Designing an Authentic Assessment: Reflection
Authentic Assessment is a type of a performance – based assessment that involves a task that envelops certain real life skills. It involves both process and product. It has five dimensions, namely: the task, physical context, social context, assessment result or form, and assessment criteria. This assessment may take several meetings to be accomplished by students.
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect that I will plan such assessment. It seems very elusive and ambitious for a college student like me with no experience whatsoever in planning such assessment. Luckily, we were equipped with the needed inputs that helped us achieve the best plan we could make. Let me share some of my experiences and insights during our planning for such assessment how during our defense of our plan.
In the planning stage, we have come up with the topic and task in an instant, which is to let our prospective students design a wiring plan for a two floor house. We were jubilant at first since we thought that it will be a smooth ride for us. We wrote our tentative plan. But as we processed this proposed plan, we realized that it was very unrealistic since our prospective students are not equipped with the skills needed to come up with a plan (since it needs Kirchhoff’s rule). So we simplified it into an office room. Here, we realized that it needs very critical and in depth analysis of the task to be given to our future students in an authentic assessment. Next obstacles are the physical and social task. These two are quite the easiest to come up. We just need a realistic setting, group and time frame and voila!-we’re done with it. Next is the assessment result or form. You can determine this only if you have visualized your task. If you have determined your main product, the other forms will come up. In our task, a schematic diagram is the main product. By visualizing this, we thought of transforming it into a layout design, then letting them defend it by using visual aids and submitting also a proposal on paper of their diagram. Each product involves certain processes. The last and most grueling to come up is the assessment criteria. In this dimension, you have to come up with your own assessment tools (rubric, rating scale, checklist, etc.). Coming up with a rubric is the most demanding part. It needs very long period of time to process and needs a pool of ideas from each member of the group. It also has to be that no standards overlap and that is the hardest part. To come up with each standard is very hard.
Another thing, this activity is so tedious. It consumes a lot of time and energy. Also, in the preparation for the defense, we spent time on planning and perfecting it to meet the expectations specified on the rubric given to us. I felt also a bit disappointed during the defense since I feel it was unfair that we are the only group scrutinized by 2 experts. Also, I think the expectations were too high for the defense and that gave us the jitters rather than confidence. But above all, that was a learning experience for all of us future teachers.
