Formative Assessment

Instructors use formative assessment all the time – it can be as simple as asking a question of the class to gauge their level of understanding. Formative assessment helps determine which students are learning various aspects of the course content and how well. It can be used continuously throughout a lesson to check in on student understanding.

Following are examples of formative assessment techniques:

having students complete an exit ticket with a question about the day’s topic
holding up a certain number of fingers indicating how well they understand the topic
using a polling system either in a face-to-face class or in the learning management system

These types of assessments are are generally ungraded, and help the instructor determine if additional content or scaffolding needs to be delivered, while there’s still time to help the students cement their learning prior to a high stakes assessment.

table showing differences between summative and formative assessment

Benefits of formative assessment

When used to determine adjustments that can be made to instruction to improve student learning, there are several benefits to instructors and students.

Instructors:

Learn who is struggling and where, so intervention can be provided
Make changes in instruction before it is too late (i.e. a test or paper has already been assigned and completed)

Students:

Know when they are learning and when they are struggling.
Reflect on their efforts and make changes prior to the summative assessment

An example of formative assessment – minute paper

A simple example of a formative assessment technique is a “minute paper” (or “virtual exit ticket”). This technique helps the instructor get a “barometer” on what effect their actions/methods have on the class and on the individual learners. It gives the instructor a good sense of what may need “tweaking” or re-working for the next class session, to improve student learning, retention, or engagement.

Determine in advance a prompt, representing what information is to be gathered from the students. Examples might include:

Today was hard because…
What do you understand well?
What do you still have questions on?
How does this build on something you learned earlier in class?

The instructor then decides when to administer the assessment. Administer the assessment at the end of class if it relates to the day’s lecture. If the prompt relates to the previous day’s homework, the assessment could be administered at the beginning of class.

In a face-to-face class, students could write a response to the prompt and turn them in on the way out the door. And for an online class, the students could be instructed to post their paper as a submission.

Later, the instructor quickly reviews the responses, making a tally of common questions. The next day, the instructor shares back with the class (or posts an announcement in the LMS) summarizing the questions, and reviewing or applying additional scaffolding. This is important since sharing what the instructor learned by administering the minute paper closes the loop on instruction, and connects learning to teaching.

Links to other formative assessment techniques are provided at the bottom of the page.