The website teacher vision defines authentic assessment as aiming to evaluate student's abilities in real-world context. Students learn how to apply their skills to authentic tasks and projects. Authentic assessment does not encourage rote learning and passive test-taking. Instead, it focuses on students analytical skills, ability to integrate what they learn, creativity, ability to work collaboratively, and written and oral expression skills. It values the learning process as much as the finished product. Authentic assessment might be performance based. Students do experiments, conduct research, compile reports. Often these activities are done in groups with students working collaboratively. They can involve investigations and problem-solving. They can include reflection and self assessment. One of the most important aspects of authentic assessment is that it has a connection to real-world activities. It is not simply a recitation of terms or concepts in response to questions on the test. It's not simply a paper students write and turn into their teacher. Indiana University Center for Innovative Learning and Teaching says that an assignment is authentic; if it is realistic, if it requires judgment and innovation, if it asks the students to do the subject, if it replicates or simulates the context in which adults are tested in the workplace or in civic or personal life, if it assesses the student's ability to efficiently and effectively use a repertoire of knowledge and skills to negotiate a complex task, and if it allows appropriate opportunities to rehearse, practice, consult resources, and get feedback on and refine performances and products. One of the most common forms of authentic assessment is the portfolio, which we'll look at in this module later. Group or individual projects that result in presentations to the class or to those in the real-world also fit this category. Designing a solution to a problem, creating a website. In the lesson on teaching grammar, I mentioned how you might have students research grammatical errors they struggle with, and then teach those rules to the class. In the class on text and form, we looked at persuasive writing that contained a real-world components, such as proposing changes on one score, and sending that proposal to the principal superintendent, school board, dean, or college president, who might have the power to enact those changes. I once taught a college level creative writing class in which everyone was writing children's books. When they had finished their first drafts, I arranged for them to visit a third grade class so that the third graders could review their books and offer suggestions. My students never work so hard as they did during the week or two leading up to their visit to the third grade classroom. My first encounter with authentic assessment came when I was an 11th grade AP history class, and our teacher gave us a class project during the last month of the year to study and evaluate our high-school and to write a report on our findings, which our teacher promised he would submit to the school superintendent. Most writing in school was done for the teacher and the teacher alone. Authentic assessments provided audience beyond the teacher. One of the advantages of this for the teacher, as we'll see in the upcoming reading, Writing Students Make Coaches, Not Judges, is that teachers can join with their students to act as coaches and help them achieve a shared goal. Consider how much more valuable a discussion with students can be when it asks, who is your audience, and the answer is, not you teacher, but the elected officials who make all the major decisions for our school, or the admissions director at the college I hope will accept me. The teaching website at the University of New South Wales lists some of the ways authentic assessment can benefit students. Students generally accept authentic assessment as a valid approach and favor it as a method that motivates them to engage in deeper and more productive learning. Because it involves addressing unpredictable challenges, it helps students rehearse for the complex ambiguities of working in professional life, and to visualize themselves as real professionals. It require students to contract unique responses rather than selecting from pre-existing options. In this way, it challenges students to undertake complex, higher-order reasoning and to think independently and creatively. Students can reflect on and assess their own work and effort. They can see meaningfully how effectively they apply conceptual learning. Students can integrate this learning in a holistic way, bringing together work samples collected over time, perhaps in the preparation of a portfolio. Authentic assessment enhances graduate employability by developing students work readiness capabilities. It can creatively disrupt the traditional power balance and assessment by allowing external markers to give feedback and/or grade students' work, and students to actively engage in self and peer assessment. Authentic assessment helps equip learners with relevant workplace skills and competencies and prepares them for lifelong learning. Not instead of other forms of assessment, but in addition to, I encourage you to consider authentic assessment. These are two of the websites that I got some of this information from.