In an authentic assessment activity, the task is realistic and meaningful, leading to an artefact, product or performance which is – or could be – useful in its own right in work, study or social life.
Authentic assessment can meaningfully contribute to our students’ developing a sustainability mindset. It can usefully support inclusion and diversity, and help students prepare for many other ‘real world’ challenges. This aligns with the aims of the ‘assessment as learning’ and ‘sustainable mindset’ elements of the Brookes IDEAS model.
An authentic assessment task should be relevant to students. For example:
- Does it meaningfully connect with the rest of the discipline and / or their lived experiences?
- Will it be the kind of task they might have to perform in their future lives?
Such activities are likely to involve students in working with ‘abstract concepts, facts, and formulae inside a realistic— and highly social—context’, in ways that replicate the activities of a professional or disciplinary community (Lombardi, 2007).
Realistic contexts for assessment also allow students to choose their own paths through the task and reach their own, contextually-informed, conclusions, rather than mechanistically applying procedures to arrive at ‘the correct’ solution. Diversity of approach and response is encouraged and can be used in contexts that either embed and embrace GenAI, or try to find ways to minimise its use so as to facilitate the development of other skills.
Authentic assessment tasks can be designed in different ways with different types and degrees of GenAI to suit the required learning outcomes, such as:
- Incorporating GenAI to help prepare students for a GenAI-enabled world whilst building GenAI competencies e.g. critiquing AI-generated material (Pedagogic Practice 7), debating with GenAI, road-testing GenAI (Pedagogic Practice 4), real or fake exercises (Pedagogic Practice 8), or producing a piece of hybrid writing (Pedagogic Practice 10).
- Creating specific, reflective activities based on what happened within the students’ immediate, real contexts or experiences. This means that the predictive/prompt-driven nature of GenAI cannot respond effectively to these tasks (such as reflecting on the specifics of a seminar debate, a work placement, or interdisciplinary tasks).
- Not using GenA when it deprives students of the opportunities to develop cognition and human-centric skills (e.g. students’ personal understanding and experiences, their ability to make connections between disparate fields of knowledge, thought processes and reasoning/self-efficacy.
- Incorporating assessments that emphasise ethical considerations, self-management, social intelligence, and innovation. This approach can enhance the personalisation of assessments, making them less susceptible to predictable GenAI-generated outcomes.