In order to guide teachers in preparing their assessment activities, there were eight

characteristics of 21st-century assessments, which were suggested by various authors. This

is necessary to ensure that the learners are being assessed towards the skills and demands
of the 21st century. These are:

 1.    Responsive. In assessing students' performance, the students' visible performance-

based work (as a result of assessment) must generate data that curriculum and instruction
are responsive to their needs.

 2.    Flexible. Assessment must be adaptable to students' settings rather than the identical

approach that work s in traditional assessment, 21st-century approaches are more versatile.

 3.    Integrated. Assessments must also be incorporated into day-to day practice rather

than as add-ons at the end of instructions or during a single specified week of the school
calendar.

 4.    Informative. Teachers must ensure that the desired 21st-century goals and objectives
are clearly stated and explicitly taught. Moreover, information gathered depicting students’
outputs should display their range of emerging knowledge and skills exemplars routinely
guide students toward the achievement of targets.

 5.    Multiple methods. In this era, an assessment continuum that includes a broad

spectrum of strategies is the standard.

 6.    Communicated. 21st-century assessment results or other tangible data must be

communicated clearly and transparently for all stakeholders.

 7.    Technically sound. Assessments must be carefully done scientifically. Adjustments and

accommodations can be made in the assessment process to meet the students' needs and
fairness.

 8.    Systemic. 21st-century assessment is part of a comprehensive and well-aligned

assessment system. Hence, the assessment must be balanced and inclusive of all students,
constituents, and stakeholders and designed to support improvement at all levels.

Points for Reflections on the 21st Century Assessment

 
1.    21st-century assessment challenges and other innovative assessments support the attainment of
learning objectives relevant to the current “glocal” learners.

 2.    Innovative assessment practices are needed to grasp the complexity and multiple roles of modern
learning, as well as meeting the changing needs of 21st-century learners.

            In this era, the Commission on Higher Education (C.H.E.D.) spearheads in the
structuring of the curriculum to meet the changing needs of the learners. Thus, C.H.E.D.
issued a C.M.O. 46 series of 2012 mandating the full implementation of O.B.E. among H.E.I.s.
For this reason, the Outcomes-based Education (O.B.E.) becomes the eventual thrust of the
higher education institutions (H.E.I.s), aligning itself to the global educational standards. 

Meaning of Outcomes-Based Assessment (OBA)

          O.B.E. is the transforming of the educational landscape from being input-based
learning to outcomes–real-world knowledge and skills of learning. With this paradigm,
students need to understand and perform as a result of learning. Using O.B.E., students are
expected to perform successfully learning outcomes at the end of instruction. This brings
O.B.E. a great opportunity for schools and teachers to produce more graduates.

           OBA focuses on the assessment tasks to the intended learning outcomes (I.L.O.s) set
before the curricular enactment. It signifies the development and utilization of valid, fair,
and reliable assessment tools in measuring students’ learning. Moreover, OBA plays an
essential role in O.B.E. since, without it, teachers cannot measure the extent of the learning
performance of the students. Dagdag & Cardona (2018) argued that in “real” O.B.E. practice,
performance-based assessment is more given emphasis compared to a pen-and-paper test.
Thus, an outcomes-based approach necessitates a mind shift in the curriculum and
assessment process, empowering the learner to perform better.

Features of OBA
          Dagdag & Cardona (2018) claimed that in O.B.E., teachers use criterion assessment
while in traditional, teachers use comparative assessment. Likewise, they presented a list of
pertinent features of OBA to wit:

1. align the curriculum and assessment primarily to the intended learning outcomes,
not to the subject matter or content.
2. Use public assessment so that students understand if they can achieve the intended
learning outcome.
3. Define the desired results and work backward to identify the building blocks that
learners must achieve to reach the end outcomes.
4. Treat curriculum, instruction, and assessment as alterable or flexible means
to achieve the end goals of education.

5. Use student achievement at the end of the learning period as the final result of all
prior student learning, not the average of all the results of the students' activities.

  Authentic assessment is a form of assessment whereby students are tasked to perform a

real-world activity for them to demonstrate the required knowledge and skills. In essence, it
is a process where students need to apply their acquired knowledge in order to perform a
task.

For this, educators tag authentic assessment with other alternative names, to wit:
 1. Performance assessment. An authentic assessment is called a performance
assessment since students are required to perform meaningful and realistic tasks.
2. Alternative assessment. An authentic assessment can also be called an alternative
assessment since it is an alternative way of gauging and evaluating students’ learning
that is different from the traditional form of assessment. 
3. Direct assessment. An authentic assessment provides more direct evidence of a
meaningful application of knowledge and skills. Student’s demonstration of the
application of knowledge and skills is the best indicator of that learning.

Uses of Authentic Assessment in the Classroom

          Garcia (2002) claimed that there are four reasons why teachers need to use authentic
assessment in their classroom; they are as follows:

1. Authentic assessments are direct measures. The use of authentic assessment

provides the learners' opportunity to use their acquired knowledge and skills in the
real world. 

2. Authentic assessments capture the constructive nature of learning. The use of

authentic assessment provides the learners to construct their meaning of the
world, using information they have gathered and were taught and their own
experiences with the world.  

3. An authentic assessment integrates teaching, learning, and assessment. In contrast,

traditional assessment encourages the integration of teaching, learning, and
assessing. In the authentic assessment model, the teacher measures the application
skills of the students…his ability to apply the knowledge or skills is used as a vehicle
for student learning. 

          Authentic assessments provide multiple paths to a demonstration.  The use of

authentic assessment provides the learners with the opportunity to demonstrate what they
have learned. Thus, it is recommended teachers should require students to submit products
as evidence to demonstrate authentic learning. It can take in different forms (e.g., posters,
oral presentations, videos, web sites).

Samples of Authentic Assessment

           Authentic assessments include a variety of measures that can be adapted for

different situations.  The Indiana Department of Education suggested some examples of
authentic assessments, as follows:

Reflection points on Authentic Assessment 

…Crafting an authentic assessment plan demands too much of my time, but what matters is
the quality of the assessment task… The bottom line here is that quality must prevail over
quantity of assessments. “ 
…“I give my best effort to have a balanced set of traditional and authentic assessments.
Likewise, I will always treasure the supremacy of formative assessment like oral questioning
and quick feedback as I worked on any authentic assessment tasks.”

…Metacognitive awareness of student’s thought processes and self-evaluation is essential in

assessing students’ authentic assessments like doing portfolio and experiments. 

A rubric is a scoring scale used by teachers to measure the performance of students against
a particular standard or criteria. This is a useful tool in assessing students' performance
objectively. In this scoring, teachers can determine at what level of proficiency a student in
performing the task or display knowledge of a concept, defining the different levels of
proficiency for each criterion.

 Advantages of Scoring Rubric

Gabuyo (2012) and Concepcion et al. (2012) enumerated the advantages and disadvantages
of scoring rubrics, as follows:

1. Rubrics allow an assessment to become more objective and consistent;

2. Rubrics clarify the criteria in specific terms;
3. Rubrics clearly show the students how work will be evaluated and what is expected;
4. Rubrics promote student awareness of the criteria to use in assessing peer
performance;
5. Rubrics provide useful feedback regarding the effectiveness of the instructions; and
6. Rubrics provide benchmarks against which to measure and document progress.

Other Advantages

1. Helps the grading process become more efficient

2. Helps faculty grade/score more accurately, fairly and reliably
3. Requires faculty to set and define more precisely the criteria used in the grading
process
4. Supports uniform and standardized grading processes among different faculty
members
5. Clarifies quality expectations to students about their assignments
 6. Students can self-assess their work before submitting it
7. Students can understand better the rationale and the reason for grades
8. Helps to communicate grade between faculty and students
9. Helps improve student performance, because they know what to focus on

Disadvantages of Scoring Rubric

1. Development of rubrics can be complicated and time-consuming

2. Using the correct language to express performance expectation can be difficult
3. Defining the correct set of criteria to define performance can be complex
4. Rubrics might need to be continuously revised before it can be usable in an easy
fashion.

In conclusion, rubrics are crafted in many forms to align with the needs of both teachers and
students. For teachers, rubrics can help speed up the rating process enabling them to show
students their expectations. For students, rubrics clarify what ought to perform to achieve a
good grade. Although rubrics can sometimes be challenging and time-consuming, overall, it
gives countless benefits to both teachers and students.

Types of Rubrics

A. Holistic Rubrics do not list a separate level of performance for each criterion.
Instead, holistic rubrics assign a level of performance along with multiple criteria as a
whole; in other words, you put all the components together (Gabuyo 2012; Concepcion
et al., 2012). 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Holistic Rubric

 1. Quickly obtain a single dimension if that is adequate for your purpose.
2. Not very useful to help plan instruction because they lack a detailed analysis of a
student’s strengths or weaknesses of a product.
3. Do not provide very detailed information.

B. Analytic Rubrics make the teacher or the rater identify and assess components of a
finished product. Break down the final product into parts, and each part is scored
independently. The total score is the sum of all the ratings for all the parts that are to be
assessed or evaluated (Gabuyo 2012; Concepcion et al., 2012). 

dvantages of using Analytic Rubric

1. It provides meaningful and specific feedback along multiple dimensions.

2. Scoring tends to be more consistent across students and grades.
 3. More comfortable for the teacher to share with students and parents about specific
strengths and weaknesses.
4. It helps students to better understand the nature of quality work.

Disadvantages of using Analytic Rubric

1. It is more difficult to construct analytical rubrics for all tasks.

2. It tends to be quite time-consuming.
3. Lower consistency among different raters.

Steps in Developing a Rubric

(Source: Gabuyo,2012)

1. Reexamine the learning objectives to be addressed by the task. Identify your

standards, objectives, and goals for your students. Standard is a statement of what
the students should be able to know or be able to perform.
2. Identify specific observable attributes that you want to see. Also, identify the
characteristics of a good performance on the task, the criteria. 
3. Brainstorm characteristics that describe each attribute. Identify the levels of
performance for each criterion. Through this level of performance, the teacher or the
rater can provide more detailed feedback about the performance of the students.