Assessment+(continued6)

**As educators in the 21st century the importance of teaching students 21st century skills such as critical thinking has never been greater, but how do we effectively assess authentic learning?**



Twenty first century skills are skills and habits that allow people to actively participate in society using technology and media. The diagram above shows both the student outcomes (the colored archs) and support systems of 21st century skills(the blue swirls).

Authentic assessment is a term that is closely related to performance assessment and means that learners engage in educational tasks that are meaningful and directly related to real tasks they may need to perform in the future. For example, having a social studies students engage in an activity to poll public opinion on a local issue would be an authentic assessment as compared to having these same students taking a closed-book exam on principles of democracy. Having students interacting with their community, and becoming involved in real world issues would be a form of authentic learning . When teachers implement authentic assessment in the classroom it usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated.

ePALS can be used as a tool for authentic assessment. Through ePals, students are able to collaborate and interact with one another. They can also interact with students across the world. Being that students will have to collaborate and interact with people throughout their life, this is considered a type of authentic task which could be assesses using an authentic assessment. Through ePALS, the teachers are able to monitor the content and will be able to see if the students are using the skills required to complete the task.They will also be able to see based on what the students write, if they need to reteach any information that the students are unable to expand upon.

Authentic learning may be assessed by using a rubric. For example, performance assessment activities such as keeping a blog or wiki and updating it frequently may be considered authentic learning. This would be assessed by setting performance criteria and including a rubric. Students are completing a task that is meaningful to them (writing journal entries in a wiki or blog) as well as relevant to their lives while also still meeting necessary learning standards.