Authenticity is the assurance that evidence of achievement is a learner's own. There are 3 broad categories of authenticity challenges that need to be managed during assessment.
Providers and assessors must be aware of the potential for learners to:
- copy from another person or source (plagiarism)
- have too much guidance from the teacher or assessor
- get specific answers for the assessment activity because it's available online, such as some Ministry of Education activities.
Assessors must verify that work submitted for assessment has been produced by the learner.
Assessors must consider (and manage) the potential for work to have been copied, borrowed from another learner, copied from a book or downloaded.
Assessment activities are publicly available from websites such as Tāhūrangi, commercial suppliers and subject associations. Managing authenticity for public source materials includes:
- changing specific figures, measurements or data sources
- setting a different context or topic to be investigated
- setting a different text to read or perform.
Assessors must manage authenticity issues for all assessments regardless of source.
It's appropriate for learners to learn from others and to gather information from a variety of sources. However, assessors must be clear that the work to be assessed has been processed and produced by the learner.
Make sure that teachers or assessors don't help learners complete work for assessment. The assessed work must be the learner's own, including when it's a performance in a group context or conditions allow for open book assessment.
For example, whole-class brainstorming can't include the answers to questions in an assessment, but it could include topics that learners can research individually.
Strategies used to ensure authenticity include
- modifying assessments available from publicly available sources
- changing the context of the assessment from year to year
- supervising the research process by including regular checkpoints
- requiring plans, resource material and draft work to be submitted with the final product
- keeping on-going work on site
- oral questioning to confirm a student's understanding or requiring a repeat performance where there is doubt
- being familiar with or controlling the resources available
- controlling group work by breaking the task into group and individual components
- requiring a signature on an authenticity statement to highlight the issue for both parents and students.