Authentic assessment - Embedding the development of 21st century skills in your unit

What is authentic assessment?

You probably have heard of the term authentic assessment before. Authentic assessment has been increasingly adopted in higher education, and is certainly proving its relevance and value to both educators and learners.

But what is it, and why should we care?

Svinicki (2004) offers the following definition of authentic assignments:

" Authentic assignments should be based on 'student activities that replicate real world performances as closely as possible'."

Examples of authentic assessment may include simulation, role-playing, case study, creation of different forms of media, e-portfolio, you name it. The authenticity of an assessment task may be determined based on the nature of your discipline, and how well it is contextualised to reflect real work scenarios in a particular industry.

So, you may be thinking, 'is traditional obsolete?', and 'is it even possible to make all assessment components authentic?'. Those are valid questions, and my answers are 'no', and 'probably not'.
Firstly, traditional assessment such as multiple-choice questions and essay writing are valuable in evaluating students' understanding of foundational concepts, and their critical thinking to some extent.
Secondly, given the constraints in time and resources, it is not likely that every assessment task could be authentic. Therefore, it is important to think about assessment in your unit as a portfolio of assessment, containing an appropriate balance of both traditional and authentic assignments.

Why authentic assessment? 

Now, let's take a moment and reflect on our own work context. Despite the structure in place to establish our goals and ensure quality of our work, we are often given the autonomy to choose how we work, i.e. how we solve problems. We often need to provide direct evidence of our competence (performing a task), which is the essence of authentic assessment. 

"Student learning experience and development is beyond the grade they get at the end of the subject."  

(Frey, Schmitt & Allen, 2012) 

Similarly, authentic assessment requires students to perform tasks and provide direct evidence of their competence. Furthermore, by allowing students some freedom in how they can demonstrate their competence in terms of skills and knowledge, you are effectively developing students for their ability to think critically and solve problems creatively. Students may also be enabled to collaborate with their peers and communicate their work with an audience other than their grader. These are the 4Cs of many frameworks on 21st century skills, which is gaining attention and sparking meaningful conversations in Higher Education about how we should prepare our students. 

An example 

Damien Lambert and his team teaching Auditing and Assurance has had a busy S2. The team have implemented storyboard and role-playing performances as parts of their assessment for their unit. Students first get to work in teams to come up with their own work scenario for auditors, and subsequently create a storyboard for submission. Finally, they get to act out their scene to an audience inclusive of fellow students and assessors. 

Damien and his team are not the only ones in the Department of Accounting to adopt this form of assessment. In fact, other CEs teaching Auditing and Assurance including Ashna Prasad and Lisa Powell have also collaborated and shared knowledge to refine this form of assessment and make it work for their own cohorts. The three CEs were motivated to implement storyboard and role-play in an auditing course to develop students on creative thinking and effective communication skills. These are highly desirable attributes of auditors, and will enhance graduates' employability.

I have also had a chance to provide some feedback on the marking rubric for this assessment task and saw tremendous value added to students' learning experience. So last month, Kris Nagy and I paid a visit to one of Damien's role-play sessions. Without further ado, here are some of the highlights. Enjoy!

Students during their performances

Two assessors discussing their results

A closing thought

Finally, I'd like to leave you with an inspirational message. The future of education is you, and you have the power to change how students learn and develop.  

References

1. Svinicki, Marilla. (2005). Authentic assessment: Testing in reality. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 2004. 23 - 29. 10.1002/tl.167.

2. Battelle for Kids. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2019, from http://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21/frameworks-resources

3. Frey, B. B., Schmitt, V. L., & Allen, J. P. (2012). Defining authentic classroom assessment. Practical assessment, research & evaluation, 17(2).

4. Designing Authentic Assessments. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2019, from http://www.queensu.ca/teachingandlearning/modules/assessments/20_s2_12_designing_authentic_assessments.html 

Open up the classroom - A class on the Lawn

BTB3221 - Taxation law and practice is a unit that many students (especially those with international background) find difficult to study. As it is a specialist technical discipline. Our colleague Toan Le tried to make tax law easier to learn for students by introducing group learning workshop and presentations.  But in Semester 1 2018, he was allocated a seminar room that was not suitable to conduct the 3-hour long group learning workshop. The room had no window or no screen on the wall. And it was in a long rectangle shape which made it difficult for the students at the back to see the front.

We had to improvise - with the help of Deb McCormack and Tristan Cui from the TaLT, we moved the students out of the traditional classroom and we facilitated the outdoor on the lawn of the Peninsula campus.

Each week, after the 90 minutes lecturers, Toan took the 38 students out to the lawn in front of the Peninsula library and ran a 90 minutes workshop there.

How it works is that like in the traditional classroom students were broken up into groups and allocated a space to work and then to present their group work. As the students did their work Toan would facilitate their learning by going around each group and joining in the discussion, assisting them to answer their allocated tasks.

To communicate with the larger group and deal with the occasional noise, Toan carried a portable microphone that the TaLT supplied.

Feedback /outcome

The workshops proved to be successful. Students enjoyed the different learning setting! Happy students generally correlated to a better learning experience!

Perhaps because they were being outdoor and have an open space to work, students showed better engagement than when they were learning in the classroom. They did not check their mobiles or access Facebook or Twitter on laptops and they were even taking selfies for the special classes.

When it was time to present, the students listened inattentively as the picture shown. The noise was not a problem. Thanks to the portable microphone I was heard and the student presenters did not experience any issue. In fact, students overcame it by moving closer in to listen.

However, you need to consider the students with health issues for this setting. Also, the cold weather stopped us from doing that for the whole semester.

Overall, it was a successful experiment of a flexible and new approach to teaching and learning. And it is FUN!