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- Vol 5 RE: Chapters 12, App C
authentic assessmenthigher education assessmentemployability skillscomplex performance tasksfeedback literacylearner agencyassessment alignmentinclusive assessmentJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Vlachopoulos and Makri review 94 articles on authentic assessment in higher education, focusing on implementation, development of employability-oriented “21st-century” skills, and implications for students, educators, institutions, and policy. Authentic tasks ask learners to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes in complex situations resembling relevant professional or real-world practice rather than reproduce information in decontextualised tests.
Key ideas
Across disciplines, reported benefits include problem solving, critical and creative thinking, collaboration, communication, self-regulation, engagement, feedback literacy, and links between academic learning and future work. Effective designs use clear criteria, realistic complexity, meaningful audiences or products, iterative feedback, reflection, learner agency, and alignment among outcomes, teaching, and assessment. Challenges include workload, scalability, consistency and reliability, student resistance, unfamiliarity, unequal resources, accessibility, technology, academic integrity, staff expertise, and institutional rules. The review calls for training, adequate time and infrastructure, stakeholder involvement, inclusive design, quality assurance, and policies flexible enough to support disciplinary variation.
Why it matters
Because the evidence consists largely of heterogeneous reports and perceptions, authentic appearance alone should not be assumed to cause transferable skills; designs need explicit goals and credible evaluation of learning, equity, and longer-term outcomes.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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