As wikipedia states the, “Authentic assessment is the measurement of intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful.” They go on to say those qualities are in comparison to standardized testing. I couldn’t agree more. I can’t think of an instance that I have used anything from my high school standardized testing career that I revisited in the real world. One of my favorite components of an authentic assessment is that they can be created in collaboration with the students. This gives students a sense of ownership with the class.
Creating an authentic assessment starts by asking the question – what should the students be able to do? To apply authenticity students should be able to mirror real tasks or problem solving skills that may be required from them outside of the school. The good authentic assessment or assessments in general should involve an act of learning. An authentic assessment will in many cases ask students to require a judgement toward the quality of something making it subjective in nature, in essence to get the student making opinions about the subject matter to display their knowledge about it.
Some other aspects, other than the real world applicability, that authentic assessments should have are: backwards design ie-creating them before the curriculum, creating rubrics to ensure rigor, gets students using critical thinking skills, they help students self-assess their learning, they measure how they think not what they remember, and perhaps most important they engage students because they are based on content that students have genuine interest in.
