What is Authentic Assessment?

“A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful
application of essential knowledge and skills…”- Jon Mueller (2011)
“…Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to
fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the kind of
problems faced by the adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field.”- Grant Wiggins (1987)

“Performance (authentic) assessments call upon the examinee to demonstrate specific skills and
competencies; that is, to apply of their weaknesses. This results is diminished fear of tests and improvement
of self-esteem.” From teacher-centered activities, Authentic Assessment encourages a learner-
centered class.

Types of Performance- based Assessment

There are two types of performance-based assessment according to Gronlund, Linn and Miller (2009)
1.) Restricted-response Performance Task
2.) Extended-response Performance Task

Restricted-response Performance Task

- a performance task that is highly structured with a limited scope. The instructions of the task are
more focused and the limitations are always indicated.
Examples: writing a one page summary of the class outreach program: demonstrating how to set up cooking
utensils: delivering a two minutes campaign speech: and constructing a bar graph of the scores of 50 students
in a quiz in statistics.

Restricted essay questions- are more structured and they require less time to administer. The shorter the
administration of the said task implies that there are more task to administer; hence, they can cover a
broader content of the subject matter.

Extended-response Performance Task - a type of performance task that is less structured with broader in
scope. Examples: students conducting a thesis and then presenting and defending their findings in front of a
panel of judges; or writing and rewriting a poem after being criticized by a teacher.

Some extended-response performance tasks combine all three types of performance tasks such as problem
solving, communication skills, and psychomotor skills that result to a product such as (Gronlund, Linn, and
Miller, 2009):

a. The preparation and delivery of a speech to persuade people to take action to protect environment;

b. Writing a computer program in Beginner, All- purpose, Symbolic, Instruction, Code (BASIC) that will
sort a list of words alphabetically;

c. Designing and carrying out an investigation to estimate the acceleration of a falling object such as a
baseball; and

d. Describing the procedure used, presenting the collected and analyzed data and stating your
conclusion .