Introduction
Students say they are motivated by solving real-world problems. They often express a preference for doing rather than listening. At the same time, most educators consider learning-by-doing the most effective way to learn.
Through the emergence of a new set of technological tools, we can now offer students a more authentic learning experience based on experimentation and action (Lombardi; Oblinger, 2007). With this, authentic assessments should be incorporated inside the classroom since according to Wiggins, “Authentic assessments” replicate the challenges and standards of performance that typically face writers, business people, scientists, community leaders, designers, or historians. These include writing essays and reports, conducting individual and group research, designing proposals and mock-ups, assembling portfolios, and so on (Wiggins, 1989). With access to online research communities, learners are able to gain a deeper sense of a discipline as a special “culture” shaped by specific ways of seeing and interpreting the world. They begin to grasp the subtle, interpersonal, and unwritten knowledge that members in a community of practice use (often unconsciously) on a daily basis. “Learning becomes as much social as cognitive, as much concrete as abstract, and becomes intertwined with judgment and exploration,” just as it is in an actual workplace.
Educational researchers have found that students involved in authentic learning are motivated to persevere despite initial disorientation or frustration, as long as the exercise simulates what really counts—the social structure and culture that gives the discipline its meaning and relevance. The learning event essentially encourages students to compare their personal interests with those of a working disciplinary community: “Can I see myself becoming a member of this culture? What would motivate me? What would concern me? How would I work with the people around me? How would I make a difference?” (Lombardi ;Oblinger, 2007). These authentic assessments present the student with the full array of tasks that mirror the priorities and challenges found in the best instructional activities: conducting research; writing, revising and discussing papers; providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. Conventional tests are usually limited to paper-and-pencil, one- answer questions. Authentic assessments attend to whether the student can craft polished, thorough and justifiable answers, performances or products.
As a result, Authentic assessment achieves validity and reliability by emphasizing and standardizing the appropriate criteria for scoring such (varied) products; traditional testing standardizes objective “items” and, hence, the (one)right answer for each (Wiggins, Practical Assessment, Research ; Evaluation, 1990). Thus, authentic assessments should be tantamount to the desired learning outcomes of the subject matter in order to achieve the competencies needed to be developed by the learners in order to serve its purpose. This gives greater emphasis on the development of students’ 21st-century competencies Since educational movements and new technologies continue to arise, teachers and schools all over the world are in search of other form of assessment wherein they can assess and evaluate students in a more effective and efficient way. Teachers thought that conventional assessments cannot anymore adequately measure students’ ability to apply the knowledge and skills gained in class. This search led to the use of authentic assessment inside the classrooms. To reiterate, authentic assessments refer to any use of instruction and assessment that mirrored real-world tasks rather than a contrived learning experience of the classroom-based worksheet or test (Archbald and Newmann 1988).
In this kind of assessment, the students are expected to perform activities that are tied to real-world contexts and constraints like those encountered by practitioners in the discipline. Authentic assessments are widely used today in several parts of the world. In fact, “Authentic assessment has become increasingly popular, as a perception has grown that there is a need for more holistic approaches to evaluating students. Authentic assessment moves beyond learning by rote and memorization of traditional methods and allows students to construct responses.
Authentic assessment captures aspects of students’ knowledge, deep understanding, problem-solving skills, social skills, and attitudes that are used in a real-world, or simulation of a real-world situation” (https://education.alberta.ca/media/6412562/literature_synopsis_authentic_assessment_2004.pdf.). A lot of school institutions preferred this kind of assessment because they are able to observe how students perform in class. It allows teachers to see the entire process and not just the end product of students’ work. Since students are directly engaged in the process, it enables teachers to evaluate the performance of the students more accurately.
Thus, engaging students in this kind of assessment provide an avenue wherein the students take ownership of their learning. Differentiating it to the traditional or conventional assessments, where in the students are just to take a pencil-and-paper test, its goal is to dissolve the dichotomy in what is being learned in the classroom with what is happening in the real world (Ayo, 2015). Students, who are experiencing these kinds of assessments, become more aware of how the world works outside the classroom. This gives them the opportunity to see and to have an idea about the things they will encounter in the real world. It is also believed that, the more the students are exposed to these kinds of assessments, the more skills they are to develop and that said skills will help them to easily and better adjust to the real world. In Philippine context, authentic assessment is also being used but it remains a controversial issue because most Filipino classrooms prefer to use both the traditional and the authentic assessment since one cannot be separated from the other for reason that students need to take college admission tests as well as licensure examinations in various fields of discipline after graduation.
This is evident in content courses while skill-related subjects adopt authentic assessment as their form of assessing student learning and performance (Rosaroso, 2015). Some of the authentic assessments used in Filipino classrooms are demonstration assessments which consist of role playing, dramatization, experimentation, and reporting; oral assessments which consist of storytelling, monologue, extemporaneous speech, impromptu speech, debate, choral reading and job interview; and portfolio assessment which consist of reflections, test results, checked worksheets or seat works, homework and others activities that demonstrate mastery by a variety of means – in this case, through writing, drawing and creative manipulation. In this context, high school students of Education High School of the University of Santo Tomas are taken as subjects in this study. As this study progresses, you will be able to know the students’ perceptions of authentic assessments.
This study also attempts to answer the following questions:
- What are the factors affecting students’ perception about authentic assessment?
- Are the authentic assessments implemented in class really authentic?
- Do authentic assessments have impact on the students’ academic performance?
- Can the students apply in real-life context the assessments implemented inside the classroom?
Resources that can be used:
HYPERLINK “http://education.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-22” http://education.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-22 HYPERLINK “https://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2” https://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 https://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=XgYoDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&dq=A+five-dimensional+framework+for+authentic+assessment&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRnIy6v9rdAhUGcCsKHW2vD7EQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=A%20five-dimensional%20framework%20for%20authentic%20assessment&f=false Introduction Sources: https://grantwiggins.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wiggins-atruetest-kappan89.pdf https://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 https://library.educause.edu/~/media/files/library/2007/1/eli3009-pdf.pdf
