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When looking at authentic assessment, I like to use a compass. I call it my Authentic Assessment Compass. And it really has four different pieces that really help us understand what makes a good authentic assessment from the instructor’s perspective. The first part is authenticity. And when I say authenticity, I mean not only to have it be something that could be done in a workplace or a real world event, but have the assignment have something to do with a real scenario. What we often see in authentic assessments is we try to have a real world example. For example, in a class that you may be teaching that could relate somehow to policy, some type of maybe political policy, government policy, you could have students do something to interact with that policy in their local environment. You know, instead of having a pretend example, have the opportunity to actually engage with real world resources and pieces to use. So authenticity is really number one.
The second one is student agency. The second point in the compass, if you will. Student agency is allowing that student the ability to choose not only what topic perhaps they’re going to look at in the assignment, but also what mode or what medium they’re going to use to demonstrate their learning. This really draws on those ideas of having multiple means to show that information. Maybe you have a student who wants to do a podcast or a student who would like to do a more formal paper. When looking at agency, I am trying to pair it with authenticity, I often challenge students and instructors alike to think of other forms of writing that a student could use. Maybe it would be a newspaper article, maybe it would be a letter to a representative. So finding ways to have agency, but still using authentic ideas in the types of assignments. That agency is so important because it’s also showing meaning to the student. They are going to be invested in this way.
The third is equity. So the third point in the compass is equity. And when we see and use this term equity, what I mean is having a way to look at your assignment and see are there things that aren’t necessary to be assessed that could be possible barriers to a student. A great example of this is if the assignment has an objective to explain something or to define something, if that doesn’t need to be written definition, if it could be something spoken in a video like this, then why not offer those opportunities to a student? If it was just a written definition that was asked of, this could create a problem for a student that is not as comfortable with writing or perhaps has other reasons why typing might be difficult for them. And so finding ways to look at your assignment and ask, are there things, are there unintended barriers in the instructions in what that final product, if you will, might be? And then trying to see from that framework, how can we remove some of those barriers for the assignment.
And finally, the last point is authentic evidence. So we can have this assignment that is a real world problem. We can let students decide how they want to demonstrate that. We can make sure we’re removing barriers. But at the end of the day, we wanna make sure that the evidence of learning is also authentic. An example would be if we are asking them to look at a policy for some sort of government piece or something of that nature, we want it to be an authentic piece of evidence of their learning. For example, maybe it is gonna be a letter to a representative explaining why they feel a policy should be a certain way. In other words, have it be something that is authentic itself. What sometimes can happen is we’re getting really close to having authentic assessment.
And then the final summative piece of it, that final product that’s being turned in ends up being a very traditional style assignment. And so that’s the last piece of the challenge: how can we have the activity itself authentic, how can we have the students have choice in it, make sure we are assessing what we want to assess, but then at the end of the day, have that product, if we call it, that final piece they turn in, be something genuine, unique, and something that could move the needle on maybe an issue or a challenge students see in the real world.
Understanding authentic assessment requires grasping several key concepts that distinguish it from traditional assessment approaches. These principles provide the foundation for designing assessments that truly serve learning while promoting equity and agency.
In the above video I introduce The Authentic Experience Compass: A Framework for Assessment Design, a model for authentic assessment grounded in my experience as an educator. The four directions of my framework are:
- Authenticity: this direction invites educators to think about designing challenges that have the complexity and ambiguity of real-world problems. In history courses, instead of asking students to memorize dates, I might ask them to advize a modern community facing a decision by researching how similar communities handled comparable challenges in the past.
- Student agency: this direction invites educators to think about how to create assessments where students have meaningful choices in how they demonstrate their learning. For example, if public speaking is challenging for some students, invite them to demonstrate their learning through an interactive digital presentation or a video. Consider the principles of Universal Design for Learning to support this work.
- Equity: this direction invites educators to design assessments that remove unnecessary barriers while maintaining rigor. This means asking questions like, does this requirement actually measure what we want to assess, or is it just tradition?
- Authentic evidence: this direction invites educators to gather evidence of what students can do with knowledge from their course/s over time, in context, with appropriate support.
Discussions
Which of these principles resonates most strongly with challenges you face in your current assessment practices?
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.