formative vs summative evaluation examples

How to Write an Effective Self Evaluation

Evaluating yourself can be a challenge. You don’t want to sell yourself short, but you also need to make sure you don’t come off as too full of yourself either. Use these tips to write a self evaluation that hits the mark.

A self evaluation is a tool used by many managers to get their employees’ perspectives about performance, attributes and weaknesses. Although self evaluations are not useful as a stand-alone tool for assessing performance, they can be invaluable when it comes to reviewing past events and learning how employees feel about work processes. Using this information, managers can make changes to improve work environments and processes.

Benefits of a Self Evaluation

Managers will request self evaluations for several reasons. Learning how you see yourself within an organization and how you understand expectations helps managers be more effective. Your manager can gain insight about inter-personnel communication as well. These evaluations can also be effective for motivating employees, especially those that are intrinsically motivated to grow and improve.

Points to Cover

Your self evaluation should include specific data and quantifiable results you produced during the review period. These details demonstrate specific skills and tangible results. Make sure to include these points:

• Organize your accomplishments into a few categories. If unexpected projects came up, include these items too, so you can demonstrate your adaptability.
• Include quotes and feedback you’ve received that supports your skills and performance. This feedback might come from coworkers, managers or customers.
• Highlight strengths you have to show how your skills had a positive impact.
• List a couple of goals you have or skills you’d like to develop over the coming year. Inquire about opportunities for growth that might arise.
• Use action words and phrases to describe your accomplishments.

What to Skip

You may be tempted to include the following, but doing so will likely reflect poorly on you.

• Resist the urge to criticize others in your self-evaluation. You are writing about yourself, no one else. Avoid taking a defensive tact as well.
• Address any weaknesses you have as an opportunity to improve instead of focusing on negatives.
• Don’t make excuses for errors or failures. Instead, frame these situations as learning experiences, taking responsibility and making specific goals to succeed.

Using Self Evaluation Examples

It may help to review a few self evaluation examples as you work on your own self examination. These examples will usually show organized accomplishments and projects, highlighting skills used and actions taken to finish these tasks. You’ll also get ideas for how to describe challenges with positive framing and how to ask for new growth opportunities for the coming year.

Once you finish writing your self-evaluation, ask a coworker or family member to read it. Make sure you proofread it carefully so that it’s free of errors and typos.

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How to Evaluate and Choose the Right Horses for Sale

When it comes to purchasing a horse, the process can be both exciting and overwhelming. With so many horses for sale in the market, it’s important to know how to evaluate and choose the right one for your needs. Whether you’re a beginner rider looking for a gentle companion or an experienced equestrian searching for a competitive show horse, this article will provide you with valuable insights on what to consider when evaluating horses for sale.

Assess Your Riding Goals and Experience

Before diving into the world of horse shopping, it’s crucial to assess your riding goals and experience level. Are you looking for a pleasure horse or do you have aspirations of competing at higher levels? Understanding your riding goals will help you narrow down the type and breed of horse that would be most suitable for you.

If you’re a beginner rider, opting for a well-trained and calm-natured horse is advisable. On the other hand, if you’re an experienced rider with competitive ambitions, considering horses with specific skills or training in your desired discipline is essential.

Conduct Thorough Research on Breeds and Bloodlines

Once you’ve determined your riding goals, it’s time to conduct thorough research on different breeds and bloodlines that align with those goals. Each breed has its own unique characteristics, temperaments, strengths, and weaknesses. By understanding these traits beforehand, you can make an informed decision when evaluating horses for sale.

Take note of any specific bloodlines that are known for excelling in your chosen discipline. Researching bloodlines can give insight into potential performance capabilities as well as any hereditary health issues that may be present within certain lines.

Consider Age, Size, and Conformation

When evaluating horses for sale, age, size, and conformation are important factors to consider based on your personal preferences and intended use of the horse.

Age plays a significant role in the horse’s training and development. Younger horses may require more time and professional training to reach their full potential, while older horses may have more experience but could also come with certain health considerations.

Size is another crucial aspect to consider. Ensure that the horse’s size is appropriate for your height, weight, and riding style. A horse that is too small or too large can impact your riding experience and safety.

Conformation refers to the physical structure of the horse. Look for a well-balanced conformation that is free from any major faults or structural issues. A sound conformation can contribute to a horse’s overall soundness and performance ability.

Evaluate Temperament, Health, and Soundness

The temperament of a horse plays a significant role in determining its suitability for different riders. Assess whether the horse has a calm and willing disposition or if it tends to be high-strung or difficult to handle. A compatible temperament will make your riding experience more enjoyable and safer.

Health and soundness are paramount when evaluating horses for sale. Request veterinary records to ensure there are no underlying health issues or chronic conditions that could affect the horse’s performance or longevity. Additionally, it’s wise to have a pre-purchase veterinary examination conducted by an independent veterinarian who will assess the overall health and soundness of the horse before finalizing the purchase.

In conclusion, evaluating horses for sale requires careful consideration of various factors such as riding goals, breed characteristics, age, size, conformation, temperament, health, and soundness. By taking these factors into account during your search process, you’ll be better equipped to choose the right horse that aligns with your needs and aspirations. Remember that purchasing a horse is an investment both financially and emotionally, so take your time and seek professional guidance if needed to ensure a successful purchase.

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

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Formative and summative assessments.

Assessment allows both instructor and student to monitor progress towards achieving learning objectives, and can be approached in a variety of ways. Formative assessment refers to tools that identify misconceptions, struggles, and learning gaps along the way and assess how to close those gaps. It includes effective tools for helping to shape learning, and can even bolster students’ abilities to take ownership of their learning when they understand that the goal is to improve learning, not apply final marks (Trumbull and Lash, 2013). It can include students assessing themselves, peers, or even the instructor, through writing, quizzes, conversation, and more. In short, formative assessment occurs throughout a class or course, and seeks to improve student achievement of learning objectives through approaches that can support specific student needs (Theal and Franklin, 2010, p. 151). 

In contrast, summative assessments evaluate student learning, knowledge, proficiency, or success at the conclusion of an instructional period, like a unit, course, or program. Summative assessments are almost always formally graded and often heavily weighted (though they do not need to be). Summative assessment can be used to great effect in conjunction and alignment with formative assessment, and instructors can consider a variety of ways to combine these approaches. 

Examples of Formative and Summative Assessments

Both forms of assessment can vary across several dimensions (Trumbull and Lash, 2013): 

• Informal / formal
• Immediate / delayed feedback
• Embedded in lesson plan / stand-alone
• Spontaneous / planned
• Individual / group
• Verbal / nonverbal
• Oral / written
• Graded / ungraded
• Open-ended response / closed/constrained response
• Teacher initiated/controlled / student initiated/controlled
• Teacher and student(s) / peers
• Process-oriented / product-oriented
• Brief / extended
• Scaffolded (teacher supported) / independently performed 

Recommendations

Formative Assessment   Ideally, formative assessment strategies improve teaching and learning simultaneously. Instructors can help students grow as learners by actively encouraging them to self-assess their own skills and knowledge retention, and by giving clear instructions and feedback. Seven principles (adapted from Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2007 with additions) can guide instructor strategies:

• Keep clear criteria for what defines good performance - Instructors can explain criteria for A-F graded papers, and encourage student discussion and reflection about these criteria (this can be accomplished though office hours, rubrics, post-grade peer review, or exam / assignment wrappers ). Instructors may also hold class-wide conversations on performance criteria at strategic moments throughout a term.
• Encourage students’ self-reflection - Instructors can ask students to utilize course criteria to evaluate their own or a peer’s work, and to share what kinds of feedback they find most valuable. In addition, instructors can ask students to describe the qualities of their best work, either through writing or group discussion.
• Give students detailed, actionable feedback - Instructors can consistently provide specific feedback tied to predefined criteria, with opportunities to revise or apply feedback before final submission. Feedback may be corrective and forward-looking, rather than just evaluative. Examples include comments on multiple paper drafts, criterion discussions during 1-on-1 conferences, and regular online quizzes.
• Encourage teacher and peer dialogue around learning - Instructors can invite students to discuss the formative learning process together. This practice primarily revolves around mid-semester feedback and small group feedback sessions , where students reflect on the course and instructors respond to student concerns. Students can also identify examples of feedback comments they found useful and explain how they helped. A particularly useful strategy, instructors can invite students to discuss learning goals and assignment criteria, and weave student hopes into the syllabus.
• Promote positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem - Students will be more motivated and engaged when they are assured that an instructor cares for their development. Instructors can allow for rewrites/resubmissions to signal that an assignment is designed to promote development of learning. These rewrites might utilize low-stakes assessments, or even automated online testing that is anonymous, and (if appropriate) allows for unlimited resubmissions.
• Provide opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance - Related to the above, instructors can improve student motivation and engagement by making visible any opportunities to close gaps between current and desired performance. Examples include opportunities for resubmission, specific action points for writing or task-based assignments, and sharing study or process strategies that an instructor would use in order to succeed.  
• Collect information which can be used to help shape teaching - Instructors can feel free to collect useful information from students in order to provide targeted feedback and instruction. Students can identify where they are having difficulties, either on an assignment or test, or in written submissions. This approach also promotes metacognition , as students are asked to think about their own learning. Poorvu Center staff can also perform a classroom observation or conduct a small group feedback session that can provide instructors with potential student struggles. 

Instructors can find a variety of other formative assessment techniques through Angelo and Cross (1993), Classroom Assessment Techniques (list of techniques available here ).

Summative Assessment   Because summative assessments are usually higher-stakes than formative assessments, it is especially important to ensure that the assessment aligns with the goals and expected outcomes of the instruction.  

• Use a Rubric or Table of Specifications - Instructors can use a rubric to lay out expected performance criteria for a range of grades. Rubrics will describe what an ideal assignment looks like, and “summarize” expected performance at the beginning of term, providing students with a trajectory and sense of completion. 
• Design Clear, Effective Questions - If designing essay questions, instructors can ensure that questions meet criteria while allowing students freedom to express their knowledge creatively and in ways that honor how they digested, constructed, or mastered meaning. Instructors can read about ways to design effective multiple choice questions .
• Assess Comprehensiveness - Effective summative assessments provide an opportunity for students to consider the totality of a course’s content, making broad connections, demonstrating synthesized skills, and exploring deeper concepts that drive or found a course’s ideas and content. 
• Make Parameters Clear - When approaching a final assessment, instructors can ensure that parameters are well defined (length of assessment, depth of response, time and date, grading standards); knowledge assessed relates clearly to content covered in course; and students with disabilities are provided required space and support.
• Consider Blind Grading - Instructors may wish to know whose work they grade, in order to provide feedback that speaks to a student’s term-long trajectory. If instructors wish to provide truly unbiased summative assessment, they can also consider a variety of blind grading techniques .

Considerations for Online Assessments

Effectively implementing assessments in an online teaching environment can be particularly challenging. The Poorvu Center shares these  recommendations .

Nicol, D.J. and Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006) Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education 31(2): 2-19.

Theall, M. and Franklin J.L. (2010). Assessing Teaching Practices and Effectiveness for Formative Purposes. In: A Guide to Faculty Development. KJ Gillespie and DL Robertson (Eds). Jossey Bass: San Francisco, CA.

Trumbull, E., & Lash, A. (2013). Understanding formative assessment: Insights from learning theory and measurement theory. San Francisco: WestEd.

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Formative vs. summative evaluations.

Summary:  Formative evaluations are used in an iterative process to make improvements before production. Summative evaluations are used to evaluate a shipped product in comparison to a benchmark.

By Alita Joyce

• Alita Joyce

on 2019-07-28 July 28, 2019

• Research Methods Research Methods
• Share this article:

In the user-experience profession, we preach iteration and evaluation. There are two types of evaluation, formative and summative, and where you are in the design process determines what type of evaluation you should conduct.

Formative evaluations focus on determining which aspects of the design work well or not, and why. These evaluations occur throughout a redesign and provide information to incrementally improve the interface.

Let’s say we’re designing the onboarding experience for a new, completely redesigned version of our mobile app. In the design process, we prototype a solution and then test it with ( usually a few ) users to see how usable it is. The study identifies several issues with our prototype, which are then fixed by a new design. This test is an example of formative evaluation — it helps designers identify what needs to be changed to improve the interface.

Formative evaluations of interfaces involve testing and changing the product, usually multiple times, and therefore are well-suited for the redesign process or while creating a new product.

In both cases, you iterate through the prototyping and testing steps until you are as ready for production as you’ll get (even more iterations would form an even better design, but you have to ship at some point). Thus, formative evaluations are meant to steer the design on the right path.

Summative evaluations describe how well a design performs , often compared to a benchmark such as a prior version of the design or a competitor. Unlike formative evaluations, whose goals is to inform the design process, summative evaluations involve getting the big picture and assessing the overall experience of a finished product. Summative evaluations occur less frequently than formative evaluations, usually right before or right after a redesign.

Let’s go back to our mobile-app example. Now that we’ve shipped the new mobile app, it is time to run a study and see how our app stands in comparison to the previous version of the app. We can gather the time on task and the success rates for the core app functionalities. Then we can compare these metrics against those obtained with the previous version of the app to see if there was any improvement. We will also save the results of this study to evaluate subsequent major versions of the app. This type of study is a summative evaluation since it assesses the shipped product with the goal of tracking performance over time and ultimately calculating our return on investment . However, during this study, we might uncover some usability issues. We should make note of those issues and address them during our next design iteration.

Alternatively, another type of summative evaluations could compare our results with those obtained with one or more competitor apps or with known industry-wide data.

All summative evaluations paint an overview picture of the usability of a system. They are intended to serve as reference points so that you can determine whether you’re improving your own designs over time or beating out a competitor.

The ultimate summative evaluation is the go/no-go decision of whether to release a product. After all is said and done, is your design good enough to be inflicted on the public, or do we think that it will harm our brand so badly that it should never see the light of day? It’s actually rare for companies to have a formal process to kill off bad design, which may be why we encounter many releases that do more harm than good for a brand. If you truly embrace our proposition that brand is experience in the digital age, then consider a final summative evaluation before release.

Origin of the Terms

The terms ‘formative’ and ‘summative’ evaluation were coined by Michael Scriven in 1967. These terms were presented in the context of instructional design and education theory, but are just as valuable for any sort of evaluation-based industry.

In the educational context, formative evaluations are ongoing and occur throughout the development of the course, while summative evaluations occur less frequently and are used to determine whether the program met its intended goals. The formative evaluations are used to steer the teaching, by testing whether content was understood or needs to be revisited, while summative evaluations assess the student’s mastery of the material.

When Each Type of Evaluation Is Used

Recall that formative and summative evaluations align with your place in the design process. Formative evaluations go with prototype and testing iterations throughout a redesign project, while summative evaluations are best for right before or right after a major redesign.

Great researchers begin their study by determining what question they’re trying to answer. Essentially, your research question is the same as the type of evaluation. Below is a list of possible research questions you might have and the corresponding evaluation. For that reason, this table is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Research Methods for Formative vs. Summative Evaluations

After it is clear which type of evaluation you will conduct, you have to determine which research method you should use. There is a common misconception that summative equals quantitative and formative equals qualitative ­­— this is not the case.  

Summative evaluations can be either qualitative or quantitative. The same is true for formative evaluations.

Although summative evaluations are often quantitative, they can be qualitative studies, too. For example, you might like to know where your product stands compared with your competition. You could hire a UX expert to do an expert review of your interface and a competitor’s. The expert review would use the 10 usability heuristics as well as the reviewer’s knowledge of UI and human behavior to produce a list of strength and weaknesses for both your interface and your competitor’s. The study is summative because the overall interface is being evaluated with the goal of understanding whether the UX of your product stands up to the competition and whether a major redesign is warranted.

Additionally, formative evaluations aren’t always qualitative, although that is often the case. (Since it’s recommended to run an extended series of formative evaluations, it makes financial sense to use a cheaper qualitative study for each of them.) But sometimes big companies with large UX budgets and high level of UX maturity  might use quantitative studies for formative purposes in order to ensure that a change to one of their essential features will perform satisfactorily.  For instance, before launching a new homepage design, a large company may want to run a quantitative test on the prototype to make sure that the number of people who will scroll below the fold is high enough. 

Formative and summative evaluations correspond to different research goals. Formative evaluations are meant to steer the design on the correct path so that the final product has satisfactory user experience. They are a natural part of any iterative user-centered design process. Summative evaluations assess the overall usability of a product and are instrumental in tracking its usability over time and in comparing it with competitors.

For more on formative and summative evaluations, check out our courses like Usability Testing or Measuring UX and ROI .

Greenstein, Laura.  What Teachers Really Need to Know About Formative Assessment . ASCD, 2010.

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About the Author

Alita Joyce is a UX Researcher at Google, where she uses her expertise in research methods, stakeholder relationships, and systems thinking to guide product strategy. She is the lead researcher for Google Cloud Platform accessibility, the design system, and new market opportunities.

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Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what is the difference between formative and summative assessment, formative assessment.

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative assessments are generally low stakes , which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

• draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
• turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative assessment

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative assessments are often high stakes , which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a senior recital

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

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• Formative versus Summative Evaluation: difference, examples, challenges, and limitations
• Career Center

Looking for information on formative and summative evaluations? This article explains the key differences, examples of each, the challenges and limitations they present, and best practices for conducting effective evaluations. Discover how leveraging these evaluations can lead to program success. Perfect for those interested in program development and evaluation.

Table of Contents

Origin of the Terms

• What is the difference between Formative and Summative Evaluation?

Importance of Formative and Summative Evaluation in Program Development

Research methods for formative vs. summative evaluations, examples of formative and summative evaluation in practice, challenges and limitations of formative and summative evaluation, conclusion: leveraging formative and summative evaluation for program success.

The terms “formative evaluation” and “summative evaluation” were first introduced by Michael Scriven, a prominent philosopher of science, in his book “The Methodology of Evaluation” published in 1967.

Scriven used the term “formative evaluation” to refer to evaluation activities that are conducted during the development process of a program or product, with the aim of improving its quality. The term “summative evaluation” was used to refer to the evaluation of the program or product at the end of the development process, with the aim of determining its overall effectiveness.

Since then, the terms have been widely used in various fields, including education, psychology, public health, and business, to describe the two types of evaluation methods.

Today, formative evaluation and summative evaluation are recognized as important components of the evaluation process, and they are used to assess the effectiveness of programs, products, or services and to inform decision-making.

What is the difference between Formative and Summative Evaluation ?

Formative evaluation and summative evaluation are two types of evaluation methods used in various fields, including education, psychology, and business.

Formative evaluation is an ongoing process that involves collecting feedback and data during the development of a program, product, or service. The purpose of formative evaluation is to identify areas for improvement and make changes as needed to ensure that the final product or service meets the intended goals and objectives. Formative evaluation is usually conducted during the early stages of development and is often used to guide decision-making and improve the quality of the final product.

Summative evaluation , on the other hand, is conducted at the end of a program, product, or service to determine its effectiveness and success in achieving its goals and objectives. Summative evaluation is usually conducted using predetermined criteria and involves collecting data through surveys, tests, or other methods to measure the outcomes of the program. The purpose of summative evaluation is to provide feedback on the overall effectiveness of the program, product, or service and to inform decisions about its future.

Formative and summative evaluations play a crucial role in the development of effective programs. Here are some reasons why they are important:

• Identify areas for improvement: Formative evaluation allows program developers to identify areas for improvement during the development process. This helps to ensure that the final program meets the intended goals and objectives and is of high quality.
• Provide feedback : Both formative and summative evaluations provide feedback that can be used to improve the program. Formative evaluation provides ongoing feedback that can be used to make adjustments during the development process, while summative evaluation provides feedback on the overall success of the program.
• Measure effectiveness : Summative evaluation measures the effectiveness of the program in achieving its intended goals and objectives. This information can be used to determine whether the program is successful and to inform decisions about its future.
• Ensure accountability: Evaluation helps to ensure accountability by providing evidence of program outcomes. This information can be used to demonstrate program effectiveness to stakeholders and funders.
• Improve decision-making: Evaluation provides data-driven information that can be used to inform decision-making. This helps to ensure that decisions are based on reliable and valid information, rather than assumptions or opinions.

Formative and summative evaluations are important for ensuring the success of programs. They provide feedback, measure effectiveness, ensure accountability, and improve decision-making.

The research methods used for formative and summative evaluations differ depending on the goals of the evaluation.

Formative evaluation typically involves collecting qualitative data through methods such as focus groups, interviews, and observations. These methods allow evaluators to gather feedback from stakeholders in a more detailed and nuanced way than quantitative methods. Formative evaluation may also involve analyzing data from previous evaluations, conducting literature reviews, or using other secondary sources of data.

The purpose of formative evaluation is to identify areas for improvement and make changes to the program, product, or service during the development process. Therefore, the research methods used in formative evaluation are designed to provide information that can be used to guide decision-making and improve the quality of the final product.

Summative evaluation, on the other hand, typically involves collecting quantitative data through methods such as surveys, standardized tests, and other assessments. These methods allow evaluators to measure the overall success of the program, product, or service in achieving its goals and objectives. Summative evaluation may also involve analyzing data from previous evaluations or using other secondary sources of data.

The purpose of summative evaluation is to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the program, product, or service and to inform decisions about its future. Therefore, the research methods used in summative evaluation are designed to provide reliable and valid measures of program outcomes that can be used to make data-driven decisions.

In summary, formative evaluation typically involves qualitative research methods, while summative evaluation typically involves quantitative research methods. However, both types of evaluation may also incorporate a mix of research methods depending on the specific goals of the evaluation.

Here are some examples of formative and summative evaluations in practice:

Formative Evaluation:

• A school district develops a new curriculum and conducts formative evaluation by gathering feedback from teachers and students through surveys and focus groups. The feedback is used to make adjustments to the curriculum to ensure that it meets the needs of students and is effective in achieving its goals.
• A nonprofit organization that provides mentoring services to at-risk youth conducts formative evaluation by conducting regular check-ins with mentors and mentees to gather feedback on the program. This feedback is used to make adjustments to the program to improve the quality of the mentoring experience for both mentors and mentees.

Summative Evaluation:

• A public health organization implements a new community-based program to reduce obesity rates in a specific population. The organization conducts summative evaluation by collecting data on obesity rates before and after the program is implemented. The data is used to determine the effectiveness of the program in achieving its intended goal.
• A business develops a new customer service training program for its employees. The business conducts summative evaluation by administering surveys to customers to gather feedback on their experience with customer service before and after the training program is implemented. The data is used to determine whether the training program is effective in improving customer satisfaction.

While formative and summative evaluations are essential for ensuring the success of programs, they also present some challenges and limitations. Here are some examples:

Challenges of Formative Evaluation:

• Time-consuming: Formative evaluation can be time-consuming, as it requires collecting and analyzing data throughout the development process.
• Limited resources: Conducting formative evaluation may require additional resources, such as staff time or funding, which may not be readily available.
• Subjectivity: Formative evaluation is often based on subjective feedback and may be influenced by individual perspectives or biases.
• Difficulty in measuring outcomes: Formative evaluation may focus on inputs, processes, or outputs, which can make it difficult to measure outcomes.

Limitations of Summative Evaluation:

• Lack of control: Summative evaluation may be limited by factors outside of the program’s control, such as external events or environmental factors.
• Timing: The timing of summative evaluation can be challenging, as it may not provide immediate feedback that can be used to make adjustments during the program.
• Cost: Summative evaluation can be costly, particularly if it involves administering standardized tests or other assessments.
• Difficulty in measuring impact: Summative evaluation may not capture the full impact of the program, particularly if the program’s outcomes are difficult to measure.

Formative and summative evaluations present some challenges and limitations, which should be considered when planning and conducting evaluations. These challenges can be addressed by using appropriate research methods, leveraging stakeholder engagement, and focusing on clear and measurable goals and objectives.

Formative and summative evaluations are critical for the success of programs, projects, policies, or interventions. Formative evaluation provides ongoing feedback and data to guide the development process and ensure that the final product or service meets the intended goals and objectives. Summative evaluation provides feedback on the overall effectiveness of the program in achieving its intended goals and objectives.

To leverage formative and summative evaluation for program success, it is essential to establish clear goals and objectives, use a variety of data sources and research methods, involve stakeholders, ensure data quality, use data to inform decision-making, communicate findings effectively, ensure ethical considerations, and continuously assess and adjust the evaluation plan.

By leveraging the insights gained from formative and summative evaluation, program developers can make data-driven decisions that lead to the success of their programs, products, or services. Therefore, it is essential to use appropriate research methods for each type of evaluation to ensure that the data collected is reliable and valid and can be used to make informed decisions.

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Formative vs Summative Assessment Examples

Effective ways to track your middle school students’ progress online.

In middle schools, testing is everywhere, but it’s often more challenging to find good examples of effective assessment. Educators classify assessment into two broad categories: formative and summative. We’ll explore the difference between formative and summative assessment with examples.

Formative vs. Summative Assessment: What’s the difference?

Formative assessment and summative assessment differ in their goals and application. Instructors carry out formative assessments throughout the term, and their primary purpose is to act as a vehicle for feedback. Formative assessment allows you and your students to see what students have already mastered and what still needs more practice. It can also be a tool for practice.

Summative assessment’s main aim is to get a holistic snapshot of the learner’s achievement throughout the grading period or year. Instructors carry out summative assessment in specific increments, such as at the end of each unit or the end of the semester. Sometimes, the summative assessment also includes a pre-test at the beginning of the term, and then you can compare the summative results to a benchmark or “starting point.”

What are the main components of formative assessment in middle school?

There are many different ways to do effective formative assessment in middle school , and most of these methods fall into four broader categories: questioning, feedback, peer assessment, and self-assessment.

Questioning

Questioning is an assessment method that involves asking students questions and serves two main functions.

• First, check-in questions allow you to understand what the students have already mastered since their answers to your questions reveal what they know and what they still need to practice.
• Second, questioning allows students to reflect on their own learning since it requires them to formulate and articulate their thoughts on the material throughout the learning process. 

You can also use questioning as a vehicle for feedback; it is beneficial for helping students understand how and why their answer is incorrect. Questioning allows students to arrive at answers on their own, leading to learning that transfers further.

Feedback is an integral part of formative assessment, as long as you do it effectively. The best feedback happens promptly and in an appropriate context. Give feedback as soon as possible so students can absorb feedback better. 

You should also contextualize feedback. You can contextualize feedback by showing your students their grades according to the rubric or by using examples of student work and demonstrating exactly where they met (or failed to meet) the criteria and standards.

Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is a great way to get students involved and motivated in their formative assessment. Seeing their work alongside their peers can motivate students by giving them a real-life example of the expectations in addition to the ideal expectations laid out in a rubric or example from the teacher. 

Peer assessment can go beyond the simple trade-and-grade. For example, you can give students a list of guiding questions to ask their partner(s) regarding their assignment or output. Or, you can give each student an unmarked rubric copy and ask them to target its components in their peer’s paper.

Self-Assessment

Self-assessment is an excellent tool because it relies on both cognitive and metacognitive strategies to complete. This means that students recall experiences and knowledge from the course and reflect on the underlying thought processes and affective elements.

For effective self-assessment, you should provide students with the criteria or standards you use to grade their output. This could be a rubric or examples of adequate, inadequate, and stellar work. Then, encourage students to look closely at their work and compare. Plus, offering a list of guiding questions can help focus the students’ attention on the key components of their output.

Formative Assessment Examples

Common formative assessment examples include:

• Exit tickets 
• Pop quizzes
• Check-in questions
• Written feedback
• Conversations with student

How can I do formative assessment online?

Web 2.0 tools such as Kahoot , Mentimeter , Padlet , and FlipGrid help do formative assessments online. You can use these tools to create pop quizzes, exit tickets, and affective feedback prompts in class or asynchronously.

Summative Assessment Examples

Common summative assessment examples include:

• Unit tests.
• End-of-course exams.
• State-led standardized testing.
• College entrance exams.

How can I do summative assessment online?

You can use quiz-building software such as Google Forms and Quizziz to do summative assessments online. These authoring tools allow you to add many different types of questions (like multiple choice, short- or long-form paragraph responses, and fill-in-the-blank) to check your students’ overall understanding of the materials presented in class.

Which app can help with formative and summative assessment online?

There are a lot of apps that can help with assessment online. But it’s hard to find a versatile assessment tool that can cover all of your bases. TeacherMade offers robust assignment creation that fills many roles in your classroom. You can use TeacherMade to:

• Create formative assessment from existing worksheets you already use ( see which file formats you can upload onto the TeacherMade system here ).
• Use summative assessments from your state or district and convert them to online tests in minutes.
• Gamify all assessments to break up monotonous testing days.
• Set up self-grading to free up your nights and weekends.
• Stop juggling a variety of apps when one does it all.

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Taking our Programs to the End-Zone: Formative v. Summative Evaluation

So, you have been tasked with creating a formative evaluation plan for your program. Your supervisor mentions way that there are some old summative evaluations that you could look at to inform this endeavor. What the heck?! Where do you start? Here, of course!

In this post, we will walk through these two kinds of evaluations together and give you the skillset needed to accomplish the aforementioned task, as well as the foundational knowledge to impress your colleagues.

Let’s get started with a brief rundown of terms and why we should care.

• Formative evaluations (or formative assessments) have one simple overarching goal: improve outcomes.
• Summative evaluations (or summative assessments) can also be boiled down to another goal: describe what happened.

These two methods of evaluating your programs should be used in tandem because they do different things. If we only used formative evaluations, we would never gain a comprehensive look back at the program’s outcomes. If we only utilized summative evaluations, we would be leaving opportunities for improvement on the table.

Let’s take a deeper dive into some examples of each method of evaluation using an analogy from an increasingly controversial American pastime: football!

Formative evaluations happen early in the “drive”, meaning that these evaluations happen while there is still time to change the outcome. The earlier and more consistently you conduct formative evaluations within your programs, the better chance you have at changing the course of the program. Let’s say your team is at the 30-yard line, or in the middle of the first year of their 5-year grant. Conducting a formative evaluation, possibly an audit of all activities that have taken place so far will allow program staff to see where holes in the service plan might lie. If staff wait until they are at the 10-yard line, or the final year of the grant, there is very little time to make changes to the program model.

Other examples of beneficial formative evaluations are semester and yearly reports, focused interviews or process evaluations, and even the Annual Performance Report (APR). For GEAR UP and TRIO programs, the APR is a report that feeds into the Final Performance Report, or the FPR. You can improve upon each year’s APR; the FPR is written in stone.

Summative evaluation is just as it sounds – it is a summary of what has happened in your program. It is a summation of outcomes and performance indicators that have happened over a set period of time, which in your case is generally a grant cycle. This is similar to the final score and stats report from a football game. How many rushing yards did each team have? How many touchdowns did each quarterback pass? What was the percentage of your students who enrolled in a postsecondary program straight from high school?

These evaluations are frequently guided by your program’s objectives – both set at the federal level, as well as your internal objectives written into each grant. At the end of the project, a summative evaluation helps us paint a picture of the final scoreboard. They inform your audiences of how you measured up against your goals.

Now that we have discussed the differences between formative and summative evaluations, we will close with an example of how one program used each to build a robust evaluation plan. The following is a diagram of a 5-year-grant’s evaluation plan.

As you can see, each year’s formative evaluations varied depending on program needs. These are flexible and can be as formal as each program wishes to accomplish its goals. These formative evaluations lead into the summative evaluation, which is a thorough report covering what happened during the 5 years of grant funding.

I would love to dig deeper into how both of these methods can be utilized to evaluate individual initiatives within a project, but that’s a 30-yard pass for another game…I mean, blog post.

Contributed By Lauren Coleman-Tempel

Lauren Coleman-Tempel, Ph.D.  is the assistant director of  Research, Evaluation & Dissemination  for the University of Kansas Center for Educational Opportunity Programs (CEOP). She oversees multiple federally funded equity-based program evaluations including GEAR UP and TRIO and assists with the supervision of research and evaluation projects.

Follow  @CEOPmedia  on Twitter to learn more about how our Research, Evaluation, and Dissemination team leverages data and strategic dissemination to improve program outcomes while improving the visibility of college access programs. 

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Formative And Summative Assessment: The Differences Explained For Teachers

Tim handley.

In this article we un-pick the differences between formative and summative assessment, when and why you should use each type of assessment, and how to get the best out of each to keep driving forward students’ learning.

Formative vs summative assessments – what is the difference?

What is formative assessment, what is summative assessment, a breakdown of the differences between formative and summative assessments, formative vs summative assessment comparison chart, how to use formative assessments in your lessons, formative assessment examples and ideas, practical tips for implementing formative assessment, summative assessment examples and ideas, practical tips for implementing summative assessment, formative vs summative assessments – the pros and cons.

Let’s start with a brief overview and then drill down for greater nuance

Formative assessments are low stakes tests designed to identify where students are in their current understanding and inform teachers about what the next teaching steps should be. Summative assessments tend to be higher stakes and used at the end of a unit to evaluate student learning against a standard or benchmark.

Formative assessment is the use of day-to-day assessments to gauge and explore pupils’ understanding of a topic. They determine student needs, which teachers use to form learning outcomes in order to prioritise student achievement and success.

It is best thought of as an assessment for   learning . 

Formative assessments are one of the teaching strategies used to help inform the learning ‘in the moment’. Formative assessment is continuous, informal and should have a central and pivotal role in every maths classroom.

If used correctly, it will have a high impact on current learning and help you guide your instruction and teaching by giving ongoing feedback on students’ progress.

Having an assessment with low stakes allows pupils to develop their skills, confidence and user experience before attempting a summative assessment with high stakes. It also makes room for self-assessment.

Summative assessment takes place after pupils’ have completed a block of work, whether that be on a term or modular basis. They are a more formal way to sum up pupil progress and are often compared against a standard benchmark.

They are best thought of as assessments  of  learning.

There are different types of summative evaluations that we carry out ‘after the event’, often periodic (rather than continuous), and they are often measured against a set standard.

Summative assessment can be thought of as helping to validate and ‘check’ formative assessment – it is a periodic measure of how children are, overall, progressing in their mathematics learning.

Formative and summative assessments differ in the following ways:

• Difference 1: Purpose : the purpose of formative assessments is to improve learning, while the purpose of summative assessments is to gain a measure of attainment (e.g. a final grade).  
• Difference 2: Frequency : formative assessment occurs regularly throughout every lesson.  Summative assessments occur at the end of a teaching-learning cycle or at the end of class.
• Difference 3: Type of Assessment : formative assessments are likely to be low-stakes and summative assessments are likely to be high-stakes.
• Difference 4: Outcome : teachers provide feedback to improve learning following formative assessments.  The outcome of a summative assessment is a final grade or score that is used as a measure of attainment.

Importantly, it is not the ‘form’ that assessment takes that determines whether it is formative or summative, instead it is how it is being used.

For example, ‘test style questions’ can be used both as formative assessment (perhaps as exit tickets – questions given to children at the end of the lesson to check understanding) or summative (perhaps as an end of an instructional unit test or check).

In all subjects, but especially in maths, we use a combination of both assessment strategies, but that formative assessment, due to its constant nature, makes up the bulk of our assessment activities.

This Venn diagram shows the difference and similarities between the two assessment types very clearly.

Formative Assessment - Set of 4 Diagnostic Quizzes for Year 6

25 multiple choice questions per quiz on Number and Place Value, Addition and Subtraction, Multiplication and Division, Fractions, Decimals and Percentages.

Formative assessment: what you need to know

Formative assessment is an intrinsic part of both teaching and pupil progression. This form of assessment does not rely upon tests and results, but rather the ability to adapt to classroom blockers as they arise. 

It should indicate what a good piece of work is and why this is the case, but it also gives you as a teacher a chance to see when things are not going so well and act upon it and see improvements. 

Good formative feedback will enable both the teacher and pupil to plan together what the next stage of their progression will be and future learning goals.

During a lesson, all adults in the classroom should be on a ‘constant assessment mission’ through interactions with pupils. 

Teachers should be moving around the room, interacting with each child, and assessing their progress towards the learning objective.

In the moment assessment can take many forms:

• You could use a question from your shared learning to assess where you need to pitch independent work, or which pupils need further support
• Perhaps you are using a hinge question in a class discussion to assess where you need to pitch the independent work or group work, or which children require further support.
• You could be use ‘exit tickets’ to assess children’s understanding at the end of a lesson

Any ‘in the moment’ assessment that is carried out should have a purpose, and then the information obtained from formative assessments can help you understand the children’s learning processes and adapt to this in future lesson plans.

Ask yourself:

• If your assessment shows that children are secure, then how are you going to deepen their learning?
• If your assessment shows that children have some misconceptions, then how are you going to support these?

There are a lot of different assessment routines you can use to keep up with the progression of your maths class.

Common examples of formative assessment include:

• Group activities
• Class projects
• Presentations

Read more: Formative assessment examples

1. Ensure every formative assessment routine has a purpose

Make sure that your assessment ‘routines’ have a purpose and use. 

For example, if you are going to do the ‘maths lesson classic’ and ask children to show you an answer on a mini-whiteboard , make sure you are actually looking at the answers given by all children. 

You should then be using these to inform the next step in your lesson and the learning for each child.

I have observed many lessons where teachers have carried out the mini-whiteboard ‘routine’, not actually looked at the responses given, and carried on with what they had planned regardless. 

Remember – it is not the activity or ‘thing’ that you do that represents effective assessment, but what you do with the information you gather from it. 

It is through effective, in lesson, formative evaluation that you can ensure that each child is supported and challenged, and that every child is  learning  rather than constantly  rehearsing  what they already know.

Read more: Adaptive teaching

2. Address the learning gaps and don’t leave potholes

I often use a ‘pothole’ analogy with the schools I work with. Imagine a local council were filling in potholes but that their road maintenance vehicles were themselves creating new holes in the road.

They wouldn’t be doing a very good job at improving the overall quality of the road surface would they?

Yet, schools often inadvertently do the same with maths. They are often very good at carrying out a plethora of intervention activities to fill gaps (or potholes) that have been ‘left’ from previous years, but, at the same time, often allow new gaps (or potholes) to be created.

Make sure that you use your ‘in the moment’ and ‘end of lesson’ assessment to help fill any new gaps that are starting to emerge. Then, at the end of the maths lesson, you formatively check that all children are secure with the objective for that lesson, and if not, you carry out some form of intervention to help address these gaps.

If you are not going to address the gaps now, then who is and when?

Read more: Same day interventions

3. Understand diagnostic assessment and how it works

Probably the most effective type of formative assessment is a multiple choice diagnostic assessment . This is when you set up your formative assessment in a deliberate way to diagnose the precise learning gaps and misconceptions that each of your students may have.

Each carefully selected incorrect option for your multiple choice answers can highlight a particular maths misconception . This design ensures that students can answer correctly only if they have a clear understanding of the topic, free from any misconceptions.

This format is not only beneficial for student understanding but also efficient for teachers. The distinct set of answers allows for quick marking, enabling students to receive immediate feedback.

The questions can be answered swiftly, typically within ten seconds, allowing their frequent use in lessons without impinging on valuable learning time. Regular use of diagnostic assessments fosters reflective learning among students, encouraging them to identify areas needing further study and revision.

Download a free diagnostic maths test (available for primary and secondary) to get you started.

Summative assessment: what you need to know

Summative assessment helps to demonstrate the extent of pupils success in meeting specific goals. It is a method than can be used to quantify student performance and achievement, and due to its data driven nature, it is a great way to provide a numerical basis for the student’s next step.

Some common examples of summative assessment include:

• End of term projects

However, whilst the principles of summative assessment are simple, there are 4 key points you need to consider before implementing it.

1. Understand the difference between your assessment framework and your assessment system

Despite the power of ‘in the moment’ formative assessment, schools do need a way to track the attainment and progress of children throughout the school. 

This means schools also need to consider the assessment framework or rubric being used i.e. what you are assessing against. This decision is often one that is taken at school (or trust) level.    

At this point you need to be clear about the different between your assessment system and the framework you are using. 

Often in working with schools we hear that they are usingClassroom Monitor, Target Tracker or School Insights for their assessment. In fact, these are all just assessment systems – a bit of software that allow you to record and track children’s progress against the assessment framework that has been chosen by your school. 

They are not what you are using to ‘assess’ but merely what you are using to record your assessment.   

These assessment systems all allow you to select (and often create your own) framework upon which to assess your children – and it is these frameworks that are vitally important.

2. Consider the balance of objectives and targets in your assessment framework

When choosing, or indeed creating, the assessment framework that you are using, look closely at how you’re balancing the objectives and target areas of mathematics within the framework.

For example, a common occurrence is that schools assess against each objective of the national curriculum. This, however, is problematic and often creates unwelcome ‘surprises’ when it comes to comparing teacher assessment against standardised summative assessment. 

An example of this is SATs tests – I have been asked to work with many schools where their assessment against the whole national curriculum does not match the performance of children on previous SATs papers.

The reason for this disparity between teacher assessment against the whole national curriculum ie. assessing against every statement of the Year 4 Maths national curriculum and performance on standardised test, is that the whole national curriculum is not weighted in the same way as the KS1 and KS2 end of key stage assessment (SATs) are.

Read more: Why your SATs interventions should not start in Year 6

At primary The KS1 and KS2 test frameworks show a clear weighting towards number based objectives.

Number, calculations and proportionality making up between 75-85% of a child’s final result (this is for a good reason – but that’s the subject of another blog post!)

Yet, most year groups have around a 50/50 split between ‘number’ objectives – i.e. number, calculations and proportionality  and ‘non-number’ objectives- i.e.- shape, space, measures and statistics.

This essentially means that a child could be legitimately marked as ‘secure’ or ‘working at aged related expectations’ against the whole national curriculum, on the basis of their strength in shape, space, measures and statistics,  whereas they wouldn’t be classed as ‘secure’ or ‘working at aged related expectations’ in a standardised test.

It is therefore important that whatever framework you use is balanced, and represents the weighting of objectives in the Test Frameworks.

There are many ways in which you can do this, including: 

• Use in-built ‘weighting’ functions of some assessment systems that allow you to weight each objective. 
• Assess against key objectives only, which overall, have the balance of number vs non-number objectives.
• Group objectives together, creating the overall numbers vs non-number balance. 
• Use a commercially available assessment framework which has the weighting work done for you.

Top 20 maths revision topics for KS2 SATS

Third Space Learning have undertaken a detailed analysis of past papers to determine the topics that appear most often on the Standardised Assessment Tests (SATs) at the end of year 6 as well as the numbers of marks allocated to these topics. This list informs the order of lessons we teach on our one to one SATs revision programme which every year supports thousands of children to achieve their best outcomes in SATs.

We recommend you use it to create your own year 6 maths revision programme too.

Focused maths revision for GCSE

At secondary school the GCSE exam board frameworks mirror the weighting at primary school towards number . However with many more strands to test the marks in final exams are more fairly divided across algebra, geometry and ratio and proportion. Only probability and statistics tend to be regularly responsible for fewer marks across the 3 GCSE maths papers .

If you’re interested in digging into the detail on the maths topics assessed at GCSE, these articles provide excellent expert analysis:

• Summary Of ALL GCSE Maths Papers 2023: Question Analysis, Highlights & Next Steps
• Question And Topic Level Analysis of All Edexcel GCSE Maths Papers 2017-2023

3. Train your teachers how to use the assessment framework

Once your school has decided on a framework to use for assessment, next comes the question of how it is actually used. 

These frameworks can be used both in a purely ‘summative’ way, or in a formative way that leads to, over time, an accurate summative assessment. 

The traditional use of these frameworks is for schools to ask for each child to be assessed against the framework at set points – for example through termly or midterm exams. 

This often leads to ‘assessment panic’ with teachers feeling overwhelmed having to create the assessment against many objectives for all children in their task in a short period of time.

If this is the only way in which these frameworks are used, then these are being used purely summatively – it is the teacher’s judgement at the end of a term/half term. 

Due to the stress of having to meet a deadline and make a judgment against each objective for all children in your class, this can often mean that these summative only teacher assessments are not as accurate as many would like.

Luckily, you can adapt these assessments very easily

How to use the frameworks formatively as well as summatively.

These frameworks can also be used in a more formative way- with teachers being encouraged to record the progress towards objectives on the framework as they are being taught .

An example of this is recording and amending judgements each week as a result of the ‘ongoing’ assessment. This leads to an ever changing snapshot of each child’s performance, which can be really powerful.

This can be used to inform interventions and subsequent teaching, and help to identify common misconceptions, giving the assessment framework used by your school both a summative and formative use. 

These assessments can then just be finalised in time for whatever deadline of ‘snapshot’ date your school set.

It is fantastic that many schools are favouring teacher assessment to provide this ‘data’. 

Teacher assessment is incredibly powerful, and gives teachers the professional autonomy that they deserve. 

4. Regular standardised tests can be used with your assessment framework

Many schools will also choose to use some form of testing alongside their assessment frameworks.

This can be seen as helping to validate teacher assessment judgements, and can also help to ensure there are no ‘nasty’ surprises when it comes to Year 6.

However, testing is only as good as the quality of the tests that you use. As we know, the development of SATs tests takes 3 years . They are also, as we all know, standardised – leading to the infamous ‘scaled score’.

Make sure that the tests your schools rely on also have the same degree of work that has gone into their development.

They should be standardised – so you know how children across the country perform, and be based on a clear test development framework, and have been trialled and refined in schools. 

Some popular tests that have been developed in this way include PUMA (by Hodder/Rising Stars Assessment), NfER tests and GL Assessments.

In a test by Rising Stars using PUMA assessment data, pupils who received one to one maths tuition from Third Space Learning made double the expect progress over 14 weeks.

Regardless of what tests are used, schools and teachers will understand that they provide a snapshot of the performance on the day the test was taken. Children, just like adults, all have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ days, and these tests should be seen as a supplement to good quality teacher assessment, not a replacement for it.

Both formative and summative assessment have a very important role to play in the classroom and in schools. However, it is very important to ensure that you find the right balance between the two approaches for your own class’s learning needs.

Constant formative assessment can prove difficult if not implemented properly, but consistent assessment of pupils strengths and weaknesses can prove invaluable in helping them to progress.

Summative assessment can often not show the whole picture of a pupils progression, but it is a fantastic way of getting a data driven overview of how a pupil has progressed and grown over a period of time.  

The goal of this article was to summarise the difference between formative and summative assessment, and the conclusion is that both approaches have their flaws, but they can also both provide a valuable insight into how a class is getting on throughout the school year. All that is left is to use assessments of both kinds to inform your teaching!

• The Myth of Expected Progress in Primary Schools
• Primary School Grades Explained
• Pupil Progress: Measuring The Impact Of The Affective Domain Across 1,750 Schools
• KS1 Assessment Frameworks Maths

Do you have students who need extra support in maths? Every week Third Space Learning’s maths specialist tutors support thousands of pupils across hundreds of schools with weekly online 1-to-1 lessons and maths interventions designed to plug gaps and boost progress. Since 2013 we’ve helped over 150,000 primary and secondary school pupils become more confident, able mathematicians. Learn more or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school’s needs and how we can help.

Subsidised one to one maths tutoring from the UK’s most affordable DfE-approved one to one tutoring provider.

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Home » Blog » Formative and Summative Assessments: Examples and Differences

Formative and Summative Assessments: Examples and Differences

One of the primary benefits of using formative and summative assessments is that you aren’t forced to choose between them. They work exceptionally well when used in combination.

In this article, we’ll be breaking down precisely what formative and summative assessments are, the key differences between them, the benefits of their use, and providing a range of examples to help illustrate how they can be implemented in the classroom.

If you’re looking for an effective way to assess student learning and measure progress, read on to find out how formative and summative assessments can help.

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Formative assessments: definition and purpose.

Before we get into examples of their use, it’s essential that we first define precisely what both formative and summative assessments are and how they differ.

Formative assessments are employed regularly throughout a set learning period, be that a chapter, unit, or term, and help track progress and identify areas where students may struggle or need more support.

They also give the teacher and course designer the data they need to improve the learning experience and make any necessary changes that may be required throughout a system.

Rather than strict exams, formative assessments are usually relatively low-stakes, meaning they do not always need to be graded or even marked. This helps to create a non-threatening atmosphere and encourages students to take risks in their learning without fear of failure.

Formative assessment tasks usually rely on feedback from both students and the teacher, with learners receiving feedback on performance as soon as possible.

Uses of Formative Assessments

As mentioned, one of the primary uses of a formative assessment is to gauge student understanding and identify knowledge gaps that may need extra work.

Formative assessments can also be used to help inform curricular decisions, provide valuable data on the effectiveness of a course or lesson, and allow students to monitor their progress over time.

In addition, formative assessments are valuable in helping teachers gain real-time insight into a group’s collective understanding, allowing them to rapidly adapt their training or lessons accordingly.

Benefits of Using Formative Assessments

There are a range of benefits to employing formative assessments as part of your teaching strategy, including the following:

• Improved student or employee engagement and motivation – By allowing students to track their learning journey, you can help them take ownership of their learning experience. This can be highly motivating for students, as it encourages a sense of progress and accomplishment.
• Better assessment of real-world understanding – By using formative assessments that involve practical skills or application, you can better understand how well your students understand the real-world implications of the content they are studying.
• Enables rapid identification of areas of difficulty for learners – Through formative assessments, you can quickly identify areas that students may be struggling with. This helps to ensure that these areas are addressed rapidly and effectively.
• Allows teachers to tailor their lessons to the needs of the group – Teachers and course designers can use the data from formative assessments to tailor their studies according to the group’s needs and ensure that they meet all learning objectives.

Examples of Formative Assessments

To clarify how formative assessments can be used, below are a few examples of tasks that could be used both in the classroom and in a digital learning environment.

Classroom-Based Examples

The following examples can be valuable to employ in a classroom setting:

1. Quizzes and polls

Simple and easy to execute, quizzes and polls are a low-effort way of gauging student understanding at regular intervals throughout a lesson.

2. Peer feedback and self-assessment

Peer-based feedback sessions and self-assessment questionnaires can help identify areas where students may need extra support or guidance while giving vital insight into how students perceive their progress.

3. Class discussions and debates

Encouraging students to discuss their different perspectives on a given topic or concept allows teachers to better understand how well they comprehend the material. It also gives students the opportunity to have their ideas heard and helps create a sense of solidarity within the classroom.

Online and Digital Examples

With the rise in the use of digital learning tools and technologies , there is also a range of online-based practices that can be used as formative assessments, including:

1. Interactive quizzes and games

The gamification of quizzes or other learning activities can provide an engaging way to assess student understanding and offer real-time feedback.

2. Virtual simulations and case studies

Where more vocational skills are being taught, virtual simulations and case studies can test students’ problem-solving capabilities in a low-stakes environment.

3. Online discussion forums and feedback platforms

One of the benefits of using an online learning platform is the wide range of features available to assess student understanding. Discussion forums, peer feedback platforms, and automated feedback systems can all be used as formative assessment tools.

Summative Assessments: Definition and Purpose

Compared to formative assessments, summative assessments are conducted at the end of a defined learning period and often represent the final grade for the course.

To provide a comprehensive assessment grade, summative assessments evaluate a student’s overall understanding and performance of the skill or concept studied.

They can also be used to track educational progress over time, such as in standardised testing, as well as help to inform curricular decisions and the effectiveness of teaching methods.

Uses of Summative Assessments

Summative assessments test student mastery of content, assess their overall understanding of a subject or topic area and generally give them a final mark.

For teachers and course designers, a summative assessment allows them to measure the effectiveness of their teaching and make any necessary changes or improvements.

Summative assessments can also be used to compare student performance across different classes, courses, and programs.

Benefits of Summative Assessments

As with formative assessments, there is a range of benefits associated with the use of summative assessments, including:

• Provides an overall assessment score – Summative assessments can provide a more accurate assessment of student understanding and performance, offering an overall grade or score.
• Helps track educational progress over time – Educators can track student progress to identify improvement areas through standardised testing or other summative assessments.
• Helps inform curricular decisions – Summative assessments can assess the effectiveness of a particular course or program and help inform future curricular choices.
• Offers an efficient way to measure learning outcomes – By providing an overall assessment grade, summative assessments offer a convenient way to measure the success of a teaching strategy in one go.

Examples of Summative Assessments

To clarify how summative assessments can be implemented, here are a few examples of traditional assessment methods, such as essays and exams, and performance-based assessments, such as presentations and projects.

Traditional Assessment Methods

Below are some examples of traditional assessment methods:

1. Examinations and final tests

Examinations are widely used to assess student knowledge and understanding at the end of a course or program. They are easy to implement and provide a quick and efficient way to evaluate student performance.

2. Term papers and essays

Essays and term papers are another traditional assessment method used alongside examinations. Essays test students’ ability to analyse a given topic or concept in detail, providing insight into their understanding of the subject matter.

3. Projects and presentations

Where skill-based or vocational courses are being taught, projects and presentations can test a student’s performance in class. These assessments allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter and show their ability to apply and transfer the knowledge in a practical context.

Performance-Based Assessments

Performance-based assessments are best employed when assessing practical skills or processes. Examples of performance-based summative assessments include:

1. Practical exams and demonstrations

Practical tests and demonstrations are often used to assess students’ physical abilities, such as in sports or vocational courses. These assessments test a student’s understanding of a particular skill or concept by having them demonstrate it in a real-world setting.

2. Portfolios and showcases

Where creative or design-based courses are being taught, portfolios and showcases allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts in a practical way. These assessments require students to use their creative skills to produce a tangible output, such as an artwork or multimedia presentation.

3. Capstone projects and dissertations

Dissertations and capstone projects are often used to assess students’ understanding of complex topics or skills. These assessments require students to demonstrate their knowledge of the subject matter by producing an in-depth research or project that meets specific criteria.

Critical Differences Between Formative and Summative Assessments

Now that you have a fuller understanding of what both formative and summative assessments represent and how they can be employed, here’s a summary outlining the key differences between the two:

Timing and Frequency

One of the most essential distinctions between the two types of assessment is when they are conducted. Formative assessments occur throughout the course and act as checkpoints to monitor student progress.

In contrast, summative assessments are shown at the end of a defined learning period and only count towards an overall grade or score.

Purpose and Focus

Formative assessments are designed to provide feedback on understanding and inform instruction in real-time. In contrast, summative assessments evaluate student performance of a skill or concept and can help inform curriculum decisions.

Feedback and Evaluation Process

The feedback and evaluation process for formative and summative assessments differs significantly. Formative assessments are designed to offer real-time feedback on performance.

In contrast, summative assessments provide an overall assessment score or grade that reflects the student’s understanding of the subject matter at the end of a course or program.

Which is the Right Assessment Approach to Utilise?

Choosing the correct assessment approach for your students ultimately depends on the goals you are trying to achieve, the type of course or program being taught and the knowledge and skills that need to be assessed.

To help you decide, consider the following:

Considerations for Selecting Formative Assessments

Some of the critical considerations for making use of formative assessments include:

• Regular feedback – Formative assessments should be implemented regularly to ensure students receive regular feedback on their understanding and performance.
• Low-stakes testing – As formative tests don’t count towards an overall grade, they should be designed as low-stakes tests to help encourage participation.
• Inform instruction – Formative assessment results can inform instruction in real-time, allowing educators to tailor their teaching approach to student needs.

Considerations for Selecting Summative Assessments

When making use of summative assessments, it’s essential to consider the following points:

• Assessment goals – Before designing a summative assessment, clearly define the purposes of the evaluation and how it will be used to evaluate student performance.
• Assessment criteria – When creating a summative assessment, ensure that you set clear and concise evaluation criteria that allow students to demonstrate their understanding fully.
• Inter-rater reliability – To ensure fairness and accuracy, consider having multiple assessors score each student’s work when creating a summative assessment.

Using Both Formative and Summative Assessments in Learning and Development

As mentioned, one of the primary benefits of using formative and summative assessments in learning and development is that they can provide a more comprehensive evaluation of student performance.

By implementing both assessment forms, educators can better understand their student’s progress and tailor their instruction for maximum impact.

Formative assessments can measure progress and inform instruction in real-time, while summative assessments provide an overall score or grade that indicates learning success.

Final Thoughts

While formative and summative assessments have apparent differences, such as in their purpose, timing and feedback mechanisms, there are significant benefits to using both assessment types in learning and development.

Educators can better assess student performance and tailor instruction by implementing formative and summative assessments. Additionally, the use of both reviews provides a comprehensive view of understanding that can be used to inform curriculum decisions.

If you are looking for more guidance and resources on creating and implementing formative and summative assessments, check out the other articles on the Skillshub blog .

As experts in developing eLearning content , Skillshub can help create customised learning materials tailored to your organisation’s needs. To learn more about our services, get in touch with us today.

Sean McPheat

Sean is the CEO of Skillshub. He’s a published author and has been featured on CNN, BBC and ITV as a leading authority in the learning and development industry. Sean is responsible for the vision and strategy at Skillshub, helping to ensure innovation within the company.

Updated on: 20 September, 2023

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Formative vs. Summative Assessments: What's the Difference?

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December 22nd, 2021 | 8 min. read

Chris Zook is a contributing author to the AES blog. He enjoys everything about online marketing, data science, user experience, and corgis.

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Whether you’re an administrator, supervisor, or teacher, you’ve heard of formative assessments and summative assessments . They're both essential parts of any curriculum map . But what do these terms actually mean?

In a nutshell, formative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how someone is learning material throughout a course .

Summative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how much someone has learned throughout a course .

In the classroom, that means formative assessments take place during a course, while summative assessments are the final evaluations at the course’s end. 

That's the simple answer, but there's actually a lot more that makes formative and summative assessments different. To fully understand formative vs. summative assessments, you'll need to understand the details of these two important forms of assessment.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at formative and summative quizzing and assessing. When you've finished reading, you'll understand how to better test student knowledge in your classroom.

Video: Formative vs. Summative Assessments

What Are Formative Assessments?

Formative assessments are evaluations of someone’s learning progress in a classroom.

Common formative assessments include:

• Presentations
• Group activities

Formative assessments work great when they’re used on a regular basis. That regularity could be based on a calendar (every Monday, every Thursday, etc.) or your lesson plans (every unit).

They’re also more flexible than summative assessments. You don’t always have to use pencil and paper to get a feel for your students’ progress. Instead, you can use in-class games, group presentations, and hands-on activities to evaluate student progress.

Ultimately, the formative assessments you use are up to you. After all, no one knows your classes better than you. So if you’d prefer to get an overview of how well your students are learning, you can use a group-style assessment like a game. If you want to know where each student struggles, you can use an individual assessment like a quiz.

This flexibility is perfect for keeping students engaged in your class. It lets you stick to a syllabus while mixing up the exact task each student has to perform. That way, you don’t fall into a predictable routine of teach-test-teach-test. Instead, you have a varied routine of teach-game-quiz-teach-presentation-project or another interesting format.

By the time your course ends, you’ll have a full understanding of how students are learning as you teach a subject. Then, you can keep all of your grades to look for patterns among different class sections.

Is there an area where students seem to do worse than others? Could you adjust a lesson and shoot for better results?

Naturally, you’ll never get a class that’s straight A’s from top to bottom. But you can still design your classroom assessments to work for as many students as possible!

Top 3 Formative Assessment Examples

Formative assessments are excellent opportunities to let your students flex their creative muscles.

Even if a student isn’t much of a writer or artist, they can still have a little fun with these assessments.

1. Make an ad

Have your students create an advertisement for a concept they just learned. Use visuals and text to really sell an idea.

This makes students apply what they’ve learned into a creative exercise, which helps with long-term retention.

2. Idea comparisons

Instruct students to lay out the main ideas of a new concept they learned. Then, have them compare that concept to another to see where they agree and disagree.

In addition to helping students remember these concepts, this exercise makes them apply previous knowledge to a new format so they can remember it better in the future.

3. Misconceptions

After you introduce a concept to students, introduce a popular misconception about it. Have students discuss why the misconception is false and where it may have started.

This exercise makes students think critically about what they’ve just learned while showing them how to debunk misinformation.  

How Do You Track Formative Assessments?

You can track formative assessments in one of three ways.

First, you can track them by grade . This gives you a specific, concentrated view of how a student (or group of students) learns. However, graded assessments are sources of stress for many students. So if you want to make a unit fun or loose, graded assessments may not work well for you. 

Second, you can track them by feel . This is more based on your teacher instinct, allowing you to pick which students need additional support based on your observation. On the downside, you can’t “show” this information to your administrators . If you have certain standards to meet throughout a marking period, you won’t be able to prove you’ve fulfilled those standards without grades.

Finally, you can track formative assessments with  student data . This is non-graded information that may reflect how your students are learning, such as questions they've frequently answered incorrectly or subject areas where they've had trouble. After all, not everything has to be a grade!

With all of that said and done, let’s jump into summative assessments.

What Are Summative Assessments?

Summative assessments are evaluations of what someone has learned throughout a course. 

Common summative assessments include:

• Final exams
• End-of-class projects

Summative assessments almost always take place at the end of a course unless a teacher decides to break a course into more manageable chunks. They’re often cumulative, and they’re used to evaluate a student’s long-term information retention.

In summative assessments like final exams, you can include questions from the first week or two of a course to ensure students retained introductory information. In other assessments like papers, your students can pull from a full marking period of learning to apply to a topic.

Either way, your students have to do some serious reflecting and critical thinking to bring together the information from an entire course.

This is a great way to ensure students retain essential information from one course to another. So if you teach introductory courses, summative assessments are perfect to set students up for success in their next classes.

That’s important because a student’s success in your classroom is just one step for them. When you prepare them for the next step, you make it easier for them to succeed in the future as well.

In that way, summative assessments serve two purposes:

First , they evaluate what someone learned while they’ve been in your class.

Second , they evaluate how prepared someone is to go to the next academic level.

Combined with the rest of a student’s performance in class, summative quizzing and assessments are excellent ways to gauge progress while ensuring long-term information retention.

Top 3 Summative Assessment Examples

Summative assessments are traditionally more structured and standardized than formative assessments.

Still, you have a few options to shake things up that go beyond a pen-and-paper test.

1. In-depth reports

Instruct students to choose a topic that resonated with them in class and report in-depth on it. This is a great opportunity for students to take an idea and run with it under your supervision.

These reports often showcase a student’s interest, and you’ll be able to evaluate a student’s engagement level in the class by how they approach the report.

The goal is a passionate, intelligent, and comprehensive examination of a concept that matters to a student. 

2. Cumulative, individual projects

Have your students pick a project to complete. This project should somehow reflect what they’ve learned throughout the course.

Projects are great for any practical application class from health science to physics. Creating a cross-section of the human heart, designing a diet, or creating a protective egg-drop vessel are all fun ways students can show off their knowledge of a topic.

3. Personal evaluation papers

Require students to apply principles from your class to their personal lives. These papers are excellent fits for psychology, nutrition, finance, business, and other theory-based classes.

In a nutshell, personal evaluations let students look at themselves through a different lens while exploring the nuances of the principles they learned in class.  Plus, it lets students do something everyone loves — talk about themselves!

Now that you have a few ideas on summative assessments, how can you track their success?

How Do You Track Summative Assessments?

While everyone has their own ideas on this topic, grades are the best way to evaluate someone’s success with a summative assessment.

How you grade is ultimately up to you. Presentations are great ways to grade someone based on a number of factors, including soft skills like public speaking. Written exams or project-based assessments are ideal to see a student’s full-scope understand of your class after a marking period.

Whatever you choose, stick to a consistent grading scale so you can identify your own strengths and weaknesses in the classroom as students complete your course. 

What’s More Important: Formative or Summative Assessments?

Many new teachers have this question — are formative or summative assessments more important?

In a perfect world, they’re equally important. Formative assessments let students show that they’re learning, and summative assessments let them show what they’ve learned.

But American public education values summative assessments over formative assessments. Standardized tests — like the SATs — are great examples of high-value summative assessments.

It’s rare to find the same emphasis on formative quizzing and assessments. That’s because formative assessments act like milestones while summative assessments show the bottom line.

We encourage teachers to look at these assessments as two sides of the same coin. Formative and summative assessments work together flawlessly when implemented properly.

With all of that in mind, you only have one question left to answer. How are you going to add these assessments to your curriculum ?

Use Formative and Summative Assessments and Meet Your Challenges

As a teacher, you’ll likely need to employ both summative and formative assessments in your curriculum. An effective balance of these assessments will help you understand your students’ needs while meeting your standards.

However, CTE teachers face challenges in the classroom each day that sometimes get in the way of connecting with students and preparing them for these assessments.

If you want to feel less overwhelmed and spend more time helping your students succeed, download your free guide . You’ll learn about five of the most significant challenges teachers face and how you can overcome them.

Qorrect Blog

The difference between Formative and Summative Evaluation?

Leila Atta January 9, 2023 12,700 Views

The difference between different types of evaluation, especially the difference between formative and summative evaluation, is a very vital topic every educator should know about; in order to perfectly employ each type within the teaching process and to conduct good tests.

Formative and summative evaluation are among the most common and important types of evaluation as they complement each other and influence the quality of the whole educational process.

The difference between formative and summative evaluation is nothing more than an attempt to understand each type of them, then use them in the desired way and combine their results to maximize the evaluation benefits.

In this blog, we briefly review the different types of assessments and explain some of the differences between formative and summative evaluation, and also discuss the role of digital systems in improving evaluation results.

Table of Contents

What is the difference between Formative and Summative Evaluation?

Evaluation in education refers to measuring the degree to which learners understand the curriculum, with the goal of accurately determining which educational purposes have or have not been met.

There are many types of educational assessment, the most common of which are:

• Pre-assessment.
• Formative assessment.
• Diagnostic assessment.
• Summative assessment.

Visit our blog and learn more about the latest Methods for Assessing Students.

Formative and summative evaluation are the most common types of evaluation, and it is important to clarify the difference between formative and summative evaluation. Robert Stick, a professor at the University of Illinois, describes the difference between formative and summative evaluation by saying: “ When the chef tastes the soup, that’s formative evaluation, but when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative “.

To understand this saying, the following table shows the difference between formative and summative evaluation.

The difference between formative and summative evaluation

While talking about the difference between formative and summative evaluation, it should be noted that the main difference between formative and summative evaluation that clearly separates them is how the results of the evaluation process are used.

If the results are used to assess the effectiveness of the curriculum in achieving educational goals after the completion of the education process, the evaluation is summative. But if the results are used to create an updated picture of the curriculum, learners, and educators’ performance, the evaluation is formative.

To better understand the difference between formative and summative evaluation and its use in the learning process, let’s take a closer look at the concept, models, and strategies of each type.

Summative evaluation

Summative evaluation definition refers to the type of evaluation carried out at the end of a curriculum or course, such as final exams, mid-term exams, final projects, etc. It aims to assess learners’ performance based on their grades and to compare learners’ results to determine the extent to which the objectives of the educational process are being met.

In order to achieve accurate results and effective impact, the summative evaluation is based on the following factors:

Curriculum compatibility

In summative evaluation, learners are not assessed on the knowledge they have not learned, but on what they have learned. In this way, evaluation is appropriate to determine whether the educational objectives have been met.

Variety of questions

The summative evaluation contains different types of questions to measure the learners’ level of knowledge in different ways.

Regular evaluation

Learners’ results are reviewed at regular intervals according to their progress at different stages of learning.

Summative evaluation provides various reports on the level of assessment, student performance, etc. These reports are used to prepare curricula and adopt educational policies at subsequent educational levels.

If you are looking for a variety of accurate reports on student evaluation, you have no alternative to Qorrect system.

Summative evaluation examples

There are different examples of summative evaluation, listed below:

• Written final exams: the most common form worldwide.
• Semi-annual exams: such as monthly exams, mid-term exams, or end-of-semester exams.
• Practical tests: such as physical or chemical experiment tests in scientific colleges.
• Final oral exams: Students submit an oral examination individually or collectively at the end of the course or educational program to a teacher/professor or group of teachers/professors.
• Research projects: includes collaborative or individual projects and papers.
• Presentations: prepared individually and jointly.
• Student Portfolios: like paintings done by art students during the school year.
• Admission tests such as SAT, IELTS, and TOEFL.

When preparing a summative evaluation, it is necessary to use a variety of questions to evaluate students and ensure that the assessment is relevant to the topic being studied and combines academic knowledge with applied practice.

Summative evaluation in education

Summative assessment in education has the following meaning:

• Monitoring the grades of learners at different levels of education to identify successful and unsuccessful learners.
• Identifying the class of learners enrolled in a particular college, department or course, etc.
• Measuring the effectiveness of the learning process and the efficiency of teaching methods.
• Determining the effectiveness and relevance of curricula and policies for learners and their different levels.
• Providing an objective criterion to be relied upon in the development of the educational process and in decision-making regarding the change and improvement of the educational system in its various pillars.

It’s also an organized process, as it takes into account the following:

• Exams period.
• Those responsible for preparing and correcting the tests.
• Correction method.
• Preparation of answer forms.
• Confidentiality of the questions.

To achieve the desired impact on the quality of the educational process, summative evaluation relies on a variety of strategies and methods.

Summative evaluation strategies

Summative evaluation strategies are divided into two main types:

Traditional strategy

This strategy is based on traditionally familiar forms of summative evaluation such as written tests. This strategy focuses on assessing the learner’s academic performance, and relevant skills such as writing skills, language skills, and so on.

Creative Strategy

This strategy uses various forms of summative evaluation such as final projects, research papers, and student portfolios. This strategy focuses on measuring students’ ability to apply academic knowledge to their real lives, as well as other relevant skills such as teamwork, time management, and leadership.

It should be noted that it is important to integrate both strategies into any summative evaluation process; to make a more accurate assessment and to develop the educational process more effectively.

Summative evaluation methods

The summative evaluation methods are divided into the two following methods:

Pen Paper Tests

It is a classic accepted form in various educational institutions that requires a lot of time and effort to prepare, monitor, and correct.

E-assessment

Electronic testing is a new direction that started to be used as a new way of summative evaluation that helps to reduce the time, effort, and cost of conducting tests.

Formative Evaluation

Formative evaluation refers to this type of evaluation that occurred during the instructional process; in order to deliver results and data that can measure the level of learners and the effectiveness of educational practices.

Learners can use these findings to identify their strengths and weaknesses and change their learning styles in a way that develops their weaknesses and improves their strengths. Educators also can also use the results to determine learners’ academic progress.

This evaluation is done at an early stage so that both educators and learners have the opportunity to develop their own teaching and learning processes and address their deficiencies before they reach the end of the educational program and take a summative evaluation.

Formative assessment helps both educators and learners determine if the learner has mastered a skill or a knowledge or if they need more time to master it and how to use that time effectively!

In this way, formative evaluation contributes to the following:

• Defines concepts and skills that are difficult for learners to understand or master.
• Reconstruct education programs and correct teaching methods to adapt them to the level of
• learners and support their learning process.
• Steer the educational treatment plan in the right direction.
• Establish the concept of independence for learning in the hearts of learners.

Formative evaluation is characterized by the fact that it encompasses all learning objectives, is repeated at different stages of the educational process, and is analytical because it is based on the analysis of the learners’ results.

Formative Evaluation Examples

The formative evaluation aims to discover the problems that learners face during the educational process and resolve them before they escalate.

To this end, educators employ a number of strategies to conduct a formative evaluation.

Among the best-known of these strategies are the following:

In this process, the educator asks students to provide a written or oral summary of what has been explained.

After the explanation, the educator asks the students to share questions about the topic of the explanation. Through the discussion that takes place among the learners, the educator can see what the learners understand and what difficulties they are facing.

Competition

At the end of the explanation, the learner conducts a competition of short questions about what was explained and determines the level of understanding of the topic based on students’ answers.

Open-ended questions

Closed-ended questions are generally not a good way to assess a student’s understanding of a lesson.

On the other hand, open-ended questions allow the educator to know what the students have learned, what things are on their minds and other things that are difficult to learn or even remember.

At the end of the explanation, the educator gives students a few minutes to think about how they can apply what they have learned to their lives. Afterward, a discussion is conducted among the students about the main ideas written down.

In this strategy, the educator provides incorrect information that contradicts what he or she has explained and observes the learners’ reactions. Do they notice the mistake or not? And if they notice it, how do they refute it? In this way, the educator knows the extent to which the learners understood what he explained.

This strategy is based on three questions that are asked to the learners after the explanation. Based on their answers, the educator determines the learners’ level of understanding and the effectiveness of the teaching method.

These three questions relate to what learners learned from the explanation, what points they emphasized most that they would like to explore further, and whether they have any questions they would like to ask.

Exit ticket

At the end of the explanation, the teacher asks a question and asks learners to write the answer on a piece of paper. Each learner delivers his/her answer sheet as a ticket to leave the class.

The most important point / the most difficult point

In this strategy, the educator asks the learners for the most important information they learned in the lesson and the most difficult information to understand.

It should be noted that formative assessment has less to do with when the assessment is administered or what parts of the course it covers, and more to do with its purpose and how its results are used to achieve that purpose.

For formative assessment to achieve the desired goal, it depends on more than one form, such as follows:

• Classroom discussions.
• Monitoring learner performance.
• Homework assignments.
• Instructions from the educator.

And there are many examples of formative evaluation that we could mention, for example:

• A literature professor explains criticism of a literary trend, then discusses it with students and listens to their opinions.
• A physics professor instructs his students to look for the latest findings of scientists on the theory of parallel universes to discuss in the next lecture.
• A politics professor explains the different systems of government and then asks the students to apply what they have learned to solve the governmental crisis in Lebanon.

As we can see, the different examples of formative evaluation aim to measure and improve the student’s learning skills and support educators’ pedagogical practices, in the context of the different efforts to develop the education system and activate its role in society.

How does Qorrect system help you maximize the benefits of formative and summative evaluation?

After clarifying the difference between formative and summative evaluation, and recognizing their importance in the development of the educational process, some educators in educational institutions may be concerned about the time and mechanisms they need to activate and use these two types of evaluation.

Qorrect system is here to help you create a more accurate and effective assessment by providing you with the following features:

• Preparing all forms of tests that will help you achieve your desired educational goals.
• A thorough analysis of learners’ results and quick and comprehensive reports on all aspects of the assessment process.
• Maintaining test confidentiality and administering tests within a tight security framework and effectively combating cheating.
• Reducing the time and effort required to create and correct tests by automating the correction.
• In addition, you can create question banks with countless questions in simple and easy steps.

From formulating questions and administering traditional or electronic tests to analyzing results and generating reports, Qorrect system helps you step-by-step and increases the quality of every type of assessment you administer.

Book a free demo now and contact one of our experts to find out more!

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formative_assessment https://www.baylor.edu/atl/index.php?id=965148 https://www.baylor.edu/atl/index.php?id=965147 https://vcsa.ucsd.edu/_files/assessment/resources/50_cats.pdf https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/summative-evaluation/28712

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Revolutionize Assessment with Qorrect: The Ultimate Online Quiz Maker

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