Designing authentic assessment

To translate students’ psychological needs for intrinsic motivation into practical assessment design, we can draw on the work of Quinlan et al. (2024). Their concept of educationally authentic assessment provides a useful framework for understanding authenticity in terms of students’ meaningful engagement with their learning process.

The outcomes of authentic assessment can be professional, societal, disciplinary or developmental:

• Professional authenticity
  Assessment tasks reflect key practices, standards and issues in relevant professional or workplace contexts.
• Societal authenticity
  Assessment involves students in real social, economic or political issues and responsibilities that extend beyond the university.
• Disciplinary authenticity
  Assessment asks students to engage with the core ways of thinking, inquiring and communicating that characterise a particular field.
• Developmental authenticityzs
  Assessment is aligned with students’ developmental level and supports their personal, academic and intellectual growth.

Design features for meaningful engagement

According to Quinlan et al. (2024), assessments are not primarily educationally authentic because of their outcomes, but because of the process and the experience of engaging meaningfully with learning. Each of the four outcome types above can, depending on the student, offer a pathway into engagement.

They identify several design features of authentic assessment that foster meaningful engagement: cognitive stimulation/challenge, practical value/realism, novelty, cultural sensitivity, interaction with peers and opportunities for choice.

In practice

A carefully considered assessment design,for example by building in opportunities for choice, realism and appropriate novelty, can foster meaningful engagement and thereby support deeper learning. A number of design features deserve particular attention.

• Choice; By giving students genuine say over:
  • the topic (what they focus on)
  • the format (how they demonstrate what they have learned)
  • the process (how they approach the task)
  • or a combination of these

thoughtful use of choice can strengthen their sense of ownership and relevance, while the overall structure remains clear and aligned with the learning outcomes.

• Realism in assessment connects tasks to:
  • a meaningful topic or issue
  • a meaningful topic or issue
  • a real or plausible audience
  • and a relevant place or context

For students, the most compelling aspect of realism was often the issue itself – social, economic or political problems or opportunities – rather than a direct link to a specific job. This has consequences for how we design ‘real-world’ tasks: in many cases, societal relevance matters more than a strict match with a particular role.

• Novelty; Novelty means introducing something new into the assessment. However, novelty should contribute to meaningful engagement, for example a fresh perspective or a new type of audience, rather than change for its own sake.

By combining these features, we can design assessments that are meaningful, connect to important issues or questions and are tuned to students’ development – whether in professional, societal, disciplinary or personal terms.

Quality standards in designing authentic assessment

Switching to open, realistic tasks can indeed boost students’ motivation, but it does not automatically guarantee reliable, effective assessment. Without careful planning, this can lead to unequal treatment, higher workload or a lack of transparency. When designing authentic tasks, keep the four key quality standards for assessment in mind to prevent these risks.

• Validity; An assessment should measure whether students have in fact learned what you intended.
  For authentic assessment, this means that tasks focused on societal or professional issues must still closely align with the intended learning outcomes. The ‘realism’ or the ‘issue’ should serve as a vehicle for assessing the right knowledge, skills and attitudes – not as a distraction from them.

• Reliability: Judgement should not depend on irrelevant or random factors.
  Authentic assessment often involves complex, open-ended tasks. To safeguard reliability, teaching teams need clear criteria, well-designed rubrics and a shared understanding of what different performance levels look like in relation to those criteria.

• Transparency; Both teachers and students need to know clearly what is expected of them. Transparency is especially important when tasks are new or more open in design. Students need clear guidance on:
  • the purpose of the task (including how it relates to professional, societal, disciplinary or developmental authenticity)
  • the assessment criteria
  • the options for choice and how to make responsible use of them

• Feasibility; Assessment must be workable in practice for both staff and students.
  Authentic assessment needs to be feasible within the UvA’s programme contexts – including cohort sizes, staff workloads, feedback capacity and available resources. Feasibility can be supported, for example, by using structured templates, clear group processes or digital tools that help manage complex authentic tasks.

Authentic assessment needs to be feasible within the UvA’s programme contexts – including cohort sizes, staff workloads, feedback capacity and available resources. Feasibility can be supported, for example, by using structured templates, clear group processes or digital tools that help manage complex authentic tasks.

In sum: a dual task for authentic assessment

Designing authentic assessment at the UvA involves meeting two conditions:

• Educational authenticity supporting students’ meaningful engagement with learning across professional, societal, disciplinary and developmental dimensions.
• Robust quality standards for assessment ensuring validity, reliability, transparency and feasibility.

The UvA Teaching & Learning Centre can support programmes in navigating this landscape – translating the ambitions of the UvA educational vision and the Assessment Policy Framework into concrete, sustainable assessment designs that genuinely matter to our students and to the world they are learning to shape.