What are formative and summative assessments?
As per wikipedia – Formative assessment or diagnostic testing is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures employed by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment.[1] It typically involves qualitative feedback (rather than scores) for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance.[2
A summative assessment, seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability. I have also uncovered a hugely useful quote by Paul Black which says that ‘When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment; when the customer tastes the soup, thats summative assessment.’ See slides below for more of a helpful discussion of formative and summative assessment.
What sorts of educational technology tools and processes can help to engage students in formative and summative assessments?
-Clickers can get participation, peer learning and feedback
The introduction of student response systems to the classroom offers a method of engaging students and developing formative and summative assessments, which can increase student accountability and learning while improving attendance. Schools can use clickers to generate participation, interactive peer learning, and instant feedback
– Moodle can help engage through peer and self assessment
The workshop module is a peer and self assessment activity and encourages students in their role and contribution of group work. It also gives more relevant feedback because it is generated by their peers in a language that they understand and students are aware that their contribution is graded by their peers and so this makes them want to work harder. This is based on research from the University of New South Wales. For more guidance please go to the edtechhelp site
here. There is also a helpful video on iteachwithmoodle.Please see below.
There are many other tools in Moodle that can further help develop both formative and summative assessments, many of which i have covered in previous posts. Other examples would be to use
quizzes.
multiple choice assessments,
forums etc.
Recording lectures can help students with revision.
Lecture capture facilitates students using their preferred learning style, whether that is visual or textual (following the slides) or auditory (listening to the lecturer). For more detailed guidance please visit our
edtechhelp site. For a more detailed blog posting which demonstrates the use of lecture capture see my previous
posts.
Grading Assignments using Turnitin
With GradeMark® a lecturer is able to edit and grade student papers online. The lecture can add comments within the body of the paper, point out grammar and punctuation mistakes, evaluate the paper against qualitative or quantitative rubrics, assess the student’s performance within the class and enter a grade for the paper that is automatically saved into GradeBook (optional). For guidance on how to grade turnitin assignments please click here.
