testing the knowledge (Karunanayaka & Naidu, 2021). College students have the desire to become more competent through their learning, but they are not enthusiastic about the idea of exams or tests. Adult learners are committed to becoming more competent professionals, leaders, or entrepreneurs instead of becoming “A” students.
Learners of different types tend to view grades as meaningless and feel discouraged when receiving a low grade. They need working assessment tools that help them identify their strengths and weaknesses. Authentic assessment, which asks the student to apply their knowledge to real-work situations to demonstrate their learning outcomes, stimulates the teacher to replace the one-size-fits-all rubric with more personalized and timely feedback on students’ work. This allows the teacher to assess each learner’s performance in a more objective way.
Benefits of authentic assessment
There are many benefits of using authentic assessment as work-integrated learning activities.
Bohemia et al. (2012) adopt the socio-cultural perspective and argue that authentic assessment allows learners to learn together and socialize with their peers as it encourages deep learning and active engagement. Fox et al. (2017) echo this perspective and emphasize that authentic assessment enhances collaboration and networking among learners. Because of this advantage, authentic assessment can enrich the learner’s motivation and commitment to professional development in their field. Martinez et al. (2018) examine the authenticity question in learning. The interviews conducted in their study show that authentic assessment encourages students to reflect on their life experiences, cultural identity, social backgrounds, etc. This reflection can not only transform the learner-student relationship but also help students break the intellectual and emotional constraints coming from their social backgrounds. Villarroel et al. (2020) support the self-reflection function of authentic assessment and point out that authentic assessment help students not only become active learners but also increase students’ self-regulation, metacognition, and confidence.
Among all the benefits of authentic assessment, many scholars highlight how authentic assessment could prepare students to meet the increasing demands of professional work. Villarroel et al. (2018) provide a systematic review of the literature on authentic assessments from 1988 to 2015 and suggest that authentic assessment addresses a common criticism of higher education. This criticism proposes that many students have the difficulty in applying the academic knowledge acquired at school to solve complicated problems in the real world. Therefore, authentic assessment promotes students’ employability by bridging the gap between the classroom and the workplace. Similarly, Kaider et al. (2017) adopt both quantitative and qualitative methods study 1,500 assessments from 40 courses in an Australian university and conclude that authentic assessment and work-integrated learning are essential for higher education institutions to increase their graduates’ employability.
Challenges to authentic assessment
Despite many benefits of authentic assessment, there are some challenges to making authentic assessment effective.
The challenges come from both the teachers and the students. Fox et al. (2017) maintain that students might find authentic assessment confusing if they are not provided clear instructions on what is exactly expected from them and how their work will be evaluated. This challenge means that authentic assessments need to be carefully planned and well structured.
Since it takes time and resources in the planning stage, many teachers feel unprepared, reluctant, or even resistant to try authentic assessment. Villarroel et al. (2018) point out that students not only will still generally prefer testing in many countries, there are great demands for teachers’ time and intellectual resources to revise conventional assessments of tests and exams into authentic activities. Azia et al. (2020) study ESL classrooms in Malaysian schools and suggest a need for proper guidelines and training for teachers. They even recommend that the Ministry of Education conduct seminars and hands-on training on authentic assessment to prepare teachers with knowledge and skills in planning, creating, and implementing authentic assessment in their teaching.
Strategies to make authentic assessment effective
There are several ways to solve the challenges of authentic assessment and make it more effective.
Backward Design. Because the backward design methodology focuses on the learning outcomes, it can identify specific assessment methods that help achieve the outcomes. The concept of backward design was first introduced by Wiggins and McTighe (1998). They suggest three steps in instructional planning --- (1) identifying what knowledge students should master or what skills students should be able to demonstrate by the end of the learning, (2) designing assessments to measure that learning, and (3) planning lessons to guide students in completing each assessment.
Backward design can effectively provide guidance for teaching because it encourages the teacher to establish the purpose of teaching during the design process before implementing any instructional activity in the teaching process (Bowen, 2017). Villarroel et al. (2020) advocate backward design as a solution to make authentic assessment effective. The authors study how to use principles of authentic assessment to redesign the traditional assessment activities of written examinations and tests. They suggest that one way to apply authentic assessment in tests is to use backward design by integrating a context that simulates real workplace situations. This practice will help the teacher assess students’ complex thinking on three levels --- knowledge understanding (such as recognizing and describing), knowledge management (such as comparing, contrasting, and interpreting), and knowledge transfer (such as deciding, designing, and innovating).
Communication and advising. In addition to backward design, other scholars highlight the importance of communication and advising in implementing authentic assessment. For example, Fox et al. (2017) list student communication and mentoring as a key step in implementing authentic assessment. If backward design can help the teacher identify desired learning outcomes and align the outcomes with tasks, the teacher needs to communicate the tasks to the students to ensure that students understand how the authentic tasks are relevant to their learning. The authors even recommend that students be consulted on their learning experience such as how to select a group. This standpoint echoes Leedham’s point (2009) that the teacher should give students some level of ownership in the assessment process to make the task more authentic.
Rubric. Backward design and student communication and mentoring are important during the planning and implementation of authentic assessment. Since students need to know what exactly is required from them, designing rubrics is a third critical step in making authentic assessment meaningful. Ghosh et al. (2017)’s case study of assessment in seafarer education reminds us that authentic scenarios do guarantee the validity of the assessment. To make assessments valid, the teacher should effectively measure the intended learning outcomes by combining all the specific criteria or standards into rubrics. Using rubrics can make authentic assessment valid and reliable.
Application of authentic assessment in different disciplines
Authentic assessment, if planned well, can be an effective tool in a variety of disciplines. Below are a few examples of the application of this tool in different disciplines.
Leadership courses. Wiewiora and Kowalkiewicz (2019) show that authentic assessment can be used in leadership development courses. Different from traditional assessment approaches in leadership education that focus on students’ knowledge of leadership theories, authentic assessment in leadership training develops students’ self-awareness as leaders. Students could revisit their presumptions and achieve critical self-reflection through observation, conceptualization, and active experimentation. Therefore, authentic assessment not only encourages students to solve complex and ambiguous problems in the real life but also helps with the development of intra-personal leadership competencies.
Natural and Social Sciences. Another example is that authentic assessment can be implemented in natural and social sciences (Sutadji et al., 2021). Through a comparison of two courses from natural sciences and social sciences, respectively, taught at the State University of Malang, the authors demonstrate that authentic assessment can assess students’ abilities from the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor aspects. Boyd et al. (2020) provide a specific example of an authentic assessment used in the course Conservation Biology designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. The assessment is to produce a 5000-word webpage about a rare species and repurpose the webpage into a 1000-word article to share with non-expert audiences at a 9th-grade reading level. This case study shows that authentic assessment has special strength in improving students’ competence of translating complicated scientific information to a broader audience. In addition, authentic assessment can be applied in other fields of adult learning, including the field of medical education (Chacko, 2018) and the field of history (Forsyth & Evans, 2019).
Authentic assessment and adult learning theories
A context of adult education can provide a deeper understanding of authentic assessment.
The theorist of adult education Malcolm Knowles (1970) listed four basic assumptions of adult education behind his andragogy methodology. First, adult learners embrace self-direction in different ways. Second, adult learners possess prior and experiential learning, which are valuable resources to make them active learners. Third, adult learners achieve the best outcomes if they are ready and eager to learn; fourth, adult learners are competency- or results-oriented and value immediate application. Although Knowles’ theory of andragogy receives some critique for overemphasizing the state of adult learners while overlooking the impact of adult education in promoting social justice and equity, this theory remains the foundation for adult education study in the 21st century. This theory suggests several characteristics of adult learners --- adult learners are independent learners who are ready and eager to control their learning experiences and who can build upon their previous experiences to learn new knowledge. These characteristics are crucial to examine adult education in the e-learning setting.
In recent years, the theory of andragogy has evolved into heutagogy. Chacko (2018) examines different pedagogies for effective adult learning, including andragogy and heutagogy. He points out relevant issues in the study of e-learning and continuing professional development, particularly the challenge of how to enable adult learners to become more autonomous in their learning journey. The author goes beyond simply introducing different adult learning theories and examines how these theories inform teaching practice in medical education. The difference between andragogy introduced by Knowles and Heutagogy is that Heutagogy focuses on preparing professionals to become self-determined learners and capable practitioners. Chacko describes the relationship between Heutagogy and andragogy, arguing that Heutagogy is a continuum of andragogical adult learning theory. Chacko advocates how Heutagogical methods can help adult professionals become autonomous learners highly motivated to improve their skills.
Reflection on further research on authentic assessment
Authentic assessment challenges students to apply their knowledge to solve real problems in the workplace. Many studies on authentic assessment emphasize the partnership of the learner, the educator, and the industry. However, there are still several areas where further research is needed.
First, more case studies need to be conducted about how authentic assessment can be applied effectively in various fields. On one hand, aligning academia and industry can be very complex; on the other hand, the application of authentic assessment should vary from discipline to discipline (Sutadji et al, 2021).
Second, many studies have defined the word “authenticity” in the assessment question, but it is also worthwhile to ask whose authenticity is at stake when connecting the classroom and the workplace. Forsyth and Evans (2019) have demonstrated that giving a real-world context to assessments in history courses can allow the voices of underrepresented social groups to be heard, thus promoting the methodology of inclusive or participatory history. Using similar logic, McArthur (2022) suggests the teacher justify authentic assessment on its social value by asking not only what authentic tasks are but also why they matter to whom.
Assessment is critical because it affects students’ performance and motivation as well as teachers’ decisions on any change in their curriculum or pedagogy. Studies examined here have shown that authentic assessment, if used effectively, can enhance the student’s learning progress, motivation, self-awareness, attitude, higher-level thinking, and problem-solving skills. Further case studies on how to treat the student/learner as an active member not only in the learning process but also in society would enhance a more holistic and richer understanding of authentic assessment.
References
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Bohemia, E., & Gillian, D. (2012). Authentic learning: The gift project. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 17(2), 49–61. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236001081_Authentic_Learning_The_Gift_Project
Bowen, R. S. (2017). Understanding by design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/
Boyd, R, Basgier, C, & Wilson, C. (2020). Repurposing scientific writing in conservation biology. Journal of Academic Writing, 4(1), 3-17. https://doi.org/10.31719/pjaw.v4i1.53
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Page author: Yan Xu
Citation: Mandernach, B. J., Ford, D., Xu, Y. & Shi, T. (2022). Post-pandemic teaching and learning: Revisiting common practices. https://sites.google.com/view/revisitingcommonpractices