MODULE No.

AUTHENTIC
ASSESSMENT
AND
PORTFOLIO
ASSESSMENT
 Assessment in Learning 2

MODULE No. 2
AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT AND PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT

In Module 1, you accomplished a metacognition exercise. It’s a tool for self-assessment, and
because you assessed yourself, how you feel about certain things in your real life, the tool is an
authentic activity. After completing your lessons in Assessment of Learning 2, go back to the same
assessment tool, assess yourself again with the same tool, and determine whether there had been
changes in you. Meanwhile, put the Metacognitive Assessment tool in your portfolio of alternative
assessment tools which will be your project in this course. You will learn more about authentic
assessment and portfolio assessment in this Module.
I. Objectives: The readings in this module and the exercises will enable you to:
1. Define authentic tasks and authentic assessment;
2. Characterize the authentic assessment process;
3. Define portfolio assessment; and
4. State the advantages of using classroom portfolios.

II. Anticipatory Set

Did you give candid responses to the Metacognitive Exercise? What did you learn about yourself? I
hope to read your reflection when I collect your write up on May 22, 2022 online . Your project in this
course is to come up with a collection of alternative assessment tools which you can pattern the
development of your own alternative assessment tools in the future.
How you will be rated in this course will be as follows:

Bases for marking Weight (%)

A. Complete exercises/performance tasks in your notebook or a complete set of
exercises done in loose sheets of bond paper put together in a folder or
envelop…………………………………………………………………………………………………..……….…50
B. Compilation of alternative assessment tools………………………………………………………20
C. Long quizzes and Final Examination……………………………………………………………………30
Total 100

III. Lesson Proper

Read the content of Module 2 in ATTACHMENTS M-2 (1) and M-2 (2)

You can also read pp. 50 – 53 in Navarro, Rosita L.; Santos, Rosita G. and Corpuz, Brenda B. (2019).
Assessment in Learning. Quezon City, Lorimar Publishing, Inc.
 EXERCISE M-2 (1)
PERFORMANCE TEST M-2 (1)

Download or borrow a curriculum (teaching guide) on any subject in English (for BSEd) or in any
subject in a grade level (or college level) that you are now teaching or you intend to teach in.

Examine the curriculum and give of at least three (3) learning competencies that could best be
assessed using authentic assessment.

Example: In Earth Science

Content: II. Earth Materials and Resources
Learning competence- 18: Cite ways of reducing the production of waste at home, in school, and
around the community (S11ES-I-j-21)

IV. Evaluation: Please be prepared for the test which will be given to you as the last
module.
ATTACHMENT M-2 (1)

Assessment must be anchored in and focused on authentic tasks because they supply varied direction,
intellectual coherence, and motivation for the day-in and day-out work of knowledge and skill
development. Such tasks are never mastered the first time out. Eventual excellence at all complex tasks
depends on how well we learn to use feedback and guidance as we confront such tasks repeatedly.
Thus we ultimately develop excellence and autonomy by getting progressively better at self-assessment
and self-adjustment, Student self-adjustment must become central to teaching, learning, and testing.
We might say then that authentic assessment is assessment FOR, assessment AS, and assessment OF
learning.

Assessment is authentic when we anchor testing in the kind of work real people do, rather than merely
eliciting easy-to-score responses to simple questions (TF, Supply type, Multiple choice, Matching type).
Authentic assessment is true assessment of performance because we learn whether students can
intelligently use what they have learned in situations that increasingly approximate adult situations, and
whether they can innovate In new situations. (Wiggins, 1998).

Standards for authentic assessment

An assessment task or tasks, problem or project is authentic if it:

1. Is realistic. The task(s) replicate the ways in which a person’s knowledge and abilities are
“tested” in real-world situations.
2. Requires judgement and innovation. The student has to use knowledge and skills wisely and
effectively to solve unstructured problems, such as when a plan must be designed, and the
solution involves more than following a set routine or procedure or plugging in knowledge.
3. Asks the student to “do” the subject. Instead of reciting, restating, or replicating through
demonstration what he or she was taught or what is already known, the student has to carry out
exploration and work within the discipline of science, history, or any other subject.
4. Replicates or simulates the contexts in which adults are “tested” in the workplace, in civic life,
and in personal life. Contexts involve specific situations that have particular constraints,
purposes, and audiences. Typical school tests are contextless. Students need to experience
what it is like to do tasks in workplace and other real-life contexts, which tend to be messy
and murky. In other words, genuine require good judgement….
5. Assess the student’s ability to efficiently and effectively use a repertoire of knowledge and skill to
negotiate a complex task. Most conventional test items are isolated elements of performance –
similar to sideline drills in athletics rather than to the integrated use of skills that a game
requires….
6. Allows appropriate opportunities to rehearse, practice, consult resources, and get feedback on
and refine performances and products. Makes use the cycle of performance-feedback-revision-
performance on the production of known high quality products and standards.

The key differences between traditional and authentic tasks are reflected in Table 1.
Table 1. Key Differences Between Typical (Traditional) Tests and Authentic Tasks*
Typical (Traditional) Tests
Require correct responses only
Must be unknown in advance to
ensure validity
Are disconnected from a realistic
context and realistic constraints
Contain isolated items requiring
use of recognition of known
answers or skills
Are simplified so as to be easy to
score reliably
Are one shot
Depend on highly technical
correlations
Provide a score
Authenticity is a matter of degree.
Inauthentic
Explain a data set
Write a paper on laws
Read a teacher-chosen text
Authentic Tasks
Require quality products and/or
performance, and justification
Are known as much as possible in
advance; involve excelling at
predictable demanding and core
tasks; are not “gotcha!”
experiences.
Require real-world use of
knowledge: the students must “do” constraints that are authentic –
history, science, etc. in realistic
simulations or actual use.
Are integrated challenges in which
knowledge and judgment must be
innovatively used to fashion a
quality product or performance.
Involve complex and nonarbitrary
tasks, criteria, and standards
Are iterative: contain recurring
essential tasks, genres, and
standards
Provide direct evidence, involving
tasks that have been validated
against core adult roles and
discipline-based challenges
Provide usable, diagnostic
(sometimes concurrent) feedback:
the student is able to confirm
results and self-adjust as needed.
Degrees of authenticity is shown in the table below:
Somewhat realistic
Design a house using specific
mathematical formulas and shapes
Write a persuasive essay on why a
law should be changed
Read to class a self-selected text.
Indicators of Authenticity
We assess whether the student can
explain, apply, self-adjust, or justify
answers not just correctness of
answers using facts and algorithms.
The tasks, criteria, and standards
by which work will be judged are
predictable or known – like the
recital piece, the play, engine to be
fixed, proposal to a client, etc.
The task is a challenge and a set of
likely to be encountered by the
professional, citizen or consumer.
(“Know-how,” is required.)
The task is multifaceted and non-
routine, even if there is a “right”
answer. It thus requires problem
clarification, trial and error,
adjustments, adapting to the case
or facts at hand, etc.
The task involves the important
aspects of performance and/or
core challenges of the field of
study, not easily scored; does not
sacrifice validity for reliability.
The work is designed to reveal
whether the student has achieved
real versus pseudo mastery, or
understanding versus mere
familiarity, over time.
The task is valid and fair on its face.
It thus evokes student interest and
persistence, and seems apt and
challenging to students & teachers.
The assessment is designed not
merely to audit performance but to
improve future performance. The
student is seen the primary
“customer” of information
Authentic
Design & build a model house that
meets standards & client demands
Write a proposal to present to
appropriate legislators to change a
current law.
Make an audiotape of a story for
 segment use in library.
Authentic Task for Assessing Understanding of Volume: A Template*

That’s a Wrap.

You are in charge of the gift-wrapping of purchases in a large department store. On average, 24,000
customers make clothing purchases in your store each year. About 15 percent want their purchases gift-
wrapped. In a month the store typically sells 165 jackets, 730 shirts, 480 pairs of pants, and 160 hats.
The price of all boxes is the same, and wrapping paper costs 26 cents per yard. Each roll of gift-wrap is
one yard wide and one hundred yards long.

As the manager of gift-wrapping, you naturally want to plan for the year’s gift-wrapping costs and you
want to save money where possible. What box shape for pants, shirts, jackets, and hats would required
the least amount of wrapping paper?

Your task:

Recommend to the purchasing agent in a written report:

 The size of boxes that should be ordered for pants, shirts, jackets, and hats when ordered
separately.
 The number of rolls of wrapping paper needed.
 The approximate cost of wrapping paper for a year’s worth of sales of pants, shirts, jackets and
hats.

Questions to consider:

1. When the clothes are folded, how big does the box need to be? Of course, the way you fold
makes a difference in the shape of the box you could use without messing up the clothes.
2. Experiment with measuring, folding, and boxing clothes in the typical light-cardboard boxes that
clothes come in (or make boxes out of large pieces of paper with which to experiment).
3. Consider whether some package shapes are easier to wrap than others, with minimal waste.
Yet maybe those easy-to-wrap shapes require more paper – even though less is wasted. Are
there rules or generalizations you can come up with that might be eliminated if a large box were
used? Or are the savings in using the easier-to-wrap box offset by the increase costs in
wrapping the new shape.
4. No one can wrap a package without wasting some paper. Figure in the cost of the extra paper
and the unused or wasted paper on the roll required, given the needs of real-world wrappers.

Your work will be judged against the following criteria:

 Mathematical sophistication
 Mathematical methods and reasoning
 Effectiveness of work
 Quality of reports
 Accuracy of work
__________________

*Wiggins, Grant. (1998). Educative Assessment: Designing Assessments to Inform and Improve Student
 Performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
ATTACHMENT M-2 (2)
PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENTS

Background: Portfolios have recently emerged as powerful tools in education. They fall into the
category of “performance assessment” where students collect their work samples to show what they
have learned. Portfolios are a collection of a child’s work and teacher data from formal performance
assessments to evaluate development and learning (Wortham, 2001). Portfolios may contain
observation reports, checklists, work samples, records of directed assignments, interviews, or other
evidence of achievement.

Why Use Portfolios? Portfolios provide information that traditional paper-and-pencil tests cannot.
They provide a demonstration of academic skills that helps teachers and students make informal
decisions about instruction (Zimmerman, 1993). Experts explain these purposes for the use of
portfolios:

1. To be more sensitive to the needs of students’ diverse learning abilities (Glazer, 1998).
2. To develop a holistic picture of the activities the student has engaged in over a period of time
(Wrotham, 2001)
3. To provide visible evidence of a student’s progress in relation to goals (Tomlinson and Allan, 2000).
4. To make the assessment process of evaluating, revising, and re-evaluating fundamentally a learning
process (Darling-Hamman et al. 1995)
5. To help students think about how their work meets established criteria, analyze their efforts, and plan
for improvement (Rolheiser et al., 2000).
6. To reveal of range of skills and understandings and to value student and teacher reflection (Vavrus,
1990).

Gronlund (1998) proposes that portfolios have a number of advantages that make their use worthwhile
in the classroom which are:
1. Learning progress over time can be clearly shown (e.g., changes in writing skills).
2. Focusing on students’ best work provides influence on learning (e.g. best writing samples).
3. Comparing work to past work fosters motivation than comparison to the work of others (e.g., growth
in writing skills).
4. Self-assessment skills are increased wen students select the best samples of their work and justify
their choices (e.g. focus is on criteria of good writing).
5. Portfolios provide for adjustment to individual differences (e.g., students write their own level but
work toward common goals).
6. Portfolios provide for clear communication of learning progress to students, parents and others (e.g.,
writing samples obtained at different times can be shown and compared.

Assessment tools that may be included in portfolios:

1. videos and performances 6. graphic organizers 11. logs and journals
2. projects 7. peer evaluations 12. observation checklists
3. cooperative works 8. computer programs etc….etc….etc….etc….etc….etc.
4. simulations 9. self assessments
5. artwork 10. musical pieces
Self-assessment

The real power of the portfolio emerges when students describe the work they include, discuss the key
concepts they have learned, and most importantly, reflect on how this learning has affected them. A
portfolio is really a multisensory and multidimensional personification of a student’s learning. As
Gronlund (1998) warns, “Simply collecting samples of student work and putting it in a file does not
provide for effective use of the portfolio.” If students merely collect and store work in a folder, they
minimize the effectiveness of using the work as an effective instructional and assessment tool.

Adding the critical element of reflection fosters the higher-order critical thinking and decision-making
skills necessary for continuous learning and improvement.

According to Rolheiser, Bower and Stevahn (2000), “Reflection happens when students think about how
their work meets established criteria: they analyze the effectiveness of their efforts, and plan for
improvement. Reflecting on what has been learned and articulating that learning to others is the heart
and soul of the portfolio process. Without reflection, a portfolio had little meaning.”

Reflection is the heart and soul of the portfolio process because it enhances the learner’s ability to self-
assess her/his work and analyze her strengths and weaknesses in order to set new goals for growth. The
metacognitive process of “thinking about one’s thinking” is critical to the success of a portfolio. The
student takes control other own learning by becoming an informed critic of her own work. The teachers
and parents serve as “guides on the side,” but the student builds the capacity to self-assess redirect and
refine her own work.

Costa ad Kallick (1992) warn, “We must constantly remind ourselves that the ultimate purpose of
evaluation is to have students become self-evaluating. If students graduate from our schools still
dependent upon others to tell them when they are adequate, good, or excellent, then we have missed
the whole point of what education is about.”

Types of Portfolios

1. Personal Portfolios (Scrapbook portfolio). The entire portfolio focuses on students’ hobbies,
community activities, musical or artistic talents, sports, families, pets, travels. Artifacts include pictures,
awards, videos, and memorabilia. Students can also include a written or videotaped autobiographical
sketch, career or college goals, future travel or family planes and reflections on what they need to
accomplish to make their dreams or career plans a reality….

2. Best Work Portfolio. Includes items that may or may not have been graded previously. This type of
portfolio allows students to select entries from all the work they have done. Student choice forms and
important components. Once the teacher and the students select key items, they review the work and
discover students’ growth and development in areas that may not be assessed on teacher-made tests or
on standardized tests. This type of portfolio highlights the strengths of the students and helps their
sense of self-esteem and self-worth.

3. Content Portfolio. Educators teaching a single subject areas such as mathematics, science, language
arts, art, music, and industrial arts require students to demonstrate their knowledge of that content
area. For example, language arts teachers may ask students to include one example of each of the their
content portfolios: narrative essay, expository essay, persuasive essay, response t literature, poem,
letters, research paper, and book report. The teacher may require that one persuasive essay be
included in the portfolio, but the student chooses which persuasive essay to include.

In the case of PRESERVICE PORTFOLIO, what may be included?

More and more undergraduate education programs require preservice teachers to keep a portfolio of
entries that demonstrate their mastery of curriculum goals and course standards. The portfolio could
contain any or all of the following:
 Lists of courses taken
 Sample lesson plans
 Reading lists
 Artifacts of students’ work
 Samples of extracurricular activities
 Videotapes of cassettes of lessons taught in the classroom
 Interviews with students
 Summaries of workshops or seminars attended
 Evidence of peer coaching
 Copies of evaluations
 Letters from students and parents
 Letters from students and parents
 Long-term goals, and
 Self-evaluations of the teaching experience.
 ETC.

Student teachers often keep ongoing logs and journals of their teaching experiences along with
personal reflections and feedback from supervising teachers, mentors, or college supervisors…. The
education majors demonstrate their knowledge of subject areas, ability to meet students’
instructional needs, interactive instructional techniques, classroom management strategies,
assessment plans, and professionalism (Campbell et al. 1997).
The portfolio is not only a graduation requirement – it can also be used in the interview process
when applying for a teaching position. Prospective employers interested in teacher performance ask
applicants to bring a teaching portfolio to initial interviews. Principals and directors of personnel can
determine if the potential employees have experiences in the innovative educational strategies they
value. If the district incorporates cooperative learning, positive discipline, multiple intelligences, ir
authentic assessment in classes they prefer to hire teachers who already understand and practice
these concepts rather than insist on additional staff development training. A portfolio interview fives
insight into a prospective teacher’s teaching preparation.

EXERCISE M-2 (2)

PERFORMANCE TASK
Examine the entries in your portfolio. You can categories your entries following the suggestions
above. Provide insightful reflection. You may choose to reflect on individual entries, or write a
reflection for each category.
Submit your portfolio one week after you have taken the Final Examination.

Please read the Portfolio Assessment Tool and be guided by the tool in developing your portfolio.
 PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT TOOL
(Assessment of Learning 2)

I. Introduction

1. Make sure that your portfolio includes a Table of Contents and a List of References at the
end.
2. The most critical component of your portfolio is your reflective narrative on each entry. Make
sure that you reflect on each item, writing in detail what you think about the assessment and
how you felt about doing it. Include in the narrative what you have learned from it and how
your learning related to assessment of your progress in the course.

II. Criteria for Portfolio Assessment

1. There is an introduction.
2. There is evidence of readings done related to the assessment tool used.
3. There is substantive written reflection about the assessment tools.
4. The portfolio contains a table of contents.
5. The portfolio is well organized.
6. The contents are assessment-related.
7. Contents illustrate particular assessment concepts and principles.
8. Contents illustrate learning by students.
9. The portfolio is displayed in a clear and creative manner.
10. The portfolio includes summary listing of references.

III. Items to be Rated

1. STYLE OF PRESENTATION (20 pts) Points

 Format and organization 10

 Table of contents 5
 Completed exercises 5

II. WRITTEN REFLECTION (40 pts)

 Narrative statements about the assessment tools

and justified why they are important to the subject 20
 Convincing narrative about the learning 20

III. BREADTH OF COVERAGE (20 pts) 20

IV. EVIDENCE OF READINGS DONE ON THE ASSESSMENT TOOLS (20 pts)

 Use of varied references for a particular assessment tool 5

 Author list and citation sources throughout the portfolio 5

 Inclusion of web addresses of sources 5
 Adequacy of references 5

TOTAL 100