Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, Vol. Vol. 11, Special Issue, pp.55-56. 
doi: 10.14434/jotlt.v11i1.34458 

Creating Authentic Assessments Through Controversy 

Lamia Scherzinger 
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis 

Abstract: We are surrounded by controversy—politics, religion, diets, and even science are all up for 
debate in our 24/7 world of social media and the internet. With this controversy comes a lot of 
misinformation and competition with what our students might otherwise be learning in our classrooms. 
I know this intimately, since I teach fitness and nutrition courses, two topics widely addressed by 
internet “experts” who continually contradict what I teach in my class. Whereas some may say this 
makes an instructor’s job more difficult, I have decided to rise to the challenge and use controversy to 
enhance my students’ learning. By using an assortment of technologies and platforms—web searches, 
Twitter, TikTok, and more—I have been able to move beyond the classroom to engage my students 
in real-world problems, a strategy that results in more authentic assessments. 

Keywords: authentic assessments, controversy, technology, misinformation, impact 

Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error. 
—Benjamin Rush 

A brief background on my teaching situation: All my classes are 100% online and asynchronous, so 
my use of technology for assessments is a necessity. I teach general education courses, so my students 
are all types of majors and come with all levels of knowledge (or lack thereof) on exercise and nutrition. 
This means what I teach is competing with whatever nutrition and fitness information they receive 
daily from social media influencers, unscientific online articles, and hearsay, which for today’s social-
media-obsessed students, can be a lot!  

One of my course learning objectives can help illustrate how I use technology and a 
controversial topic in an authentic assessment: Evaluate the relationship between food intake and 
physical health. We know the quality of one’s food intake is tied to one’s health; foods high in saturated 
fats increase the risk of heart disease, for example. One way I assess this is by posing the following 
question in a discussion: Is access to healthy foods a privilege or a basic human right? This is 
controversial for a few reasons: First, one cannot talk about healthy food access without addressing 
race, since studies show that Black Americans have a much higher rate of poverty and therefore much 
less access to fresh foods than White Americans (Drewnowski & Eichelsdoerfer, 2010). Second, it 
asks the students to share their thoughts on what they philosophically consider basic human rights, 
which differs depending on one’s personal beliefs. And finally, I ask that once they are done posting 
their contribution to the discussion, they then reply to two other students who chose a different stance 
from their own. Technology is a great help in this, and I use several technologies to facilitate this 
discussion. The most obvious one here is the use of my learning management system’s discussion 
board. I also use YouTube to share a minidocumentary entitled “Divided Cities: The Food Deserts of 
Memphis” that illustrates the way race, socioeconomic status, and basic human rights come together 
to cause a huge dichotomy of haves and have nots when it comes to fresh food access. I then have 
the students use governmental websites to look up statistics on poverty levels, food deserts, and health 
markers of Americans to support their claim. They also must use their class-assigned e-text to cite 
nutritional facts and food access information. Finally, students have the option to reply via a regular 
discussion post or to record their response and replies to each other, allowing them to have more of 



Scherzinger 

Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, Vol. 11, Special Issue, jotlt.indiana.edu 

a “conversation” than just a typed discussion. Therefore, in one assignment, I might use up to five 
different technologies to authentically assess one course learning objective in a real-word situation. 

Another example of this, and one where I address the obsession many students have with 
acquiring much of their health and fitness knowledge from social media, is to approach our diet-
obsessed culture with science. I first have them list two popular diets they have seen on social media 
apps and write out a brief explanation of what these diet guidelines and restrictions are. They then are 
to try to find, via the university’s library databases, at least three scientific articles that support that 
particular diet. Finally, they use what they have learned in our class via the e-text and class notes and 
assignments to compare these diets to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for 
Americans. This assignment provides a way for the students to learn a few things: (1) Not everything 
you learn on social media is true; (2) overall, scientific research does not support most fad diets; and 
(3) when compared to the Dietary Guidelines, many of these diets fall woefully short.

Participating in assignments such as these allows my students to use the information they 
learned in class to combat possible misinformation, participate in a respectful, engaged discussion that 
is supported by facts, and achieve the course learning objectives. By facing these topics head-on, I 
have provided my students with not only the power to overcome the inaccuracies they see every day 
but also a chance to engage in real-world situations that may arise or questions they may be faced with 
in their futures as health professionals or even in everyday life. And although in my examples I used 
multiple technologies, this does not have to be the case for all topics. For example, when discussing a 
diet that is popular among the students in a particular class, an online diet analysis tool might be the 
only technology necessary to illustrate that by nearly cutting out an entire food group on this diet (a 
low-carb diet, for example), the student is actually missing some much-needed nutrients that food 
group provides. Thus, while the controversy might be involved and multilayered, the assessment of it 
can be quite simple yet meaningful.  

Here, I am showcasing my topic, but the applications for this approach are numerous—in 
political science, theology, history, philosophy, and law, for instance. Instead of just teaching the 
material and assessing whether students learned it through multiple choice and true/false questions, 
with this approach teachers give their students the chance to apply their knowledge to real-world 
situations and come away with a firmer grasp on how to overcome misinformation. In a journalism 
class, for example, whether photojournalists should be allowed to capture and then share images of 
dead soldiers has been discussed since the Civil War. This can lead to a robust discussion on the First 
Amendment and journalists’ efforts to show the true cost of war. Or in a political science class, the 
long-debated question of when life begins can be analyzed from the perspectives of different religions 
and personal belief systems, highlighting how these can influence law making. Both are “hot topics” 
on which students can use a variety of technologies to research the subject and formulate informed, 
factual arguments. 

Many people have been taught that to have civil conversations, they need to ignore certain 
topics or “agree to disagree.” However, this does not have to be so in the classroom. With the right 
technologies, careful assessment construction and instruction, and the selection of topics that can be 
useful in students’ possible real-word work and/or life situations, controversy can be impactful.   

References 
Drewnowski, A., & Eichelsdoerfer, P. (2010). Can low-income Americans afford a healthy diet? 

Nutrition Today, 44(6), 246–249. https://doi.org/10.1097/NT.0b013e3181c29f79 

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https://doi.org/10.1097/NT.0b013e3181c29f79