Authentic Assessment for Lifelong Learning: Futureproofing Healthcare Science, and Engineering Students

Authentic assessments provide higher education students with opportunities to showcase the practical applications of their knowledge to contextually relevant scenarios. This promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills through industry-relevance challenges, helping students engage more meaningfully with their studies, while fostering strategies for lifelong learning. This is crucial for fast-evolving professions such as Healthcare and Engineering, both in high demand. Consequently, this paper presents how students within healthcare science and engineering courses at Aston University, UK, are prepared for real-world application of theoretical concepts via authentic assessments. Examples used include co-creation, employability skills, leadership and continued professional development, used to prepare students for future professional environments, and enhancing their ability to innovate. This provides new insights into aligning academic learning with practical demands to better equip graduates to meet the challenges of their chosen professions, and may inform the design of authentic assessments from healthcare to engineering.