Practical things to try

So in this course, the authentic assessment activities that I provided allow you to choose kind of what level of authentic assessment you are interested in adopting for your courses. The first is looking at kind of a introduction to using authentic assessment, if you will. The second is getting a little more in the details in terms of having an authentic assessment that also incorporates some real world application. And the third is going all the way into this idea of authentic assessment using community as well.

The first activity is one where you take, and you can look at the steps below for full details, but in this first activity, which was a reflection and choice kind of micro-assignment, what you will have students do is first take an assignment that you’re already doing. I find it very helpful to do something that you are comfortable with already. The instructions you have, you don’t need to change anything in that respect. However, what you’ll do is you will add some choice opportunities in this for your students.

So these are choice points. And what you can do with this is you can have them choose the audience they’re talking to. It could be who they are presenting this information for, whether it is you as the instructor or maybe a newspaper, something of that nature. You could also have them choose to do a video or to do some type of graphic.

The next piece that students can do that kind of adds to the authentic nature of this assignment is discuss the choices they made in more of a reflection. And so require a piece of reflection onto this assignment in addition to doing the assignment, as it was before. By doing this, you are not only hearing what the student did, how they did it, but you’re also going to get some formative feedback in terms of if students enjoyed doing this type of assignment. So this is a good way to get started in authentic assessment.

Now, as far as grading, you can use the same rubric that you used before. You know, make sure that if there are pieces that are specific to a writing. For example, if there’s a requirement in the rubric that it needs to be a certain number of words, you may change that because you wanna make sure that it would work if it was a video or if it was another piece of writing, or perhaps even a poster. So you may wanna take care of some of those that are specific to a form, but other than that, use the same rubric because you are assessing those same outcomes.

For the second activity, this is what I like to call the Choice Menu assignment. There have been different forms of a menu assignment that I’ve seen in the past. And this is something that is pretty foundational to the idea of authentic assessment of that student choice or agency. And so, in this assignment, you are going beyond having one piece of the class, maybe one assignment like we see in activity one. In this activity, you are designing an entirely new assignment around the idea of choice and around the idea of authenticity.

The first step of doing this type of assignment is really focusing in on the learning objectives. Now, the learning objectives for the assignment should really focus on the process, as well as, you know, the discipline-specific either skills or other types of activities that would fit into the assignment. Not so much the requirements of perhaps a paper, or another type of end product of that nature. So, for example, if I am having students do one of these assignments, I want to make sure the learning objectives are about those skills, those authentic pieces of what makes our disciplines unique. In my discipline of history, we really evaluate primary sources. So that would be a good objective in my case. But having something that says, a student will demonstrate their ability to write a 500 word paper would not fit into this context. And so, you really start from the beginning, right? The backwards design approach of, what do I want my students to be able to do or demonstrate at the end?

The next step is creating the choice menu itself. Now, there are many different ways you can have authentic assessments. And it can range from the types of assignments I’ve discussed already in terms of doing a podcast, a video, some type of art. But it can also be something for very unique audiences. And so, what I encourage you to do, as you’re thinking about this menu, take a look at some of the examples I have in the document below. But also, consider what that goal is, and choose the options in the menu that are going to reflect demonstration of mastering those objectives. You could also have students do a reflection on, or a movie review, if that made sense for you.

So, you know, keep your options open as far as what would be authentic things that you might do in your discipline, that they could possibly do for this assignment. You will note in the activity instructions, I provide both the, you know, what you’re going to do, whether it is a short video, a documentary, a podcast, but also the length of the words, if there is gonna be a word count of some type and the other requirements built right into it. You know, whether it is a seven minute video versus a certain length paper. So you’re just setting up the choices for the students to choose from. In an assignment like this, the third step is very crucial.

And the third step is establishing some universal standards. In other words, make a universal rubric. When a student is turning in a recording of a podcast, or a sculpture that is going to explain something of that history or that discipline, or a paper, we need to have a way to assess it both fairly but also in a way that the students are not doing different amounts of work. For example, I like to tell my students, you know, “When you are looking at doing an assignment like this, look at the rubric first.” And it often is saying, does the student make an argument? And so, these are broad, right? These are not necessarily very specific to a certain medium of providing that assignment. You know, is there an argument there? Does the student use evidence? Do they use resources? These are things that, in so many of our disciplines, we could use. And it’s those pieces that form an academic argument that don’t need to necessarily come from writing a paper, they’re still doing it in a different process. And so, have that rubric with these universal standards to make sure that as you are grading, to make it a little bit easier for you as well, they are all very similar in terms of, these are the things I’m looking for. It doesn’t matter how you necessarily get there as the student.

The next step in this process is to scaffold the assignment. And so, again, this is where we’re going from having a one-off type of assignment to an assignment like this, where you are building on it over the course of your semester. In this type of assignment, you wanna have a project proposal where students are saying, “This is what I’m planning to do and here is how I’m planning to get there,” right? So we’re going to start with an opportunity to see what students wanna do and talk with them, work with them, provide feedback on how they could go forward with that topic.

And just like we do with a research paper, or some of those other types of assignments, we may be there to guide students to, “Maybe you need to broaden this a little bit. Or, you know, “Maybe narrow down this topic a bit.” Those little things that we do to help students along the way. It’s also important to scaffold. Depending on the type of course you are doing, scaffold these assignments. Meaning have that introduction, or that piece where they are introducing their idea to you in that topic proposal. Then have a place where they offer you information on what sources they’re going to use. I also encourage you to think of having opportunities for feedback throughout the project. So have a initial draft, get some feedback. Perhaps even have some peer feedback as the class is going, right? So just the idea of scaffolding this across a span of time, not doing it on a one-off assignment, but having it be an integral part of your course.

Finally, the last piece of this assignment is to incorporate reflection. And this is what really brings authentic assessments together. If a student draws a comic book page with stick figures, it could be wonderful, but it’s not necessarily telling me what they’re arguing in it. And so, the reflection comes in as a way for students to express what their argument is in their piece. What sources they used in it, how they used those, and what decisions they made to make that assignment, make that argument in a different way. And so, without the reflection, it’s very hard as an instructor to know, you know, where is the student going with this? And so, the final piece, one of the most important pieces, is incorporating reflection in the assignment itself.

Activity three brings all of these ideas together. And so in activity two, you were using a choice menu to provide opportunities for students to try different types of assessment. In this case, however, in the third one, you are doing a community connected assignment. What this means is you are including your local community in the assignment in some way.

So the first step is really deciding what is a problem that we can try to solve in our own communities. Now, furthermore, how can we solve these problems through our disciplinary lens? If you are a business class, for example, look at some challenges or areas for improvement or opportunities in small businesses. See what challenges they might be facing and develop ways to create an assignment around it. In my discipline of history, we work with a local museum and in a whole host of others, you can start thinking about, you know, what are the pieces in our communities that relate to our disciplines? In this type of assignment, although we always start with those objectives, we go to work with our community members. What does this mean as an instructor? For you it means you are going to have to reach out and talk to members of your community.

I’m gonna use that business example. So in a business case, you might go talk to local store owners and discuss some challenges that they face. I had an example where there were some issues with the different parking lots in town, being in a small community and having enough parking spaces to go to stores. So in this type of class, students would, you know, try to pose some ideas or solutions to propose to the city council. So the steps to do this, first of all, you need to identify the community problem.

Second of all, you need to collaborate yourself with community partners. Then as you finally get to this point where you know the kind of issues you wanna look at, the people involved, the stakeholders, then you involve the students by structuring interactions between your students and the community members. That might mean having community members come into your classroom, do short interviews with students to gather information about a problem. This tends to work best when you’re doing this as a class project. And so taking a different definition of authentic assessment, the students still have choice, but you’re focused on one goal, and that is solving a real, truly real world local example. Students have the opportunity to meet multiple times with community members, and they come up with finding ways to integrate their assignment into that real world situation.

So one opportunity with the assignment itself is to have students present to community members. Have those community members come into the school, provide opportunities to show their solutions to problems and propose them to the people that could actually make a difference. With this assignment as well, one of the key pieces at the end, and kind of a final step along with reflection on the student’s part, is you wanna close the loop with community members, build the community between you know, your local community and your college or university, and find ways to grow and expand these types of assignments semester to semester.

For a very practical example. I have students work with our local historical society to document our resources into a digital library. This is something that is providing a service to our community, but also is giving my students hands-on experience on what historians actually do. Just like the other aspects of authentic assessment, reflecting and thinking about the learning itself in, you know, forms of using metacognition to do so is just as important in many ways as the assignments themselves. And so you balance these two things, especially when it comes to assessing them.