Essay Example on Authentic Assessment: Real-World Tasks, Standards & Existing Tasks

Introduction

Authentic Assessment refers to a case when students are expected to carry out real-world tasks, which shows the meaningful application of critical skills and knowledge. Authentic Assessment may not be developed from scratch. It is possible that, in most cases, the teachers use authentic Assessment during regular class time. Sometimes, the standards may be written, which appears as the primary step in designing authentic Assessment. When there is an existing task to be completed, there is need to clearly articulate the task performance evaluation criteria. A rubric for evaluating the intended task may also be another option for authentic Assessment. Therefore, several steps may be adopted to design authentic Assessment for historical learning. The development of factual assessment criteria is built on several factors. What are the initial expectations in terms of what the students should be able to do and know? This encompasses developing a list of skills and knowledge. What are the key indicators that the stated standards have been met? This helps in determining if students have achieved the set standards. Material selection or design is made.

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Several critical factors help to determine the authentic tasks. In this case, a question like: how can excellent performance on the essential functions be expected to resemble? This helps in deciding if the students have performed as expected in the task. The characteristics off excellent performance are also identified in this case. The assessment criteria would be considered by answering the question: at what extend can the production be estimated? This helps in discriminating across the students' performance criteria. The level of expected performance for a student is also considered. This considers the majority of student performance levels. Finally, finding what the students need to do to improve upon is essential. The information provided in the rubric gives the expected feedback as well as allowing the teachers to benchmark or cut scores.

Reflection of Authentic Assessment

From the web seminar presentation, a number of essential steps which should be considered when assessment criteria are being created in determining historical thinking growth. From the introduction, it can be concluded that designing authentic Assessment for historical thinking can be presented using an assessment triangle. The triangle joins together the essential components of a successful assessment criteria. This ranges from what the students already know, what the expectations states. The cognition process takes into account the extend at which a student can be able to interpret a given task. Cognition exist as the key pillar in history education learning. At this level, applying the challenge of rethinking history education is essential. The second pillar is observation which entails designing performance tasks aimed at generating the best data on students' thinking competences. The last steps involve interpretation process. Interpretation involves data relation from both developed criteria and rubrics which helps in understanding the information produced by the performance tasks.

Historical thinking performance-based assessment design is a complicated method involving weighted multiple-choice cases. The design approach is assuming the upside-down approach as opposed to th first multiple-choice approach. The choices are weighted in descending order with only a single option. Therefore, through WMCS, the intermediate nature form and interpretive history can be honored when assessing historical thinking construction. It is essential for history teachers to adopt the proposed assessment criteria.

Reflection of Authentic Assessment

From the web seminar presentation, several crucial steps which should be considered when assessment criteria are being created in determining historical thinking growth. From the introduction, it can be concluded that designing authentic Assessment for historical thinking can be presented using an assessment triangle. The triangle joins together the essential components of successful assessment criteria. This ranges from what the students already know, what the expectations states. The cognition process takes into account the extend at which a student can be able to interpret a given task. Cognition exists as the key pillar in history education learning. At this level, applying the challenge of rethinking history education is essential. The second pillar is an observation that entails designing performance tasks aimed at generating the best data on students' thinking competences. The last steps involve the interpretation process. Interpretation involves data relations from both developed criteria and rubrics, which helps in understanding the information produced by the performance tasks.

Historical thinking performance-based assessment design is a complicated method involving weighted multiple-choice cases. The design approach is assuming the upside-down approach as opposed to th first multiple-choice approach. The choices are weighted in descending order with only a single option. Therefore, through WMCS, the intermediate nature form and interpretive history can be honored when assessing historical thinking construction. History teachers need to adopt the proposed assessment criteria.