Authentic Assessment and

Collaborative Performance
Tasks
Marie Therese A.P. Bustos, PhD
Stay Well,
Keep Learning:
Education Resilience
and Learning Continuity
in the Time of
COVID 19
Compassion
Inclusion
Innovation
Assess to inform students
about their learning
"A focus on grading, ranking,
and participation in large-scale
assessments during the
pandemic may cause more
harm than good. Undue stress
related to summative
assessments may impinge on
learners’ mental health."
"Authentic products of
learning documented in
portfolios can be
validated using 60-second
assessment conversations
such as informal chats or
casual interviews."
"Use short conversations to
help establish students’
understanding of the
lesson and to verify if the
students actually worked
on their
projects independently."
Authentic Assessment
Definition
Authentic assessments are performance
assessments using real-world or
authentic tasks or contexts (Mueller,
2018)
● Authentic assessment values the
student in the teaching and learning
process.
Dimensions of authentic assessment
(adaptation of Mueller’s work by UNSW)
DIMENSION More traditional assessments More authentic assessments

Structure of problems Predetermined Unpredictable

Learning setting Contrived Real

Cognitive activity Lower-order Higher-order

Learner agency Teacher-defined Learner-defined

Application of learning Indirect evidence Direct evidence

Expectation of a task
(Cumming and Maxwell, 1999)
First order expectation
● The development of knowledge and skills necessary to
accomplish the task
● Facts, figures, concepts, principles, and “information” of
the subject
Second-order expectation
● The immersion in the activity and performance of
actual behaviors relevant to the situation and
subject area
● application, evaluation, and synthesis are
practiced and perfected
Authentic assessments must be well
thought out and carefully designed.
Spady’s Demonstration Mountain of Performance
Implications on assessment

● Assess with the long-term

significant outcomes of the
program in mind, not just subject-
specific outcomes.
What to Assess?
Must be based on the curriculum

Consider curricula across grades and

learning areas

Consider typical steps in development of

learners

Consider timing of assessment (before,

during, after) (ACTRC, 2020)
● Think photo
albums instead
of snapshots.
Real – world challenge
● Inauthentic contexts ● Authentic contexts
○ Compute the area ○ Create the budget list for
materials needed to
of the yard
build a fence around our
school vegetable garden
○ List food groups
○ Produce a nutrition
information brochure for
distribution at the
barangay health center.
Authentic teaching and authentic
assessment go hand in hand.
Take contextualization seriously
Problem:

The nature of authentic assessments is such

that they cannot be evaluated objectively
(Litchfield and Dempsey, 2015).
Solution:
Authentic Assessment and Rubrics
The value of rubrics (Andrade and Du,2005)
(1) communicate teacher expectations,
(2) facilitate student planning,
(3) facilitate revision,
(4) facilitate reflection,
(5) result in equitable grading,
(6) improve quality of work, and
(7) lower anxiety
Solution:
Assessment moderation
Using moderation (discussions among teachers)
● Purpose: make consistent, valid, evidence-based
decisions
● Moderation can be used within an improvement cycle:

○ before assessment

○ as assessment

○ after assessment
What happens in moderation
● Determine:
- what is to be learned
- how is learning progressing
- what will be learned next
● Moderation enables discussion about:
- how to interpret the curriculum
- what students need to learn to meet standards
- what success looks like
How to create authentic assessment (Mueller, 2018)

Authentic Assessment
Standards

Authentic Tasks

Criteria

Rubric
Standard
● What should students know and be able to do?
● Based on the K to 12 curriculum / MELCS
Authentic Tasks
● What indicates students have met these
standards?
● Brainstorm with a colleagues
Criteria
● What does good performance on this task look
like?
● Think evidence
Rubric
● How well did the students perform?

● Criteria and the levels of performance

Level of Student Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
Performance/Criteria
Criterion 1

Criterion 2

Criterion 3

For describing student performance, describe the lowest and highest first.
Example
MT Core Learning Area Standard

● Use Mother Tongue appropriately and effectively in

oral, visual and written communication in a variety of
situations and for a variety of audiences, contexts
and purposes including learning of other content
subjects and languages, demonstrate appreciation of
various forms of literacy genres and take pride in
one’s cultural heritage
MT Core Learning Area Standard

● Use Mother Tongue appropriately and effectively in

oral, visual and written communication in a variety of
situations and for a variety of audiences, contexts
and purposes including learning of other content
subjects and languages, demonstrate appreciation of
various forms of literacy genres and take pride in
one’s cultural heritage
Unpacking: Learning Outcome
● Behavior (observable)
● Content
● Context/Condition

● Concise
Learning Outcome: Concise enough?
● Use Mother Tongue effectively in oral,
visual and written communication in a
variety of situations and for a variety of
audiences, contexts and purposes.
Evidence: Performance Indicators
and Rubrics
● The learner composes a well-written invitation for
barangay officials, to the university’s graduation
ceremonies in the Mother Tongue.

● The learner narrates a story in the Mother

Tongue to children enrolled in the daycare center.
 Beginner Developing Proficient
Use of the Relays the story mainly Relays the story in the Able to relay the story in the
in English or Filipino and mother tongue but code- mother tongue
Mother uses mother tongue switches from time to time
Tongue vocabulary once in a
while

Knowledge Does not know story; Knows the story pretty well; Knows the story well; uses
reads from notes and may refer to notes from no notes; speaks with
of the story appears uncomfortable time to time; fairly confident confidence

Appropriate- Story is developmentally Some of the story is Story is developmentally

inappropriate for developmentally appropriate for audience
ness to the audience appropriate for audience
audience
And so on
Quality authentic assessments
emphasize both process and product.
Is the student portfolio an example of
authentic assessment?
Knowledge Network for Innovations in Learning and
Teaching (KNILT)

● A student portfolio would be considered authentic if the

following apply:

○ The student carefully selected their own work and

made their own decision of what work they were most
proud of to be placed in their portfolio.
● Students are asked to reflect upon their own work
- why they chose it, why it is important to them,
how hard they worked, how it can be improved
upon, etc.
Authentic assessment allows students
to work collaboratively.
Collaborative performance tasks
require teachers to collaborate too.
● a positive effect on student achievement can be
established only when teachers specifically
collaborate to discuss or advise each other about
student performance (Mora-Ruano, Heine,
Gebhardt, 2019)
Tips for collaborative performance tasks
https://gsehd.gwu.edu/articles/10-strategies-build-student-collaboration-
classroom

● Deliberately select which students will work

together
● Size the groups for maximum effectiveness
● Teach your students how to listen to one another
● Set the rules of language and collaboration
● Make goals and expectations clear
● Assign roles to the members of each group
● Use real-world problems, not imaginary ones
● Consider giving each group a different task
Authentic assessment can
have formative and
summative purposes.
Activity: Moderation
● Work in groups of 4 or 5. Members can come from
different specializations and grade levels.
● Choose a subject and grade level to work on.
● Choose a competency which you deem most
essential.
● Create an authentic assessment task and rubrics for
that competency following the model of Mueller.
Authentic Assessment
Standards

Authentic Tasks

Criteria

Rubric
mpbustos@up.edu.ph
t.bustos@actrc.org