Piloting authentic assessment in a digital media course

This paper reports on research conducted on the effectiveness and relevance of authentic assessment in a Mobile Application Development course, answering the research question “How practical is authentic assessment in Digital Media courses?” To facilitate this research, students were provided a set of tasks that consisted of developing a Mobile application for the Bundaberg Health and Wellbeing program. They were required to develop a working prototype mobile application that measures health related routine using the latest programming tool and APIs as used in industry. The mobile application is then used in the Bundaberg Health and Wellbeing program as a tool to monitor the progress of group members, providing a more authentic experience that connects and relates to the real needs and expectation of a client. A survey was then conducted to assess how students felt about the assessment piece and how it compared to other assessment they had done before. Overall, this indicated that most of the students favoured the introduction of authentic assessment in the course program; only a portion of the students feels otherwise. Based on this, the paper will conclude with strategies to encourage future technology-based courses in digital media courses to be based on authentic assessment.