Authentic assessment: just what is this "real world" we're designing for?
In higher education, we talk about authentic assessment a lot.
I have always been quietly frustrated about the fact that “authentic” is virtually always translated as “work-relevant”. Do we really have such a narrow view of authenticity? When the concept was originally pitched by Grant Wiggins (1990), he set out the criteria he considered essential for assessing authentically:
assessment tasks involve using the knowledge students have learned
(not merely declaring it)tasks should simulate real-world tests of ability
(not under artificial test conditions)tasks should incorporate ill-structured challenges that reflect the ambiguity of real-world situations
(not discrete, clear cut problems isolated from real-world contexts)students are required to engage with these tasks in multi-dimensional ways, like they would in the real world
(not just a single action, like answering a question)students are given the opportunity to polish and substantiate their work
(not simply respond in the moment)the work is assessed according to standards of quality (criteria)
(not just whether it is “right” or “wrong”).
As you can see, the major feature is that concept of “real-world”. But what, exactly, is the real world? What qualifies as a “real-world” problem, context or standard?
Of course, answering a quiz question by selecting one “right” option from a pre-determined set is the antithesis of authentic assessment. When does that happen in any “real” context? Well… plenty, in the world of user interfaces, many of which are designed to shepherd users towards particular choices that keep them subscribed and consuming.
But Wiggins also emphasises the notion that assessment tasks should be “worthy”. They should reflect “the kind of work that most matters” to learners and educators.
So we’re not just talking about reflecting the real world; we’re talking about reflecting what’s worthy of the real world. This takes us (surprise) into the domain of values. The real world is full of practices and reasons for undertaking them. The real world is full of paid labour and essential unpaid labour, kindness and cruelty, creativity and crime, collaboration and innovation and autopilot.
The obvious question is: who decides what practices are worthy? The principle of student-centredness would suggest that students decide. And sure, they should have some choice, some options. But it is for reasons of both pragmatism and moral duty that educators should define those options.
Firstly it’s rarely feasible for every student in a class to determine their own assignment, but secondly and more importantly, it is the role and the responsibility of professional educators to provide guidance about what worthy looks like.
Fawns et al. (2024) make the excellent point that we wouldn’t want authentic assessment to replicate problematic real world practices. We have an opportunity, and thus, I think, a responsibility to advocate for worthy practices in the real world. We miss that opportunity every time we assign a 3,000-word essay and ask our students to write for an audience of one (the teacher who will mark it). This is a problematic real-world practice. Rather than asking why some students cheat on tasks like this, we’d be better to ask why the others don’t.
Inevitably, AI use comes into this conversation as a new “authentic” practice in the (working) world. We continue frantically revising assessment policies around students using GenAI as we try to make sense of how it impacts the validity of their submissions. The amazing Phillip Dawson and colleagues (2024) say validity matters more than cheating.
I say worth matters more than validity.
If an assessment is valid, this means it effectively tests what it’s supposed to test: the student’s achievement of the learning outcomes. But being valid is not the same as being worthy.
The reality is that GenAI has grown like a parasitic vine through the knowledge workforces of the world. Some organisations planted it there; some forbade it and it grew anyway. Lawyers are using ChatGPT to fabricate legal documents. Hiring managers are using ChatGPT to screen candidates, and also complaining that candidates are using ChatGPT to write applications. Students are using ChatGPT to write essays and teachers are using ChatGPT to mark them. You get it. It’s fkn everywhere, and we’ve thrown up our hands and said, “Well — that’s the world we’re preparing them for.”
AI is just a convenient “for instance” here — there are countless examples of dubious practices that we have accepted as the way of the world. Mostly, though, we try to ignore these practices when we’re designing an authentic assessment. Don’t mention it; we have nothing to do with it — we just teach the good things, and you’ll discover the rest at work. But I wonder if it’s time for higher education to progress to whatever “post-authentic assessment” would be?
Here’s my thinking.
Real world relevance is incredibly important, but universities still have a pretty shabby rep where this is concerned. (Calling something “academic” is not a compliment.) It’s been 34 years since Wiggins wrote his pitch, but we never got good at doing authentic.
VET already does authentic. It does it so well that the aspects of authenticity are tightly prescribed in each unit of competency; students’ assessment evidence must demonstrate these “critical aspects” in order for credit to be awarded. Higher education, despite being increasingly vocational with its focus on industry, needs to differentiate itself.
At this level, educators should be able to articulate not just what good practice looks like, but why it is good — not just technically but theoretically, socially, morally — and where ambiguity exists, teach students to navigate it.
And finally, higher education is (in principle) a space where new knowledges are discovered and celebrated. We should strive for something more than describing the world as it “really” is. Echoing Jan McArthur (2023), I argue we deserve a higher education that calls us to assess the value of authentic practices and, once in a while, contribute to developing better ones.
Fawns, T., Bearman, M., Dawson, P., Nieminen, J. H., Ashford-Rowe, K., Willey, K., Jensen, L. X., Damşah, C, & Press, N. (2024). Authentic assessment: from panacea to criticality. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2404634
Dawson, P., Bearman, M., Dollinger, M., & Boud, D. (2024). Validity matters more than cheating. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2386662
McArthur, J. (2023). Rethinking authentic assessment: work, well-being, and society. Higher Education, 85, 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00822-y
Wiggins, G. 1990. The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation, 2(1), 1–3.