Defining Authentic, Perfomance & Forced-Choice Assessment

By Barry Sweeny, 1993

Basically, a forced-choice assessment is a test. Students are given a task (the test) in which each item has one right answer.
The scoring is done with an answer key by matching the student answer to the answer in the key.
There is little judgment required on the part of the scorer so forced-choice assessments are usually highly (consistant) reliable.

Students are asked to demonstrate the behavior that the assessor wants to measure.Very little inference is required on the part of the assessor to determine the student's level of ability & learning.
Also, the quality of students' work will range across a continuum because the tasks students must do requires that students use their judgment to complete the task. It is often the case that this judgment is what is being measured.
To score the work requires the use of a rubric which describes the range across the quality continuum, and a comparison of the student work to the levels on that rubric. This activity requires that teachers make a judgment about the level of quality of the student's judgment. This judgment must be consistant across teachers scoring the same work and across time by the same teacher. This consistancy is called interrater reliability and is usually measured as "within one point" (a on the rubric) or as "exact".

AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT:

A performance assessment is "authentic" when students demonstrate mastery of a desired REAL-LIFE TASK & do so in:
- A real-life CONTEXT
- For a real-life AUDIENCE.
The major criterion for authenticity is that the choice & control rest with the student /worker as it does in real life.

This may be copied and distributed for free as long as the following is retained:
Barry Sweeny, Trainer, Presenter, Author, Facilitator, Coach

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