Overview

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence has accelerated the need to design assessments that are authentic to the skills and knowledge required by students for their future careers and employment. Authentic assessments should aim to develop and allow students to demonstrate critical thinking, complex problem solving and innovation. Real world contexts and tasks are often open-ended, ambiguous and unpredictable and authentic assessment should try to replicate this.

Authentic assessments should support:

• Employability and discipline-specific skills and knowledge through the use of real world tasks,
  
  
• Enhanced academic integrity by requiring work that is harder to replicate with artificial intelligence,
  
  
• Greater student engagement through making tasks more relevant to students and giving students greater autonomy.

Authentic Assessments Principles

Certain assessment types are considered more authentic than other assessment types. Exams and essays, for example, are not the kinds of tasks required in the real world. Examples that might be considered more authentic include portfolios, projects, writing for a trade magazine, presentations, case studies etc. However, whilst some assessment types can be more authentic than others, it is the exact nature of the tasks which is more important.

Some basic principles to consider when designing authentic assessments include:

• Specific (not generic) questions or tasks. For example, case studies on a specific organisation or analysis of a specific context.
  
  
• Open-ended problem-based tasks.
  
  
• Tasks that require the collection of primary data.
  
  
• Tasks that require students to reflect or draw from their own experiences.
  
  
• Tasks that give students choice over what they do and how they do it. For example, they choose the specific case to study or the format of their work.
  
  
• Tasks with multiple possible answers where there is no ‘right’ answer.
  
  
• Tasks which require higher level cognitive skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving.

Authentic Assessment Auditing

The following questions could help to audit your assessments to judge whether they are authentic (University of Sussex, no date):

1. Are my assessment tasks integrated with situations that reflect real-world scenarios?
   
   
2. Are my assessment outcomes recognised as authentic by both students and employers?
   
   
3. Do assessments challenge students to engage in problem-solving?
   
   
4. Do my assessment tasks provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources?
   
   
5. Do my assessments challenge students to creatively apply their knowledge to novel contexts?
   
   
6. Do my assessment tasks provide the opportunity to collaborate?
   
   
7. Do my assessment tasks allow competing solutions and diversity of outcomes?
   
   
8. Do my assessment tasks provide the opportunity to engage in critical reflection and self-evaluation?

Reference

University of Sussex. (no date) “Authentic Assessment,”. Available via https://staff.sussex.ac.uk/teaching/enhancement/support/assessment-design/authentic. [Accessed 4th January 2024].