This authentic assessment sees students work both individually and in small groups to produce a governmental policy submission. This scaffolded assessment includes a number of progressive tasks due throughout the semester, including a brief oral presentation, a draft policy proposal, a background and issues document, and the final policy submission.

In this skills-oriented assessment, students are asked to identify a contemporary policy issue and make a clear and succinct case for policy change in the form of a short (2 page) ministerial policy recommendation or brief. Students also provide an additional list of (scholarly) sources consulted in preparing their recommendation.

Designed explicitly to provide student flexibility and cater to diverse learning styles, this technique has students produce a piece of written or audio-visual content in response to a provocation from a course practicum or theoretical perspective. Content can take numerous forms including a blog, critical review, documentary, or reflexive essay.

Students are assigned an extract from a draft manuscript (developed by a practicing author), for which they produce a professional editorial report. Students actively use skills taught throughout the course to make reasoned suggestions that improve the quality of the work, and may ultimately be realised in published copy.

This task is designed to allow students to demonstrate theoretical and methodological understandings of key themes and provocations from the course through an applied activity mimicking professional practice. Students select from a list of hypothetical scenarios (developed by the course coordinator) and construct a 3000 word report in response.

Students write a 1500 – 2000 word document (in a form decided by the convenor) in the language being taught. This is paired with an oral presentation based on the written piece. Students are assessed on grammatical proficiency and their ability to conform to stylistic conventions of the written genre.

This authentic assessment sees students collaborate to prepare and present a 5-minute pitch aimed at a hypothetical funding body. The imagined context is that this will precede a hypothetical five thousand dollar grant application for a product or project relevant to a specific disciplinary content or area of professional practice.

Students construct a 2000 word essay critiquing a film from their disciplinary perspective. This involves analysing salient aspects of plot situation, thematic elements etc. by applying relevant theories/concepts from the course content. This task particularly reinforces formative disciplinary knowledge (which often challenges early undergraduates) through engaging contemporary contexts.

This assessment has students design a multimodal poster including text, images and visual design elements as an inquiry into a topic of disciplinary relevance. This technique has successfully trialled in the School of Education where it functions to introduce pre-service teaches to inquiry-based pedagogical models, but serves all HaSS disciplines.

Developed as an assessment for learning (rather than assessment of learning), this scaffolded task prompts students to consider how social theory is brought to bear through personal narratives. Students use digital platforms (e.g. Pinterest) to create a fictional character profile which becomes a point of reference for progressive tutorial activities.