What is Authentic Assessment?
Too often the term "rigorous measurement" gets equated with traditional testing. Jon Mueller has an extensive website Links to an external site. about what he calls 'authentic assessment'. He defines authentic assessment as, "A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills."
Authentic assessments are the manifestation of 'experience', 'reflection', 'action' and 'evaluation' in the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm. We consider assessments to be authentic when they are:
- Performance-based: Challenges learners to show what they can do, along with what they know.
- Integrative: Requires learners to pull together skills and knowledge from multiple areas.
- Useful: Motivates learners to improve in the areas where they are weakest (think about the stumbling blocks you identified for your student persona).
- Relevant: References the learner’s situation and life experiences.
- Evaluative: Solicits the learner to participate in the evaluation process.
ePortfolios
ePortfolios are online spaces where students collect digital artifacts as evidence of their learning. One way to keep focused on authentic assessment is to design learning activities that result in work that could be used as evidence of learning in an ePortfolio. Imagining how you might design an assignment so that the resultant work could be included in an eportfolio is an easy, concrete way to think about authentic assessment.