Formative Assessment: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. --Wikipedia | Summative Assessment:Summative assessment (or summative evaluation) refers to the assessment of participants, and summarizes their development at a particular time. In contrast to formative assessment, the focus is on the outcome of a program. --Wikipedia |
So what are they really?There are some debates out there on what formative and summative assessments are and you will find many different explanations out there trying to describe the two. I will be sharing with you my understanding of the two types of assessments and what they mean for instructional design. I have also posted some links to sites that I found to be particularly helpful in my journey of understanding formative and summative assessments. I really liked how the Education Reform site explained the differences between the two assessment types; they state that formative assessments are said to be for learning whereas summative assessments are of learning. So in summative you are evaluating student learning to ensure that the student is properly comprehending and retaining the materials and the assessment typically takes place at the completion of a project. With formative the instructor is assessing the actual instruction and using the results of those assessments to determine where to make improvements in the training/learning content. The Education Reform site explained it one other way that I found rather insightful, "Or as assessment expert Paul Black put it, "When the cook tastes the soup, that's formative assessment. When the customer tastes the soup, that's summative assessment." Some of the more commonly known type of summative assessments are:
Formative assessments not only help the instructor improve their training materials as they are teaching, it helps the student get a better handle on what they are struggling with as a student and could help provide some guidance as to where they need to improve as a student. Formative assessments don't always have to be for a grade, some formative assessments are meant to help the student refocus their learning strategies, so they are not just for the instructor. Some of the more commonly known types of formative assessments are:
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