Formative Evaluations: Home

"Formative Evaluations are evaluations FOR learning. They are often ungraded and informal. Their aim is to provide both the students and instructor with a gauge of where their level of understanding is at the current moment, and enable the instructor to adjust accordingly to meet the emerging needs of the class. Do I need to re-explain that concept differently? Do I need to backtrack two steps and catch everyone up to where we are now? Do I need to change my pedagogical approach to engage this group of students?"

"The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback...'

"The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark."

"Formative evaluation includes any form of classroom interaction that generates information on student learning, which is then used by faculty and students to fine-tune their teaching and learning strategies, respectively, during the teaching-learning process."

"Heritage further categorizes formative assessments into three types that all contribute to the learning cycle:
'on-the-fly' (those that happen during a lesson),
'planned-for-interaction' (those decided before instruction), and
'curriculum-embedded' (embedded in the curriculum and used to gather data at significant points during the learning process)"