Week 8: Authentic Assessment

After reading the above article, comment on what it means to assess work authentically.

“Healthier Testing Made Easy: The Ideaof Authentic Assessment” by Grant Wiggins gives the following definition of authentic assessment: “It’s simply performances and product requirements that are faithful to real-world demands, opportunities, and constraints. The students are tested on their ability to “do” the subject in context, to transfer their learning effectively.” The textbook on authentic assessment that we used in the MS in TEFL course "Evaluation and Assessment"  "Authentic Assessment for English Language Learners" by J. Michael O'Malley and Lorraine Valdez Pierce asserts that “alternative assessment consists of any method of finding out what a student knows or can do that is intended to show growth and inform instruction, and is an alternative to traditional forms of testing, namely, multiple-choice tests…it is based on activities that represent classroom and real-life settings. ” (p. 1-2). As we can see these definitions are very similar and they tell us that in order to assess work authentically, we need to align tasks we create with academic standards, make the assignments as real-world like as possible, and have our students apply their new knowledge in these authentic tasks instead of getting them to simply recollect the facts.

When creating a project that must meet the objectives you set in your plan, how best do you assess the learning?

The textbook develops the idea expressed in both resources about the necessity of teaching skills applicable to real-life situations by saying, “The ability to accurately select one of a number of options to brief questions does not reflect what students will be called on to do in solving complex problems, communicating significant ideas, persuading others on important positions, organizing information and managing human resources, and working cooperatively with others in the workplace.” (p.2) Therefore, the best way to assess the learning is to give students meaningful and real-life (or similar to) tasks and have them apply the newly-learned concepts instead of focusing on rote-memorization and recollection.

There is one more reason why authentic assessments should be used more frequently. In fact, standard tests give little if any feedback for teachers and students, thus not promoting further learning and advancement. And if standardized testing can be justified in some cases (when assessing student English language proficiency levels on college entrance exams, for example), this type of summative assessment should be significantly outnumbered by formative (mostly authentic assessment), hence used for checking student comprehension and material retention for planning future instruction.

“Authentic Assessment for English Language Learners” lists the following types of authentic assessment for ESOL learners(p. 12)

1.    Oral interviews

2.    Story or text retelling

3.    Writing samples

4.    Projects/Exhibitions

5.    Experiments/Demonstrations

6.    Constructed-response items

7.    Teacher observations

8.    Portfolios

Therefore, depending on the project, any or several of these assessments can be used. And, although not mentioned in the article, rubrics are indispensable part of successful instruction and authentic assessment, as they let learners know of what is expected from them and based on what criteria their work is evaluated and assessed.

What also is important for authentic assessment is quick and detailed feedback: “Students overwhelmingly report that the single most important ingredient for making a course effective is getting rapid response on assignments and quizzes…An overwhelming majority are convinced that their best learning takes place when they have a chance to submit an early version of their work, get detailed feedback and criticism, and then hand in a final revised version.” I always try to correct homework on time and provide as detailed feedback as possible. The downside of this process is only one – it is incredibly time-consuming for the teacher. I also use process writing with my students, where they write essays, email them to me, I comment on them and suggest ways of improvement, and then they send me further revised versions. The culmination of this project is digital essays that they present in front of the class.

When we talk about feedback, we should not forget about peer review as well. It is true that it takes time for students to see each other’s errors, but the results are so rewarding. In fact, I have seen so many times that my students gave such ingenious suggestions, which I would not have even thought of. Moreover, as the well-known saying states, “Two heads are better than one.” And in the peer review case, students can make use of three heads or more.

I also find the following statements given in the article quite prominent is that challenging tasks allow students not only to master them but to succeed in less cognitively demanding ones. “The more students receive challenging, interesting work demands, the better they do on simple measures," Grant Wiggins states referring to a conducted study in this area of interest.

How do you know they got it?

We can tell that our students have learnt it well when they can apply the new knowledge to highly-cognitive, real-life like tasks and transfer their knowledge to various contexts.