Authentic assessment

In comparison with DA, Authentic Assessment has received small amounts of attention from researchers. As a consequence, literature about AA is reduced.

Available resources mainly come from practitioners’ websites and faculty repositories in particular. At the time of finalising this contribution, the Arizona State University is going to start a MOOC²² about Assessment Methodologies, whose first module is about Authentic Assessment.

One of the main references for AA is Gulikers, Bastiaens & Kirschner (2004), defining it as “an assessment requiring students to use the same competencies or combinations of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they need to apply the criterion situation in professional life.” (2004, p. 69). In other words, in AA – also referred to as Performance-based or Alternative or Direct Assessment – students conduct tasks that mirror the use of the concept or operation in the real world. In accordance with this definition, the original field of application for AA was that of internship and apprenticeship, with the student observed in action and the instructor providing directions. Subsequently it has been applied to arts and afterwards to all other areas of the curriculum, but the gap in research has not been completely filled yet.

As it has been done with DA, a major model of AA is hereby proposed in order to see how the experimentation fits the established criteria and can be consequently defined a case of actual AA. The model is that by Gulikers, Bastiaens & Kirschner (2004).

2.6. The five-dimensional framework for AA by Gulikers, Bastiaens & Kirschner (2004) The framework proposed by Gulikers, Bastiaens & Kirschner (2004) consists of five main criteria, defined as the dimensions of the assessment. It is important to point out that, in their model, authenticity is not a 0-1 characteristic, but, rather, it can be considered as a continuum. In their words (2004, p. 70) “the degree of authenticity is not solely a characteristic of the assessment chosen; it needs to be defined in relation to the criterion situation derived from professional practice”.

The five criteria-dimensions are:

1. The assessment task: an authentic task confronts students with activities that are also carried out in professional practice. Furthermore, the users of the assessment task should perceive the task as representative, relevant, and meaningful. It needs to have the same characteristics as a real-life problem or task.

With regards to this criterion, the task at issue can be defined authentic. It is not related to a professional practice, but to something that many of us do quite often – tweeting about daily life – i.e. a life practice.

2. The physical context: the physical context of AA should reflect the way knowledge, skills, and attitudes will be used in professional practice²³. Authentic assessment often deals with high-fidelity contexts.

22 Available at https://www.coursera.org/learn/ell-assessment/home/welcome (3/11/2016)

23 Ibid. p. 74, quoting Brown et al., 1989; Herrington & Oliver, 2000.

Tweeting can be done wherever, as it is mobile-based. Therefore, a classroom can be considered an authentic physical context.

3. The social context: this criterion is the social counterpart of the previous one. A model for AA should consider social processes that are present in real-life contexts.

What is really important in an authentic assessment is that the social processes of the assessment resemble the social processes in an equivalent situation in reality, and twitting in the classroom fits this criterion: it can tweeted alone or in a group, and, if in a group, ideas can be tweeted before or during or after the tweet, especially if the tweet gets a feedback – re-tweets or answers.

4. The assessment result or form: an assessment involves an assessment assignment (in a certain physical and social context) that leads to an assessment result, which is then evaluated against certain assessment criteria²⁴. This dimension, along with the following one, is particularly relevant for the experimentation to be defined as actual AA. Both dimensions concern features that are typical of traditional, standardized-oriented assessment: assignments, outcomes, standards, measurements. Moreover, and more importantly, the 5th dimension states that assessment criteria must be explicit and transparent to learners.

Let us start with the latter. In a strict sense, students in the experimentation were not aware of the assessment: when the teacher firstly introduced the activity, she explained it was meant to re-use the linguistic structures just learnt in order to get a feedback from her and the rest of the class while having fun and enjoying the unusual situation and communication tool. This, implicitly, is telling that there is an evaluation component in the activity, but it is clear that there is no explicitness of the assessment purposes nor of its formal constraints and elements – because it did not have them.

This and the following point can be considered as two major weaknesses of the experimentation and reduce or delete its AA nature. And yet, on the other hand, it could represent – and, in some sense, demonstrate and show – a major strength, being characteristic of its difference from traditional assessment models and, above all, of a development-oriented practice – similarly to what is meant for DA.

The point is that AA, while being presented as an innovative and nontraditional form of assessment, is actually designed and implemented as any other form of traditional assessment, with the “only” – of course, very relevant – difference that settings, objectives and concrete tasks are non-artificial but are real-life situations and they result meaningful to task performers. In this sense, AA is much less revolutionary than DA, as it does not change the mindset lying at the basis of assessment: it changes the practical scenario, not the theoretical one. AA can, in fact, be implemented without any form of participation of the teacher/assessor, who has no mediation role. This implies that traditional assessment roles – i. e. setting, explicitness, evaluation criteria, scores - have to be maintained.

From the experimentation perspective, this presents the problem of how to combine the two assessment models without losing any of their core characteristics.

24 Ibid. p. 75, quoting Moerkerke, Doorten, & de Roode, 1999.

124 Culturas, Identidades e Litero-Línguas Estrangeiras

We, in fact, have to take into consideration that applying them both together represents one of the most important innovative features of the experimentation itself. But, since the DA model is the most relevant from the theoretical and methodological point of view and it implies a complete shift of focus from mere measurement to cognitive development and actual learning, we cannot but give priority to it. As regards to the 4th and 5th dimension of the model, we have to register them as not applicable, while the rest of the criteria confirm the authentic nature of the assessment.

5. The assessment criteria: criteria are those characteristics of the assessment result that are valued; standards are the level of performance expected from various grades and ages of students²⁵. Setting criteria and making them explicit and transparent to learners beforehand is important in authentic assessment, because this guides learning (ibid. quoting Sluijsmans, 2002).

2.7. MALL

The third theoretical main aspect to analyse concerns the use of 2.0 technology and the adoption of a MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach (Aafren, 2014). Both these choices are intended to enhance the language learning process, by providing a favourable environment for effective and lasting learning to take place.

The main justification for these approaches comes from the neuroscience of learning: from a cognitive neuroscience perspective, learning involves forming and strengthening neural connections. Studies tell us that good neural networks are built by experiences containing elements such as novelty, intensity, and movement.

Enriched, stimulating environments, where novelty, intensity and movement play a key role, can lead to improved learning outcomes (Naeini & Duvall, 2012).

Emotions, in this context, play a major role, as they can direct attention and directly determine learning and memory by releasing two important hormones – epinephrine and norepinephrine – involved in the creation of new neuronal circuits (van Praag et al., 2000; Phelps, 2006; Schunk, 2012). The solution for a good emotional management is linking academical content to students’ experiences so that their positive emotions associated with these experiences become associated with the learning. That is just what Mobile Learning functionalities like micro-blogging and, therefore, Twitter, do.

Twitter and M-learning in general is a very favorable environment for integrating novelty and intensity, because it allows Situated Learning (Lantolf & Poehner, 2011), that happens when someone uses or creates and/or shares and increments knowledge exactly where knowledge is needed or generated, feeding a mechanism driven by curiosity, creativity and practical needs. As Situated Learning is generated by emotionally intense moments when something catches our attention for its beauty or another kind of attractiveness, in so doing it is very effective in creating or strengthening neural circuits.

Being intertwined with DA and AA, Twitter moments become the central point

25 Ibid. p. 75, quoting Arter & Spandel, 1992.

of an integrated, highly interactive process. For the teacher/tester, they are special occasions to observe what is being acquired and how, what kind of difficulties students encounter and what are their focuses of interest. For the students, they are special occasions for playful, fun and original re-use of the pieces of language they just learnt. Stimuli coming from the knowledge just acquired join those coming from the contextual situation, while social interactions feed the content creation process in a creative way, by mixing suggestions from friends, assonances between words and memories.

The integration of assessment and Twitter is another innovativeness factor of the experimentation. As far as it has been observed, very few cases of nontraditional assessment applied to 2.0 technologies in Synchronous Computer Mediated Communication (SCMC) with L2 learners have been implemented, and none of them is about Twitter. A very recent case is reported by Ebadi (2016) who applied DA to Skype and Google Wave and achieved interesting results in terms of interlanguage diagnosis and learning potential exploration.