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Authentic Assessment: Getting Started

Authentic Assessment: Getting Started

We want our students to be empowered for employment, prioritise experiential learning opportunities and assessments to equip students with skills, knowledge and a thirst for lifelong learning. We want to achieve this through our curriculum by challenging, transforming and being collaborative to help produce highly skilled and employable graduates.

What is Authentic assessment?

Authentic assessment relates to creating assessments which link to industry or challenges which are related to real-world, integrated industry or work-related approaches and problems. This focusses on enabling students to demonstrate key knowledge and skills that they have learnt and apply them in different scenarios to show their mastery of the topic. This usually means that the assessment output will have a wide variety of approaches and potentially wider solutions as it enables students to apply their own knowledge and understanding based off a variety of factors to a situation.

Why use Authentic assessment?

Authentic assessment:

Helps students work towards core graduate outcomes and develop the skills outlined in the Lincoln for Life wheel (internal web).
Promotes higher order thinking skills by making students address more than just a simple retelling of facts and figures. It applies problem-solving, critical thinking and application of knowledge.
Works directly with an assessment for learning approach, focussing on skills, knowledge, and application-based tasks. Enabling students to gather feedback and implement for future development.
Assessments can be tailored to the interests of the individual/group enabling the opportunity to choose their focus on a particular context or approach.
Supports academic integrity that designs assessments based around original thinking and unique situations.
Provides opportunities for holistic assessment, focussing on the process of learning, how they approach the task and adapt to challenges. This gives ample opportunities for Artificial intelligence to be embedded in assessment to support industry related skills.

Integrating Industry Partnerships

Integrating industry partnerships into authentic assessment can significantly enhance student learning and employability. By collaborating with industry partners, universities can design assessments that reflect current professional practices, ensuring students gain relevant experience and competencies. This approach not only aligns academic outcomes with industry expectations but also boosts student motivation and engagement by demonstrating the practical application of their studies

Industry partnerships can provide valuable insights into evolving sector needs, helping institutions to continuously adapt their curricula and assessment methods to better prepare graduates for the workforce. Overall, such collaborations create a dynamic learning environment that bridges the gap between education and employment, benefiting both students and employers

What are some examples of authentic assessment design?

Authentic assessment design comes in many variations and the information on this page is designed to give you some overview of some ways which authentic design can be implemented. This could be through multiple different assessment formats including presentations, portfolios, artifact/content generation and written supporting materials etc.

Whilst some areas naturally lend themselves to more authentic means of assessment, there are links to all subject areas and the authentic nature of the assessment can be around deliverables of skills and application through hypothetical scenarios. Below we have come up with some ideas for different subject areas as well as some generic ideas that can be applied to multiple disciplines. Some of the generic ideas below could be one task which is produced as part of a wider portfolio to help look at the process of learning. They can even be set earlier within the module as part of a formative assessment for them to reflect upon as part of their summative assessment.

Produce a presentation which focusses on a theory of your choosing and how you would implement it within [X]. The presentation can be in one of three formats (Visual, Poster or Video) but should be supported with a critical analysis and reflection (500 words) of why you chose that implementation method and what elements can be applied with in your current studying.
Research, analyse and produce an advice leaflet which will support [situation x], you should ensure that you have referenced your research effectively, including any challenges that may arise.
Using the data provided, format and analyse the output to guide and justify your decision making for [X]. Then produce [Y] making sure to include your justifications and next steps.
Analyse the presented case study and present your findings on [x] with recommendations of your output to achieve [y]. AI can be used to help with your data analysis only and you need to evidence your recommendations. This can be supported with an action plan of how this would be put into place.
Create [x] based around the client’s needs, you will need to provide a breakdown of [Y], outlining the reason for the choices, possible implementation requirements and relate back to key learning that has happened via your portfolio in your course.

More examples based around subject specific areas can be found on our Subject Examples of Authentic Assessment page.

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Moving from traditional exams

Whilst standard exams can be used to test recall, we need to look at two key areas to shift to more authentic design to ensure application of knowledge. The first area is uplevelling current question sets within exams. Basic knowledge questions such as ‘give two examples of [x]’ or ‘what is [x]’, whilst useful do not provide the students the opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of the topics. We already have pages of advice which look at how to adapt current question-based testing to make it a more challenging and in-depth opportunity for the students. More information on these techniques can be found on our assessments page (internal web).

This enables staff to challenge higher order thinking skills by assuming they know the answer and asking more in-depth questions related to particular scenarios or contexts. This gives a much wider opportunity for students to demonstrate what they know and how this would be applied.

One way of developing question-based exams is to focus on research papers. By using a selection of research papers throughout the teaching and learning experience, attached to each topic, students will build knowledge and understanding of the core research. These can then be used to create authentic assessment exam questions based around each paper.

i.e. using the research paper, justify the conclusions of the information below; identify, analyse and discuss the outcomes of the scenario in relation to the knowledge within the paper and critique the output. Then, using your wider knowledge on the topic, suggest how this could be improved.

This can be achieved by letting students have open book-exams where they can keep notes on the papers to build towards a scenario.

An alternative approach to developing authentic assessments is to transform the traditional exam into a proposal, application, or report-based task. In this format, students are presented with a dataset or a real-world scenario relevant to the course content. Throughout the teaching and learning process, students engage with similar datasets or case studies to build analytical and evaluative skills, which are then applied during the exam. For example, students might be asked to identify key trends, assess the reliability of the data, and suggest evidence-based interventions or strategies.

i.e analyse the data, critique the methodology or implications, and propose a justified course of action based on your findings. Support your recommendations using both the provided data and broader subject knowledge.

This can be facilitated through open-resource assessments, where students are allowed to bring annotated materials or notes developed during the course to support their analysis and decision-making.