Introduction
Educators must ensure that they have a good measuring scale to assess the level of students’ understanding.
Formative assessment is often used progressively in monitoring if the students understand continuously (Renard, 2017).
Summative assessment is like a summary at the end of teaching a topic, class, or completing a syllabus to gain insight into the overall understanding compared to a benchmark.
Relevance of Proper Application of Formative and Summative Assessment
Both assessment strategies are essential in decision-making and guiding the teaching practice (Nichols & Varier, 2021).
It is the obligation of the teachers to know how to collect and correctly utilize the evidence of student learning from the formative and summative assessments.
The formative assessment helps teachers identify gaps so that they can make improvements in targeted areas.
The summative assessment primarily gathers evidence that students have gained the intended skills and knowledge from their cumulative lessons.
The formative assessment is also useful in enhancing the learning experience of the pupils.
Conversely, summative assessments are specifically intended to evaluate the achievement of the students.
Differences in Typologies of Summative and formative Assessment
Examples of Formative:
- Ongoing discussions in class (Houston & Thompson, 2017)
- Clicker questions
- Small, less intense group work
- Weekly, continuous assessment tests (quizzes)
- Short reflection assignments
- Take home assignments
- Ongoing surveys
Examples of summative:
- Exams created by the teacher
- Standardized tests
- Final projects
- Final Essays
- Final presentations
- Final reports
- Overall grade
Differences Between the Formative and Summative Assessment
Summative:
- Characterized as assessment of learning aims to conclude the achievement of a student through benchmarks and learning standards.
- Helps in measuring the success of the training by providing the value or worth of the intervention.
- Useful in knowing if learners understood the concepts and certified their achievement
- Mainly provide the academic records of the students, such as grades for college admission or the report cards.
Formative:
- Characterized as assessment for learning, the educators watch for signs of understanding on an ongoing basis.
- Helps teachers to modify strategy and readjust teaching to suit the needs of the student.
- Students can also change their behavior after being given feedback from continuous evaluation.
- It works as a self-evaluation tool for learners and may reinforce the high achievers
Recommendation for Using Formative and Summative Assessment
The teacher should clarify the goals of learning for the students at the beginning of the training
Provide students with access to some of the formative self-assessment tools to help them with revisions
Offer detailed feedback after every formative assessment to help in strategizing learning experience.
Educators should also be available for dialogue and to encourage students through their learning process.
References
Houston, D., & Thompson, J. N. (2017). Blending formative and summative assessment in a capstone subject: ‘It’s not your tools, it’s how you use them’. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 14(3), 5-18. Web.
Nichols, S. L., & Varier, D. (2021). Teaching on assessment. Information Age Publishing Inc.
Renard, L. (2017). The differences between formative and summative assessment – Infographic. BookWidgets Blog. Web.