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Authentic Assessment

Authentic assessment is a term, coined in part by Grant Wiggins, for assessments that are tightly aligned with the learning objectives of a course or learning experience and have learners working on “real world” problems. These student-centered learning experiences provide opportunities to problem-solve, inquire, and create new knowledge and meaning. Authentic assessments usually have more than one “correct” answer but can be evaluated using a rubric that provides assurance that the data obtained from the assessment is valid.

In his essay, “The Case for Authentic Assessment”, Wiggins compares authentic assessments to traditional standardized tests. Although that direct comparison isn’t necessarily relevant in most higher education courses, we can pull some key traits of authentic assessments from that comparison:

  • Require students to perform, in a real world (or simulated real-world) context, all of the tasks a professional would engage in to apply what they’ve learned.
  • Involve open-ended and ill-structured problems.
  • Often require collaboration and opportunities for interaction that are aligned to the real-world situation. For example, if the task is typically completed by a team in the field, then the assessment should be completed collaboratively by a group.
  • Require learners to adopt a role to “rehearse for the complex ambiguities of the ‘game’ of adult and professional life.”
  • Require learners to justify their answer as well as the process they used to decide on that answer.
  • Are realistic, in that they aren’t timed, allow learners to use resources that would be available to them.

Using authentic assessments can require more effort and planning on the part of the instructor. Despite that increase in effort, both learners and instructors can benefit when a course uses authentic assessments. One of the benefits that applies to both learners and instructors is the increase in interest and engagement in the task. For instructors, it is much more interesting to explore and evaluate an array of different answers and approaches (and can be educational for the instructor, too). Learners have more motivation to work on the assessment: it is novel, creates a direct connection between the assessment and the “real” world, and clearly demonstrates to the learner how much they’ve learned and where they still have room to grow (i.e. authentic assessments are much more transparent to the learner).

Other benefits for instructors include an increased awareness of what students’ strengths and areas for growth are (both with respect to individual students and the collective), and an opportunity to connect with each individual learner. Since authentic assessments are directly tied to learning objectives, an instructor knows, with less ambiguity, what objectives students are meeting and which ones they are not. With authentic assessments, instructors get to connect with learners as they see the unique approaches each individual learner uses to solve the ill-structured problem. Many instructors teaching online value every opportunity to connect with learners they may never interact with face-to-face.

In addition to being more engaging, authentic assessments are usually more equitable for the diverse learners in a course. The design and selection of multiple-choice questions can include implicit biases that disadvantage some learners. Because authentic assessments are more transparent, don’t have a single right answer and require learners to justify their process and their answer, every learner has an opportunity to ask questions, identify and use resources, and “make their case” as to how their answer demonstrates their learning.

Because authentic assessments are tied directly to the learning objectives of a course, program, or discipline, the examples provided here are of general categories/types of authentic assessments.

  • Scenario-based learning & writing to a real audience
    • Example – General Education Writing: The instructor designs scenarios for students to understand audience-centered writing. An example of a writing scenario could involve a historical event or person, where students write a letter providing advice to a historical person or take on the role of a historical person to suggest ways to address the historical event. Another example of a writing scenario could involve a human resource problem at a company, where students are asked to create a memo or policy to address the problem. These scenarios provide students with a real-world context for a specific audience and purpose for each formative assessment.
  • Inquiry-based learning
    • Example – Physics: Instead of providing students with step-by-step instructions on how to complete a lab, students are allowed to decide what data to collect, how to collect it, and how to analyze it to explain the physics principle or phenomenon. The instructor notices that student interactions increase as students voice their opinions and facilitate decision-making with their group (Nutt, 2020).
  • Problem-based learning
    • Example – Teacher Education: The instructor creates several student personas with different learning needs. Students work in small groups during class to discuss a student persona and brainstorm ideas on the student persona’s learning problem based on prior knowledge. Students decide roles and the steps to complete the assessment. During the next class session, each small group explains their student persona’s diagnosed learning need and describes examples of differentiation and scaffolding to adapt instruction to improve the student persona’s learning. Students receive feedback from their peers as well as the instructor.
  • Project-based learning
    • Example – Social Sciences: The instructor provides a list of societal issues aligned with the learning objectives that students will select from, or students have the option of submitting a different societal issue with an explanation of how it aligns with the learning objectives. Next, students will select the product or performance to demonstrate their learning. Students will then create a project plan and submit their plan to receive feedback from the instructor. Students adapt their project plan based on instructor feedback, begin research on the societal issue, and complete the product or performance to demonstrate their learning. Lastly, students present their product or performance asynchronously using a video recording tool.
  • Design-based learning
    • Example – Engineering or Architecture: Each design-based learning activity begins with a class discussion of a human-focused problem and personas (people who are impacted by the problem). For example, the instructor shows a picture of a public building and asks students to identify personas who might find the building inaccessible. Students spend time empathizing and defining the personas and goals of their redesign of the entrance. Next, students begin the ideation nonverbally using an asynchronous interactive board (Microsoft Whiteboard, Padlet, etc.) during class and then continue to ideate over the next few weeks. In a subsequent class, the instructor guides students through a discussion to determine the top ideas for solving the problem. Each group selects one idea to design and test. Students submit the prototype and reflection on the process for feedback and grading.
  • Service Learning: Community-partnered research or project development

  • The first step to creating an authentic assessment is to write learning objectives that describe how learners will demonstrate their learning.
  • If you typically use essays for assessing student learning, frame the writing assignment for an audience other than the instructor/instructional team, and ideally, find individuals who are part of that audience to provide feedback to the learners.
  • Have students reflect on their own academic performance on each assessment. Having them identify their own misconceptions and mistakes enhances their learning, helps to develop their metacognitive abilities, and is representative of what a professional must do when they err.
  • Have students create a lightweight portfolio where they reflect on what they learned from each assignment (either through making mistakes or by engaging in the learning that occurs when someone is assessed).
  • Explore libraries of case studies online (e.g. Case Consortium at Columbia University, Michigan Sustainability Cases, Santa Clara Business Ethics, The Alan Turing Institute Data Justice Case Studies).
  • When grading, use a rubric that keeps the grader’s focus on the most important standards you want learners to meet. 

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This work is adapted from original articles licensed by Kennesaw State University and University of Illinois Chicago under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License by the Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation (CTLI, Vermont State University).

Changes include blending content from the two sources.