Who should attend?

This workshop is for staff who design and/or mark students’ assessments. In particular, this session is for staff who would like to review their existing practice and explore alternative and innovative/authentic assessment methods. By authentic assessment, we mean a form of assessment in which students are asked to perform tasks that lead to skills and knowledge relevant for a range of ‘real-world’ activities beyond education.

In this workshop, we will explore the features and rationales of authentic assessment, introduce a range of authentic assessment methods through case studies, identify its strengths and weaknesses, discuss the use of rubrics for marking this type of assessment, and facilitate discussions on how different ideas might be adapted to your own learning and teaching contexts. There will be a hands-on opportunity to apply the ‘authentic’ element into your assessment practice.

This workshop is intended to complement the Introduction to assessment for active learning, A practical guide to setting and marking assessments and A practical guide to giving effective feedback workshops. These four assessment-related workshops are meant to be complementary; attending all of them is not compulsory but is worthwhile if you are involved in reviewing/refining both formative and summative assessment. A more advanced Focus on programme-level assessment design workshop is also available for staff with responsibilities for entire modules or programmes.

Key areas

• the role of authentic assessment in learning
• characteristics of authentic assessment (e.g. authenticity as transferable and employability skills)
• methods of invoking real-world applications and assessing both knowledge and skills
• the educational and practical benefits and challenges of authentic/innovative assessments
• practical tips for the implementation of authentic assessment
• the use of rubrics for marking authentic assessment