Unit 2: Authentic Assessment vs. Traditional Testing
Authentic Assessment vs. Traditional Testing
After completing Unit 1, you may have some ideas already about why you should try to use Authentic Assessment in your classroom. In this unit, you will look at the benefits of using Authentic Assessment.
By the end of this unit, participants should be able to:
- identify the pros & cons of Authentic Assessment
Lesson 1: Why Authentic Assessment?
First, read the following excerpt from the article "Authentic assessment: using assessment to help students
learn" by Sally Brown:
While you read, note pros & cons, benefits & drawbacks.
Benefits of authentic assessment for students, staff and other stakeholders
"Universities will only thrive in the 21st century if they take seriously the need to engage students fully and ensure that their learning experience are transformative.Conversely, disengaged students don’t live up to their potential and fail to achieve their very best while making life more difficult for the staff who teach and support them. Failure to engage can result in high attrition rates which is damaging for a universities performance indicators as well as being damaging to the students’ futures and feelings of self-worth, so it is in everyone’s interests to keep students engaged in their own learning.
Students undertaking meaningful and relevant assessments tend to be more fully engaged in learning and hence tend to achieve more highly because they see the sense of what they are doing. If assignments make use of real examples, contemporary themes, live contexts and current data the assignment itself becomes a learning opportunity which provides challenges to students’ thinking.
Authentic assessment challenges students because they often haven’t encountered assessment activities where they are asked to think creatively and sometimes laterally. It can expose particular ‘threshold concepts’ and ‘troublesome knowledge’ (Meyer and Land, 2013) that students struggle with because it requires application in use of theories, rather than straightforward recall." (Brown, 2015, pg. 3)
Some barriers to the uses of authentic assessment
"Inertia factors mean that many colleagues would prefer to stick to ‘tried and tested methods’ they are used to since organising traditional exams, multiple-choice questions and essays requires less effort to set up than assignments which include the development of case study material, and the establishment of authentic practice setting environments in university buildings. Additionally, authentic assessment tasks may involve additional costs." (Brown, 2015, pg. 7)
Reference:
Brown, S. (2015). Authentic assessment: using assessment to help students learn. RELIEVE, 21 (2), art. M4. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7203/relieve.21.2.7674
Lesson 2: What are the Pros & Cons?
Now that you have been exposed to some research on the benefits of Authentic Assessment, please click the link below to contribute to our class' Pros & Cons list.
Reflect: What are the benefits for the students? For the teacher? What might be the drawbacks? What might keep you from implementing Authentic Assessment in your classroom?
Authentic Assessment Pros & Cons
Now, you may move on to Unit 3
Or, go back to home page