Authentic assessment in elearning

Reflective and Collaborative writing in the arts

Abstract

This paper examines the notion of authentic assessment and the role elearning can play as a teaching and learning tool to provide 'real world relevance' to learning in higher education. This paper will firstly, argue that educators should consider aligning course assessment to real world relevance. Secondly, it will argue that social networking tools such as weblogs (blogs) can provide one means of achieving this goal when assessment is designed to encourage collaborative learning and reflective practice. The two teaching and learning exempla's discussed will apply the concept of the reflective practitioner to the practice of writing about the arts as an authentic assessment (Herrington, Reeves & Oliver, 2010) task that is relevant to student's future professions as art administrators. The first discusses how students' collaboratively write, edit and publish an online art journal 'Artwrite'*. The second discusses student's writing blog journals where they reflect about their art industry placements.