ABSTRACT
Authentic assessment entails judging student learning by measuring performance according to reallife-skills criteria. This chapter focuses on the validation of authentic assessments because empirically-based, authentic assessment-validation studies are sparsely reported in the higher education literature. At the same time, many of the concepts addressed in this chapter are more broadly applicable to assessment tasks that may not be termed “authentic assessment” and are valuable from this broader assessment perspective as well. Accordingly, the chapter introduces a heuristic, rubrics cube which can serve as a tool for educators to conceptualize or map their authentic and other assessment activities and decisions on the following three dimensions: type and level of taxonomy, level of assessment decision, and type of validation method.
