Towards a framework for mapping authentic assessment to competency in university computing education in the UK

Across various countries and jurisdictions, we have seen reports of a “graduate skills gap”, with higher-than-desired graduate unemployment and underemployment, as well as reports from employers that there is a mismatch between the competencies desired by employers and those evidenced by graduates. Graduate employment prospects are related to many complex intersecting factors, including human capital, individual attributes, individual career-building behaviours, labour market factors, and social capital. Alongside the graduate skills gap, there are also reports internationally of a “digital skills gap”, with increasing demand for digital skills and a proclaimed shortage of diverse digital skills evidenced by the workforce. These circumstances appear to promote positive employment outcomes for computing graduates. However, there are reports in many jurisdictions, including the UK, of skills-gap-related issues for computing graduates. In response to these concerns, curricula guidance in the computing and engineering disciplines are increasingly promoting competency-based education (CBE) to develop graduates' work readiness better and, hence, reduce the skills gap. Authentic Assessment, i.e. Assessment that addresses important problems or questions that require students to effectively and creatively apply their knowledge and disciplinary and personal skills, mirroring the challenges faced by adults or professionals in the real-world context, has also been advocated to reduce skills gaps between education and professional life. However, the link between CBE and Authentic Assessment in the computing discipline could benefit from further exploration. This paper explores the relationship between CBE and authentic assessment. Based on the guiding research question: “How can authentic assessment be employed to promote competency in computing degree programmes?”, the paper begins by providing theoretical underpinnings in the form of working definitions for competency and authentic assessment and the link between the two. This paper follows a proof-of-concept research approach conducted by evolutionary prototyping to develop a framework for exploring the relationship between authentic assessment and competency. The paper documents the validation of the framework by applying it to examples of practices from UK universities involved in the study. These illustrative examples show the framework in action. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the framework promotes learner competency development by authentic assessment. This approach has implications for enhancing how computing graduates address digital skills gaps and has the potential to be customised and adopted more broadly across STEM disciplines.