Open Pedagogy & Authentic Assessments
I’ve been thinking a lot about assessment lately much to my dismay. It’s probably because I’m working on a workgroup for testing services at the college. There appears to be a need for more testing services for online courses, but it got me thinking about how some of our assessments are the same types of assessments we got when we were in college years ago. Can’t they change? Can’t they be different now since education has changed so much? It’s just a thought, but here I am thinking about assessment.
Now is a good time to be thinking about how you can or may need to change your assessments for the next semester. Whether things went well or they didn’t, or you’re worried about students finding ways to cheat on your online assessments, it’s always good to evaluate how things are going and make adjustments. One thing to consider is open pedagogy and authentic assessments. Authentic assessments are usually designed by teachers to gauge students’ understanding of the material. They are tied directly to the learning objectives of a course, program, or discipline. Some examples of authentic assessments include open-ended questions, written compositions, oral presentations, projects, experiments, and portfolios of student work.
Open pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that emphasizes collaboration and sharing. It is based on the idea that knowledge should be freely available to everyone. Some examples of open pedagogy include students creating and sharing video-based learning objects for their classes, engineering students creating an open online textbook, forestry students creating open conservation case studies, and physics students creating course learning resources.
Here are some practical tips to help you get started with implementing authentic assessments in your classroom:
- Align assessments with learning objectives. When designing authentic assessments, it is essential to ensure that they align with the learning objectives of your course or unit.
- Design the curriculum backward from the assessment. This means that you should start by identifying what you want students to learn and then design assessments that will measure their understanding of those concepts.
- Evaluate along the way using benchmarks. Use benchmarks to evaluate student progress throughout the course or unit.
- Give students time to revise after self-assessment and peer assessment. This will help them improve their work and deepen their understanding of the material.
- Continually adjust your assessment tools. Be willing to make changes to your assessments as you learn more about what works best for your students.
- Be innovative to improve assessment. Use technology, games, simulations, and other innovative approaches to make assessments more engaging and effective.
I hope these tips help you implement authentic assessments in your class!
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