Ep. 009: Formative Assessment
Formative assessments can sound like a formidable undertaking. But they don’t have to be.
Dr. Julie-Ann McFann, CTLT’s Program Team Lead, shows us how little, frequent “check-ins” can help us know if our students are really getting it. She helps us wrap our brains around the differences between formative and summative assessments and the differences between assessing and grading. We’ll also explore how using formative assessments might assuage your students’ constant craving for study guides.
Listen to this episode
Show Notes
Some additional resources:
- Assessment is used to determine what a student knows or can do (impacts advancement, placement or grades).
- Grades provide information to the student, and others, regarding your professional opinion of the potential of the student as to the content and skills being studied. They are an accepted level or standard conveyed via number, letter, or symbol indicating a student’s level of accomplishment.
- Formative Assessment: Provides feedback to students and instructor on how well students are learning course material (students are still “forming their learning”)
- Summative Assessment: Provides a final judgment on how well students have learned course material (students are “summarizing their learning”)
- Just-in-Time Teaching: An Interactive Engagement Pedagogy - Gregor Novak is a JiTT guru. This is a blog posting on EduTopia that describes JiTT in easy-to-understand language.
- Ask the CTLT Staff: What Are Those Students Thinking? - One of our former colleagues provides a nice summary of “minute papers.”
- Seven Principles of Good Feedback
Books:
Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Barkley, E. F., & Major, C. H. (2016). Learning assessment techniques: A handbook for college faculty. Jossey-Bass.
Davis, B. G. (2009). Informally assessing students’ learning. In Tools for Teaching (2nd ed., pp. 290–297). Jossey-Bass.
A captioned version of this episode is available through this YouTube playlist.
Download a transcript of this episode in Adobe PDF format.