Purpose: The present study aims to provide a better understanding of authentic assessment in the COVID-19 pandemic era by exploring how Indonesian lecturers perceive authentic assessment in terms of input, process and output. It also examines the issue through the theoretical lens of authentic assessment following the tenet of a five-dimensional framework (5DF) including assessment task, physical context, social context, assessment result and standard authentic criteria. Design/methodology/approach: The study employed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to garner data through qualitative interviews and authentic assessment questionnaires in which 48 lecturers from four universities were involved. Findings: The study gleaned two important findings. The qualitative data showed that the university teachers enacted the cognitive assessment fruitfully. The study shows that lecturer participants experienced difficulties in integrating cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains into authentic assessment tasks during the teaching and learning process. Additionally, the results of quantitative data support the qualitative data that lecturer participants faced challenges (asking students to demonstrate or perform the tasks) in implementing both social and physical contexts in authentic assessment tasks of online learning during COVID-19 pandemic. Research limitations/implications: The present study addresses practical and conceptual implications. Practically, it suggests the need to facilitate the development of lecturers' technological skills to design online authentic assessment in higher education that responds to fully online assessment, such as the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the study suggests that lecturers need to build their understanding of 5DF theoretical lens which include assessment tasks, physical contexts, social contexts, assessment result and standard authentic criteria to enhance their literacy in enacting authentic assessment. Originality/value: Although many studies have investigated the implementation of authentic assessment in higher education, only a few have examined how lecturers perceived online authentic assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study contributes to developing conceptual and empirical evidence regarding lecturers' perception of the implementation of authentic assessment based on 5DF theoretical lens in higher education settings during the pandemic of COVID-19.