How Authentic Are Authentic Assessments in Engineering Education?

Workshop Recommended citation: Ravi, M., & Besharat, M. (2025). How Authentic Are Authentic Assessments in Engineering Education?. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631317. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. HOW AUTHENTIC ARE AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENTS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION? M Ravi a,c, 1 , M Besharat b,c,1 a School of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, ORCID: 0000-0001-7659-9492 b School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, ORCID: 0000-0001-5222-0679 c Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Conference Key Areas: Engineering skills, professional skills, and transversal skills; Assessment in engineering education Keywords: Authentic assessment; Engineering education ABSTRACT The term ‘authentic assessment’ is frequently used in higher education and although there are extensive examples of its applicability to engineering education, the pedagogic literature often reveals a myopic interpretation of the term. In the context of engineering education, the emphasis of ‘authenticity’ is often restricted to the technical aspect of an assessment task with little attention being given to how an engineering student works towards preparing their assessment submission and how this compares to a professional engineer’s working practice. This workshop aims to challenge its participants on their conceptualisation of ‘authentic assessment’ and help them adopt a more holistic approach to designing assessment environments that more closely replicate professional workflows. The workshop will engage multiple modes of active learning: individual reflection on the conceptualisation of term ‘authentic assessment’, small group discussion on how an engineering student’s assessment practice can be made comparable to a professional engineer’s working practice, and an open discussion with all workshop attendees to articulate a unifying basis for authentic assessments in engineering education. Participants will leave the workshop with useful practical approaches to implement in assessments to enable students to fully develop their professional skills. 1 Corresponding Authors M Ravi, M Besharat m.ra[email protected], [email protected] 1 BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE 1.1 Authentic assessments in engineering education As defined in the pedagogical literature, ‘authentic assessment’ prioritizes experiential, context-rich learning paradigms that facilitate knowledge construction through ‘real-world’ application (Herrington & Herrington, 1998). As opposed to assessment methodologies that rely heavily on decontextualized memorization, authentic assessments simulate professional practices, thereby enabling students to develop competencies within relevant, practical contexts (Gulikers et al., 2004; Wiggins, 1990). Within engineering education, authentic assessments serve as effective conduits for immersing students in complex professional scenarios, thereby cultivating advanced cognitive engagement and preparing them for industry-specific challenges (AshfordRowe et al., 2014; Villarroel et al., 2020). This is because, by definition, such assessments are designed to foster independent inquiry and creative problemsolving, which requires students to bring together technical engineering knowledge, analytical reasoning and wider professional skills (Palmer, 2004). Authentic assessment methodologies can be further enriched through strategic industry collaborations, wherein students engage in project-based learning to address real-world engineering challenges posed by industry stakeholders. Industrybased projects require engineering students to work at disciplinary boundaries and are an opportunity to improve their communication skills (Wellington et al., 2002). Although such assessments challenge students in a good way, marking or grading rubrics that emulate industry performance expectations, where 50% good enough is often not acceptable in industry, can be misinterpreted by engineering students in higher education where such a mark is ‘passable’ (Guzzomi et al., 2017), revealing the critical need to balance such an assessment approach with structured pedagogical support to mitigate potential student disengagement. Likewise, embedding contextual complexity and personalization within engineering assessment tasks has been found to improve student engagement and deter unethical academic practice (Ullah, 2020). 1.2 Towards a more holistic implementation of authentic assessments Despite the widespread use of the term ‘authentic assessment’, as articulated in section 1.1, there is often a limited perspective with which it is interpreted in engineering education – often being restricted to authenticity in the technical content of the assessment, as evident from the vast majority of the engineering education literature in this domain (Strobel et al., 2013; Ullah, 2020; Vargas-Mendoza et al., 2018). However, to adequately prepare engineering graduates for professional challenges, it is imperative that authenticity extends beyond task design (i.e. authenticity in assessment content) to encompass the procedural dynamics of task execution (i.e. authenticity in assessment delivery). In other words, it is not sufficient if the assessment tasks or questions alone mirror those of the professional world, but so should the actual student working process of discovering solutions. This workshop is designed to enable engineering educators to adopt a more holistic perspective of authenticity when designing student assessment. Thereby, the workshop intends to challenge educators to sustain authenticity throughout the entire assessment cycle – starting from the specific task to be assigned and how to facilitate an assessment working environment that replicates professional workflows, ensuring assessment conditions align with the iterative problem-solving and decision-making processes endemic to professional engineering practice. The discussions will be scaffolded using findings reported in the engineering education literature as the theoretical foundation as well as findings from the authors’ research. By embracing this holistic approach, the workshop will serve as a basis to bridge the prevalent dichotomy conceptualizing student assessment environment in higher education as detached from the broader socio-professional ecosystem. Instead, this workshop advocates for the integration of social responsibility, professional attributes and experiential learning within assessment design and delivery for producing globally competent and socially responsible engineering graduates (McArthur, 2023; Ravi, 2023). 2 WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES 2.1 Target audience This workshop is directed at engineering educators who are involved in the design and delivery of student assessment. This includes educators who might be designing assessments at a module/subject level as well as those involved in programme-level overview of student assessment. The workshop would also appeal to members of the ‘Engineering skills’ and ‘Curriculum Development’ SEFI SIGs as fostering professional engineering competence through authentic student assessment strongly overlaps with the objectives of these SIGs. The participants of the workshop will be asked to reflect on their current assessment practice and how it aligns with the principles of ‘authentic assessment’. Thereby, this workshop will be well suited to all engineering educators with an interest in reflecting and improving their methods of student assessment. The participants will be able to improve their understanding of authentic assessment by learning from the perspectives of colleagues (through small group discussion),engineering students (presentation of survey data by the authors) and a few good practices (from piloting the findings in few engineering courses). 2.2 Expected key takeaways The key takeaways (KT) from the workshop are as follows: 1. To critically interpret the term ‘authentic assessment’ as applicable to engineering education 2. To analyse student and educator perspectives of authentic assessment against assessment findings published in the engineering education literature 3. To reflect on how engineering assessments can be made more authentic in terms of both the assessment task and the student’s assessment working practice 3 WORKSHOP DESIGN 3.1 Workshop structure The workshop will commence with participants individually reflecting on what the term ‘authentic assessment’ means in an engineering education context. Individual responses will be collated on a Padlet, which would then be used by the authors (workshop presenters) to draw parallels to the conceptualisation of ‘authentic assessment’ as presented in the pedagogic literature (Table 1). Following this brief presentation, participants will discuss how engineering assignments can be designed to improve elements of authentic assessment practice or delivery. The discussion will take place in small groups with other conference delegates (expected 4-5 members per group). The discussions will be based on the following prompts: (i) What are the salient features of an authentic engineering student assessment? (ii) What steps would need to be taken to align how a student works towards their assessment submission to how engineers would approach a similar task in professional settings? (iii) What professional skills can’t be promoted only through authentic assessment design (without assessment delivery authenticity)? The authors will check on groups during the discussions to address any doubts participants might have and enhance the interactivity. All groups will record their key observations/discussion points on a flipchart/post-it notes and these comments will be shared to the rest of the workshop attendees in a feedback session immediately after the group discussion (Table 1). The authors would then use the overarching comments emanating from the discussions to present commonalities and potential differences with student perspectives of authentic assessment (based on previously collected and analysed data) and findings published in the engineering education literature (Guzzomi et al., 2017). In conclusion, this will help elucidate a unifying basis of student perception, opinions of practicing engineering educators and the wider pedagogic literature that the workshop attendees can use to inform their practice going forward. Table 1. Workshop time plan Run time Activity Notes (Resources) Mapping to KTs 5 min Welcome and introduction Brief introduction from authors (PowerPoint slides) 7 min Individual reflection activity Individual thinking and recording of ideas (Padlet) KT1 5 min Presentation Led by authors (PowerPoint slides) KT1 13 min Group/Peer Discussion Workshop attendees discuss in groups of 4-5 (Flipchart & markers) KT2 15 min Feedback - group discussion Groups share their discussion (-) KT2,3 8 min Presentation Led by authors (PowerPoint slides) KT3 7 min Conclusion & closing comments Open discussion and Q&A (-) 3.2 Interactivity The workshop is designed to maximise active participation with the author-led presentation sections cumulatively taking up less than 15 minutes. Participation is encouraged through three forms of activities: individual reflection at the start, small group discussion with fellow workshop attendees followed by sharing of discussions with the rest of the workshop participants, and an opportunity for open discussion and Q&A at the end of the workshop. To provide an inclusive experience, the workshop also takes a multi-modal approach to interaction: individual reflection recorded digitally and anonymously, small group discussion points captured by writing on flipchart/post-its and oral discussion when feeding back group discussions and interaction with the workshop authors. 4 WORKSHOP RESULTS The workshop participants engaged in a critical reflection of how ‘authentic assessments’ are designed and delivered in engineering education. When asked to individually reflect on their perceived definition of the term ‘authentic assessments’, two major themes emerged from the responses logged on Padlet: the first was the emphasis on ‘real world challenges’ and the other being the ‘skills’ expected of professional engineers, which are captured in some exemplar participant quotes as follows: ‘Authentic assessments challenge students with tasks or scenarios which they might encounter in their future and allows students to apply their skills and knowledge in a way that is relevant and realistic’ ‘Assessment of skills relevant to solving real-world problems in an ecologically valid way. Ecologically valid = permitting students to demonstrate all skills they are able to activate during a specific task’ These critical reflections from the participants helped the authors in introducing the importance of not restricting the lens of authenticity to the ‘design’ of an assessment task i.e. the technical task or question that is being asked to be solved, but extend it to assessment ‘delivery’, whereby students are placed in a working environment that mimics professional working practice. The workshop participants proceeded to discuss in small groups the possibility to improve authenticity in engineering assessments for two exemplar assessment briefs that were provided: a practical assessment with an engineering equipment or an engineering design project. Reflecting on the specified learning outcomes that were specified to be assessed, the workshop participants put forth several interesting ideas, which could be categorised into three main themes as follows: (i) Building in group work and individual assessment as part of the overall assessment: Participants were strongly in favour of embedding group work opportunities and elements of peer feedback as all project work in the professional world is always a team effort. There was also an inclination towards co-creation of deliverables as a team and supporting authentic group work by establishing well-defined roles (ii) Longitudinal assessment with feedback loops: Participants opined that assessing the whole process (through a continuous or intermitted assessment method) instead of just the final deliverable would help strengthen assessment authenticity. A case was also made for e-portfolios with assessment weightings to incentivise creativity. Furthermore, a longitudinal assessment approach would also enable the provision of providing and acting on formative feedback, an important characteristic feature of industry working practice (iii) Oral assessments to complement (or potentially replace) written reports: With the growing influence of Generative AI tools, participants were apprehensive of using written reports as a solitary assessment method, and instead advocated for oral-based assessment methods, including unconventional approaches of having an examiner take on the role of a ‘challenger’ as might often be the case with line managers in industry. There were also suggestions that these could take the form of a defense session, where decisions taken by a student would need to be justified. The workshop concluded with the authors drawing parallels to the points raised at the group discussion from their own assessment practice pilots and student perception research studies. 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