The authenticity of ‘authentic’ assessment some faculty perceptions
The attempt to embed Authenticity within the learning process in higher education has been a driving principle within many pedagogical approaches to Higher Education developed over the past three decades. The desire to allow students to learn in a manner that closely resembles the way in which expertise is developed outside the academic environment is a central element of problem-based, inquiry-based and projectbased learning. Exploring the implications of authenticity for student achievement and the ways in which this should be assessed has led to innovative teaching methods and ways of evaluating student performance. Unfortunately, authenticity, and authentic assessment in particular, are…
First Year Computing Students' Perceptions of Authenticity in Assessment
The problem of how best to assess student learning is a fundamental one in education. Changes to computer science curricula seek to emphasise teaching practices that promote deep learning through direct, contextual examination of student performance on tasks that resemble those of practitioners, rather than more traditional methods. This kind of "authentic assessment" is becoming more popular as it appears to incorporate employability skills associated with professional practice into the curriculum in a natural way. In this paper, we report on an investigation into how computing students themselves understand the terminology of authentic assessment. We give a brief summary of some of the sa…