Authentic Assessment vs traditional assessment

In this post, I'll try to answer the question raised in Lecture 4. The questions were-What do you think? How will you deal with the issue of assessment? What impact will it have on whatever instructional strategies you select to facilitate learners' accomplishment of learning objectives?

I believe that  authentic assessment examines student performance on worthy intellectual tasks. Projects, case studies, observations and reporting are kind of this. They ‘directly examine student’s  performance on worthy intellectual tasks’ . But this kind of assessment is good for document-based historical inquiry, literature review, research, theoretical based reading and learning, providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. I think that traditional ways of assessment like quiz, multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks and similar tools are good if instructor needs to evaluate student problem-posing and problem-solving in mathematics, experimental research in science and some kind of medical exams. Assessing students only on the authentic or the traditional assessment methods can be unfair. There has to be a balance of these two assessment methods in order to best judge the learning outcomes.

Authentic assessments may provide ‘valid indicators or predictors of academic performance’. Authentic assessment also has the advantage of providing parents and community members with directly observable products and understandable evidence concerning their students' performance. The traditional way of assessment is still used in many areas of learning because of the convenience and low cost.

The instructor has to choose the assessment methods very carefully so that the  academic achievement of learners doesn’t only come in terms of writing ‘right’ answers. The impact of the method choose by an instructor can help learners improve overall performance and if student can craft polished, thorough and justifiable answers, performances or products. 

References

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 2(2). Retrieved April 25, 2012 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 . This paper has been viewed 184,219 times since 11/13/1999