Authentic Assessment for Facilitating Learning for Adult Learners (original) (raw)
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The purpose of this chapter is to report what the research says about authentic assessment. First, the claims that have been made about the benefits of authentic assessment as a mechanism for measuring student performance are discussed. Next, the claims that have been made about the benefits of authentic assessment as a mechanism for facilitating learning are examined, followed by a review of research related to authentic assessment. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of some key issues of concern related to research and practice.
Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment
Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 2013
Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment This study sought to determine the critical elements of an authentic learning activity design them into an applicable framework and then use this framework to guide the design, development and application of work-relevant assessment. Its purpose was to formulate an effective model of task design and assessment. The first phase of the study identified from the literature critical elements that determined assessment as being authentic, and presented these to practitioners and experts for feedback. In Phase two, it codified the elements into a framework that was then applied to the redesign of assessments in an Army course. Phase three involved student evaluation of the redesigned assessment activities. This led to further review and revision of elements in Phase four. The study outcomes suggest that it is possible, by identifying and codifying individual elements, to determine the ways in which the authenticity of an individual assessment activity might be enhanced. The paper concludes with a literature update on the framework elements that lead to suggestions for further research.
Perceptions of authentic assessment: Five dimensions of authenticity
2004
Based on intuition, everybody agrees that authentic assessment is 'the way to go', because authenticity is expected to positively influence learning and motivation. This enthusiasm, however, has led to different interpretations of authenticity, and intuitive authentic assessment practices. To lift authentic assessment beyond intuition, this paper first presents a review of the literature on authenticity of assessments along with a fivedimensional framework for designing authentic assessments with professional practice as the starting point. These dimensions are: task, physical context, social context, result/form, and criteria. After a thorough description of these dimensions and their sub-characteristics, a qualitative study explored the completeness of this framework and the relative importance of the five dimensions in the eyes of students (with different amounts of educational and practical experience) and teachers. The framework and explorative study showed that authenticity is a multi-faceted concept and that a number of facets (dimensions) appear to be of more importance than others. Furthermore, differences in perceptions between different student groups and teachers came to light. Implications for future research are discussed along with important issues that need to be considered in the design of authentic assessments. Defining Authentic Assessment: Five Dimensions of Authenticity and Perceptions Thereof It is widely acknowledged that in order to meet the goals of education, a constructive alignment between instruction, learning and assessment (ILA) is necessary (Biggs, 1996). Current educational goals, especially in Europe, focus on the development of competent students and future employees (Dochy, 2001). The ILA-practices that characterize these goals are: instruction that focuses on learning and competence development; learning based on reflective-active knowledge construction; and assessment that is contextualized, interpretative and performance-based (Birenbaum, 2003). The need to contextualize assessment in interesting, real-life and authentic tasks is described as one of the crucial elements of alternative, or competency-based assessment that suits current educational goals (Birenbaum & Dochy, 1996). Dochy (2001) describes the assessment of the application of knowledge to actual, real-life (authentic) cases as the core goal of alternative assessments. Gielen, Dochy and Dierick (2003) even argue that authenticity of the assessment tasks is an imperative condition to achieve the expert level of problem solving. Moreover, increasing the authenticity of an assessment is expected, and experienced by students, to have a positive influence on student learning and motivation (eg. Herrington & Herrington, 1998; Sambell, McDowell, & Brown, 1997). Authenticity, however, remains a vaguely described characteristic of assessment, because it is thought to be a familiar and generally known concept that needs no explicit defining (Petraglia, 1998). Because authenticity is thought to be such an important element of competency-based assessment on the one hand, and the fact that what authenticity actually is, is only vaguely described on the other hand, this study focuses on defining authenticity in competency-based assessment. Based upon an extensive literature study, a theoretical framework consisting of five dimensions of assessment that can vary in their degree of authenticity is presented. After the description of this framework, the results of a qualitative study are discussed, which explored whether the framework is a complete description of authenticity or is missing important elements and what the relative importance of the dimensions are in the perceptions of students and teachers at a vocational college for nursing. The Importance of Authentic Competency-Based Assessment The two most important reasons for using authentic competency-based assessments are their construct validity and their impact on student learning, also called consequential
Mastering the Art of Authentic Assessment
My development of the authentic assessment and rubrics. The following sections are in my paper: Introduction, Rationale for Developing the Authentic Assessment and Rubrics, Literature Review of Authentic Assessment, Method (subject and sample for the designed authentic assessment, how to align the authentic assessment with the curriculum and instruction, procedures of implementation ─ how to incorporate the designed authentic assessment and rubrics into the day-to-day classroom instruction, how to use the assessment information/results for formative and summative assessment, How to communicate the assessment results to students and parents), and Discussions on the potential benefits and/or limitations of the authentic assessment and implementation issues or challenges.
Authentic Assessment and Pedagogical Strategies in Higher Education
Problem statement: Researchers have noted that there is a mismatch between curriculum content and assessment practices in higher education. At the moment, the focus is still on the assessment of learning and not much on assessment for learning. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the implementation of authentic assessment in higher education in Malaysia. Approach: The study employed a qualitative research method and involved the use of instruments such as interviews, document analysis and unobtrusive classroom observations to collect the relevant data in the classrooms of a three-credit hour course from a Masters degree programme. The total population consisted of 2 lecturers and 20 students from the two selected intact TSL 752 classes. Results: In this study, researchers identified different types of authentic assessment with the suitability to certain pedagogical strategies, their effects on students' learning and the appropriate procedures of conducting authentic assessments. The findings indicated that alternative and authentic assessment have more acceptance from students and should therefore be viewed as an alternative to traditional standardized assessment. Conclusion/Recommendations: The study identified that assessment strategies should be closely related to teaching and learning. Assessing authentic performances should become integral parts of the instructional cycle and feedback provided by the lecturer and peers should be formative in order to help the students assess their strengths and weaknesses, identifying areas of needed growth and mobilizing current capacity.
Conversations and Reflections on Authentic Assessment
Imagining SoTL
In this paper, we describe how academic colleagues from different fields used a theoretical framework for authentic assessment as the starting point for meaningful conversations about our teaching practices. We re-envision Hutchings’ (2000) taxonomy of SoTL questions as a fluid conversational cycle rather than a system of classification. Using the eight elements of authentic assessment as outlined by Ashford-Rowe et al. (2014) as a theoretical framework, we engage with the research literature, reflect on what is and what works from our previous teaching and learning experiences, and propose ideas and questions for what is possible moving forward.
The authenticity of ‘authentic’ assessment some faculty perceptions
2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2017
The attempt to embed Authenticity within the learning process in higher education has been a driving principle within many pedagogical approaches to Higher Education developed over the past three decades. The desire to allow students to learn in a manner that closely resembles the way in which expertise is developed outside the academic environment is a central element of problem-based, inquiry-based and project-based learning. Exploring the implications of authenticity for student achievement and the ways in which this should be assessed has led to innovative teaching methods and ways of evaluating student performance. Unfortunately, authenticity, and authentic assessment in particular, are concepts which are open to a range of interpretations, not least in an educational context where they may be used by both teachers and students with a variety of meanings. This paper investigates the working definitions of authentic assessment used by teaching staff within a Computing department...
Interpretations and applications of 'authentic assessment': a discursive analysis
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning by illuminating discursive practices around the concept of 'authentic assessment' (University of Liverpool, C2021). More specifically, this study explores how authentic assessment has been conceptualised and applied by a selected sample of academics in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool. From constructivist and discursive perspectives, this paper assesses how meanings of authenticity are constructed by interviewees (and perceived to be applied in their practice) and the extent to which such meanings recontextualise (Bernstein, 1972/2003) institutional discourses (as formalised in Curriculum 2021) and, more widely, general concepts associated with authenticity as discussed in the extant body of academic and professional literature on the subject. Findings suggest that while authenticity is to some extent reproduced drawing from institutional discourses, different stances existed among participants which do not necessarily overlap with institutional visions. Findings also suggest that, when engaging in discourses of authenticity and authentic assessment, interviewees tended to recontextualise and combine meanings of realness, practicality, and usefulness, highlighting the meaningfulness of different tasks to students. The term purposefulness is suggested here that could capture such key concepts.