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Assessment is one of the most influential factors in promoting learning. Assessment motivates students to do the work, steers their approach to the material, and informs teachers about the impact of their teaching strategies on student learning. |
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Purposes of Assessment
An assessment will typically fulfill one of two general purposes.
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The following table further highlights the differences between formative and summative assessment.
Factors for Comparison | Formative Assessment | Summative Assessment |
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Purpose | To elicit evidence of learning to gauge and improve the quality of student learning prior to major assessments | To provide evidence for evaluating or grading students |
Characteristics |
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Examples |
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Assessment is a form of teaching. Sometimes, formative assessment is integrated within a learning activity; the activity builds student and faculty insight into learning and teaching. For example, student participation in group discussion provides them an opportunity to process concepts more deeply (a learning activity), while generating observations that allow instructors to assess the degree to which students know or are able to do a given learning task, and identify the part students do not know or able to do for future teaching and learning (an assessment activity).
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After you determine the purpose of the assessment (formative or summative), you will want to decide which type of assessment will provide you with the information you want about student achievement. Richard Stiggins (2013) offers a simple framework for thinking about four main assessment options, as outlined in the table below.
Factors for Comparison | Selected Response | Written Response | Performance Assessment | Personal Communication |
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Description | Students choose one or more answers from a limited set of pre-written answers (e.g., multiple-choice, multiple answer, true-false, and matching questions). | Students provide written answers to one or more questions or writing prompts. | Instructors observe and assess student performance of skills or assess student-created products. | Direct communication with and between students, either in person or through technologies. |
Online Tools | Online learning management systems (such as Canvas) include tools for incorporating selected-response questions into tests with automatic grading/feedback. | Online learning management systems usually support short-answer, fill-in-the-blank, and essay questions on tests. Specific writing tools include discussion boards, blogs, learning journals, wikis, and a wide assortment of word-processing programs (like Google Documents). | Online learning management systems often include tools for creating and sharing performance evaluation rubrics. Supporting tools include those for creating group projects (such as wikis and web conferencing for group collaboration), tools for student portfolios (including web-building sites, pictures, audio recordings, videos, and screen capture/recording technologies. | Discussion boards, web conferencing such as Zoom and Google Hangout Meet, blogs; phone calls, email, text messages, social networking tools, and audio/video recordings can also apply. |
Advantages | Excellent for measuring mastery of objective content knowledge and reasoning skills (cognitive domain). Easy to grade. Provides immediate feedback to students. | Promotes deep learning of content. Easy and quick to develop. Can be used to measure a wide range of thinking skills (cognitive domain). | Best way to provide relevant, authentic, direct assessment of skills or products created while using skills (psychomotor domain). Can provide both immediate and delayed feedback to students. | Excellent method for assessing student attitudes, feelings, or dispositions (affective domain). Useful for open-ended questions and uncovering issues that are impeding the learning process. Can ask probing questions to reveal details about student knowledge mastery that cannot be achieved through any other means. Powerful way to promote positive student-student and student-teacher relationships (which significantly increases learning). Very good for providing immediate, corrective feedback. |
Disadvantages | Takes time to develop for the first time, or to cull out publisher’s test bank questions that do not appropriately measure learning in your given course. Limited usefulness in assessing performance skills, subjective responses, or ability to create products. | Takes time to grade. Delayed feedback on graded assignments may discourage or frustrate students. Students may ignore feedback if they cannot revise and resubmit for a grade. | Takes time to perform assessments and assign grades. Delayed feedback on product assessments may discourage or frustrate students. | Time consuming. May be difficult to grade uniformly, since probing questions may vary considerably depending on student responses. |
Incorporating a variety of assessment methods when designing a course is a “best practice” for several reasons. First, coming at assessment from multiple perspectives helps to ensure a more accurate, fair sampling of student performance. Second, multiple assessment methods can provide a good mix of immediate and delayed feedback to students. Finally, students have the opportunity to repeatedly recall and apply what they have learned in different ways, which promotes long-term retention of knowledge and skills.
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