Assessments are a part of every course: tests, quizzes, papers, reports, etc.  But why do we give these assessments?  What exactly is each assessment meant to accomplish?  Probably the most common response is “to see how well the students have learned the material.”  In this sense, an assessment can be a measuring tool. Assessments used to gauge students’ overall learning of the material are referred to as summative assessments.  However, assessments can also be used as tools to help students in the process of learning, and are then referred to as formative assessments.

Formative assessments should be opportunities for students to work with the material in a low-stakes environment, where doing poorly is a chance to learn, rather than receive a bad grade.  The idea is that students can make mistakes and get feedback as part of the learning process.

When using both formative and summative assessments in your courses:

• Formative assessments should be low-stakes, and summative assessments should be high-stakes.  Reflect this in the grading for the course: formative assessments should count much less than summative assessments.  It’s tempting to have them not even count toward course grades, but even that little bit of credit should work to motivate students to complete them.
• Align formative assessments with summative assessments so that the formative assessments also prepare the students for specific summative assessments.  For example, students might write a draft of a paper or a report proposal for a formative assessment, and then write the full paper or report as a summative assessment.
• When scheduling your assessments, leave enough time for you to give feedback to students. Your feedback is an essential part of formative assessment.  For example, if they’re writing a draft of a paper or report proposal, they’ll need to have your feedback in time to do a good job on the corresponding summative assessment.

Because formative assessments shouldn’t count much toward students’ grades, and require a quick response from you, it’s best to have them be relatively short.  But that smaller amount of time students will spend can make a big difference in their learning!  Here are some possible examples of formative assessments:

• Add Edpuzzle questions to a YouTube video
• Create an assignment in Moodle where the students only need to submit a few sentences.  (Use the “Online text” option so you can see all the students’ responses on one page and grade them all at once to save time.)
• Have all the students find examples online of a particular concept and post them to a shared class Padlet.  (As a summative assessment, maybe have them analyze the entire collection!)