formative coursework

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Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what is the difference between formative and summative assessment, formative assessment.

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative assessments are generally low stakes , which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

• draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
• turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative assessment

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.

Summative assessments are often high stakes , which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a senior recital

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

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Formative Assessment and Feedback

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Formative assessments are usually meant to measure learning in order to provide feedback. This kind of formative feedback is given throughout the duration of the course and is given in a spirit of growth and improvement. It helps students see how well they are understanding and communicating course concepts, what they might be missing, and how they can improve and deepen their learning. It is a crucial part of the learning process.

Benefits of formative feedback

Formative feedback helps students recognize gaps in their knowledge, areas to improve, what support resources they may need, and learning strategies they might change or adapt to meet the course outcomes. Without formative feedback, students may not be aware of their own misunderstandings. This can later lead to confusion and cause students to lose motivation.

Examples of formative feedback 

Synchronous in-person feedback from the instructor.

Providing verbal feedback directly to a student in person or in a Zoom web conference allows you to have a conversation where you can ask and answer questions. This can make it easier to identify misunderstandings, provide motivational support, or demonstrate a strategy or content. 

However, this kind of feedback can be time-consuming, especially if it is provided individually. Moreover, some students may feel intimidated by receiving feedback in such a way. Consider combining a variety of methods for giving formative feedback that fits the needs of your students, teaching situation, and content.

Written notes from the instructor

Give students some written feedback on smaller assignments. This can be valuable, especially in environments where opportunities for informal in-person feedback are less frequent.

To avoid spending too much time responding to every minor assignment, consider creating a spreadsheet or grid with your student's names, and keeping track of when you give certain students feedback on smaller assignments. This way you can distribute feedback equitably, ensuring that all students at some point in the quarter receive some feedback on a minor assignment before receiving a grade or final feedback on a larger assignment.

• Tools like  Canvas SpeedGrader  and  Gradescope  can make giving feedback much more efficient.
• With a tablet and stylus from the iPads for Teaching program , you can also digitally annotate submitted assignments with handwritten feedback.

Audio-based memos from the instructor

Recording an audio message can be a great way to communicate feedback you might have otherwise given in person. It can also be motivating to students to hear your voice and receive feedback in a way that might feel more informal. Be prepared to be flexible if some students need written text instead of audio.

• Canvas SpeedGrader  allows instructors to record audio comments when grading assignments
• Canvas Discussions  forums also are able to record audio comments

Video feedback from the instructor

When giving feedback on a student project or assignment heavy in visuals, it might be helpful to create video feedback of you interacting with their work. This kind of feedback can include audio feedback, a screen recording, and a camera recording of the instructor.

Showing your students what you're seeing and noticing about their work can be extremely powerful. Do keep accessibility concerns in mind if you choose to leave feedback in this way, noting when students might not be able to access or engage with visuals.

• Create a video recording in Zoom  to easily provide this kind of feedback to students.

Peer feedback among students

In situations where students have relevant expertise or experience, formative feedback from student peers can be valuable. Consider how you can provide an easy way for students to provide each other with feedback. For example, you might instruct students to upload their work as a shared Google Document that team members can comment on or facilitate a small group feedback activity during a class meeting. For aggregated feedback, you might use a poll or survey with a tool such as Poll Everywhere to gather feedback from a large group.

It is first important to provide clear instructions and model what kind of feedback is most helpful. Encourage students to be specific and identify discrete components of the work being commented on. Feedback ideally offers an actionable solution or suggestion to improve, leaving the person receiving feedback with a clear idea of what steps to take. Good feedback should also be kind and supportive of the individual and their improvement.

• Teaching Tips

20 Formative Assessment Examples To Use In Your College Classroom

Informal assessments are an easy way to stay connected with your students and understand their progress in your course

Top Hat Staff

Formative assessments are where students are quizzed periodically throughout a learning unit. Unlike traditional assessments, these insights provide you with regular and reliable feedback on student progress. Whether it’s polls , discussions , debates or reflections, frequent, low-stakes assessments let students apply what they have learned thus far. At a time when students place increased value on frequent feedback from their educators, facilitating regular assessments is essential. Below, we share:

• What formative assessments are
• What the differences are between formative and summative assessments
• How to engage students with formative and summative assessments
• The tools you’ll need to run formative assessments
• The benefits of formative assessments

20 formative assessment examples for any course or discipline

What are formative assessments.

Formative assessments involve monitoring student progress regularly throughout a course so that educators can better gauge students’ learning gaps and address those early on. Basic formative assessment strategies may include concept maps, responses posted to a discussion board and an ungraded quiz or poll.

Watch the video below to learn how formative assessments in the classroom can benefit both educators and students. You’ll also get assessment ideas that Leslie Sprunger, Associate Dean for Professional Programs in the Faculty of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience at Washington State University, uses in her own courses.

How to engage students with formative assessments

Well-designed assessments encourage students to prioritize intellectual growth, while equipping them with marketable skills for their future careers. There are three main types of assessments instructors can incorporate into their higher educations courses.

• Assessments as learning opportunities: The best assessments are educational opportunities in which students can practice different methods of synthesizing, analyzing, and communicating what they have learned. There are many ways students can demonstrate mastery of the course content that go beyond traditional papers, quizzes and examinations. Giving students choice in how they express their knowledge, such as unessays, short films, collaborative blogs and field work also enables students to build their personal portfolios and resumes.
• Assessments that are self-reflective: Rather than objective assessments, instructors can create opportunities for students to reflect on their own progress. Consider asking students to students keep a journal throughout the class is a great way to create a record of their semester-long evolution. You can also ask students to evaluate their own work, as well as their peers. This way, instructors empower students to take ownership of the assessment process.
• Assessments that happen over time: One popular method is incorporating “scaffolding” into assessments. Instead of a paper worth a large proportion of the final grade, students submit several smaller assignments throughout the course of writing their paper, each worth a fraction of the overall grade and building towards the final product. For instance, they might first submit a topic and thesis statement, followed by their outline, then a rough draft, and then the final paper. This method provides students with feedback at various points, prioritizes the process of writing, and lowers the stakes for each graded piece of work.

Formative vs. summative assessment: The difference

Formative and summative assessments can easily be confused.  Summative assessment remains an essential part of every single college course being offered today. Despite its widespread use, however, an over-reliance upon it can turn the benefits into drawbacks:

• Every summative assessment is a high-pressure situation for students.
• Poor performance on an early assessment only increases the pressure on subsequent assessments. If a student earned a C on the midterm, they’ll feel the need to ace the final just to end up with a B.
• Poor performance on an early assessment undermines students’ confidence in their ability to perform better in the latter stages of the course. This creates an incentive to cheat: if they need to ace the final, they’ll find a way.

The best way to design any summative assessment is to make it an integral part of course planning.

Formative vs summative assessment: A structured approach

While formative assessment can take place informally through classroom discussion, it also benefits from a planned approach to its use. The challenge, for educators, is to strike the right balance between checking in on the progress of student learning and putting that learning to the test.

Choosing between formative and summative assessment for a particular course isn’t an either-or proposition. Formative assessment can’t substitute for traditional summative assessment, since exams and assignments remain essential as the best way to definitively measure student proficiency and assign a grade.

Some faculty who have embraced formative assessment choose to make the final exam worth 100 percent of their students’ grades, conducting formative evaluations throughout the semester to the point where come exam day, they and their students are confident of success. This formula probably wouldn’t work for every professor or every course, but it is a testament to the effectiveness of formative assessment, and to the value of making thoughtful use of both assessment types in every course you teach.

We share the key differences between formative and summative assessments in the table below.

Tools you can use to run formative assessments

Depending on what type of assessment you’re looking to run—whether a quiz or group discussion—the technology required will vary. Different disciplines, such as STEM or Humanities courses, may also require different formative assessment tools in order to run simulations or lab activities. 

That said, plenty of the 20 formative assessment strategies we share later in this post can also be facilitated with pen and paper or simple tech tools. If you’re looking to use ed tech to run your formative assessments, here are some platforms you may want to consider.

• Quizzes : Kahoot! , Quizlet , Socrative , Top Hat
• Video-based assessment : Animoto , Flipgrid , PlayPosit
• Discussions : Backchannel Chat , Discord , Top Hat (with anonymous discussion capabilities)
• Whiteboard or note taking tools : Dotstorming , Padlet , Limnu  
• Tools for STEM classes : BeyondLabz , Labster , Top Hat Labs
• Tools for Humanities classes : Annotation Studio , Audacity , Canva , Top Hat

Assessing course-related skills and knowledge

These formative assessment examples help evaluate learning of a given subject’s content by assessing student understanding and information recall from previous courses. Assessing this knowledge is especially important for instructors at the beginning of the term, in order to provide a clearer understanding of how to proceed with course material.

1. Exit tickets/exit slips:

Rather than a formal assessment, students use exit tickets to answer one or more assessment questions at the end of a class period or online course module to demonstrate how well they’ve absorbed that particular lesson. Each question should focus on a single concept or skill taught in that lesson. Download your free exit ticket formative assessment template for your next course.

2. One-minute paper:

In this informal assessment example, students are prompted to write a short response answering two questions related to a given week’s course content. Responses to one-minute papers can also be posted in online discussion forums to spur conversation between students. Questions can be as simple as: What was the most valuable, important or useful thing you learned in the lesson? What key questions, problems or issues remain unresolved?

Are you looking to further assess students in and out of your classroom? Top Hat’s formative assessment capabilities can help. Facilitate the one-minute paper exercise in-app using an interactive discussion board. Platforms like Kahoot! and Socrative can also be used for running polls and discussions as a quick formative assessment example.

Developing critical thinking and analysis skills

Consider structuring formative assessment examples around the development of higher-order thinking skills that rely on metacognition. Various modes of analysis, including the ability to break down information, problems and questions help develop students’ critical thinking skills. Students who think critically become instinctual problem solvers in class, engineering creative solutions to solve complex real-world case studies.

3. Think-pair-share :

Students work together in pairs or small groups to answer a question or solve a problem related to an assigned reading. These groups can use dedicated chat channels built into active learning platforms to communicate and discuss their ideas. First, the instructor asks an assessment question regarding the text for students to think about. Next, students pair up with one or more fellow students to discuss the question and their thoughts on the possible answers. Finally, each pair or group shares their conclusions with the rest of the class.

4. Defining features matrix:

Students categorize concepts based on whether or not they contain certain defining features. This is particularly useful for assessing how fully students understand certain factors distinguishing various concepts from one another and how well they can analyze whether a particular concept fits a certain category.

5. Socratic seminar:

Students help one another apply the ideas, issues and values reflected in a course text through a group discussion. Ask students to annotate the text in advance of class in order to familiarize themselves with the key themes and ideas discussed. Pose a general question and encourage students to share their responses with the group. Another student then responds to the last thought that was shared.

Encouraging students to think creatively

Quick formative assessments can involve creative expression. The following examples of formative assessments are used to understand student abilities when synthesizing information. By instructing students to express themselves creatively, students have the opportunity to think outside the box.

6. Word journal:

This assessment is conducted in two parts. In the first part, the student summarizes an entire lesson in a single word. In the second part, the student composes a short statement of one or two paragraphs explaining why they chose that particular word to summarize the lesson. These can then be submitted to the instructor for feedback directly through content delivery platforms or your learning management system (LMS).

7. Invented dialogue:

This strategy is particularly useful for demonstrating how well students have synthesized various historical or literary personalities, settings or themes. In this assessment, students compose a fictional dialogue between two real or fictitious personalities that demonstrate the students’ understanding of the topic. Teachers can opt to instruct students to incorporate actual quotes from primary sources into the dialogue or to simply invent plausible quotes of their own based on their comprehension of the content.

Enhancing problem-solving skills

These formative assessment examples assess students’ problem-solving abilities, including their ability to recognize the various types of problems and any causes and appropriate techniques to solve them. Learners can also use the time to draw similarities between various features of different problems, reflect upon them and adjust strategies for solving them accordingly. They are an important component for every educator to have on their formative assessment checklist.

8. Documented problem solutions:

Similar to a show-and-tell exercise or a how-to article, students write down each step they went through in solving a particular problem. This helps instructors understand how a student goes about thinking through problems and may highlight student obstacles when efficiently solving different types of problems. A variation of this is to document the student’s problem-solving process through an audio-video recording of the student demonstrating their process.

9. Problem-and-solution type recognition:

Effectively solving any problem requires the ability to identify the type of problem and, subsequently, the most appropriate methods of solving it. Students are given a problem and must identify its type, such as routine or non-routine, well-defined or ill-defined, and the most likely type of solution to apply to it, such as algorithm, heuristics or trial and error. Students can answer these problems through a short-answer question and the results can be shown to the class using a word cloud display.

Assessing student performance and application abilities

These formative assessment examples assess students’ understanding of how to apply the knowledge they’ve learned to specific situations. These informal assessment examples can stand alone as “temperature checks” or can be a part of a longer assessment, such as a scheduled test or quiz .

10. Directed paraphrasing:

Students take a lesson and paraphrase it with a particular audience in mind. This not only helps to assess a student’s understanding of the topic, it also helps to assess their ability to reframe it in a way that people in a different context and setting can likewise understand and apply it.

11. Student-generated test questions:

As a form of role-reversal, students devise test questions and sample appropriate answers that demonstrate their ability to comprehend concepts that underlie assigned readings. Rather than simply requiring students to recall what they’ve read, it asks them to hone in on the key elements that would indicate to them another person’s full comprehension of the concepts.

Understanding student self-awareness, attitudes and values

These formative assessment examples engage students and motivate them to develop their own attitudes, values, opinions and self-awareness through course-related activities. The three quick formative assessments below can be used as an exercise to generate discussion amongst students and ensure learning continues once class is over.

12. Opinion polls:

Students indicate how much they agree or disagree with a particular prompt or statement. This assessment data can help educators see how comfortable students are with regard to key objectives of learning activities and with specific course content in particular.

13. Profiles of admirable individuals:

This assessment in the classroom involves asking students to write a brief biography of a real person involved in a relevant field that highlights the admirable characteristics making them a role model. Instructors can use polling features for students to vote on which expert in the field they would like to research.

14. Everyday ethical dilemma: Students answer how they would go about solving a common everyday ethical dilemma related to the course or their discipline.

Activities that help develop individual awareness of self as a learner

These formative assessment examples help students clarify and express their self-concept and personal goals in ways that connect to the course content.

15. Focused autobiographical sketch:

Students write a brief memoir-style essay describing a moment or episode of their lives during the course in which they felt like they successfully reached a learning outcome.

16. Goal-ranking:

Students list three to five goals of their own that serve as their learning goals of the course, then rank them in order of priority. At the end of the course, instructors can go back to this exercise and have students evaluate their rankings and/or assess how well they did achieving each goal they set. Using Top Hat’s heat map question functionality, instructors can show how the class performed as a group.

Understanding student learning behaviors, strategies and skills

These formative assessment examples help instructors assess students’ learning habits. They can help create a more tailored learning experience.

17. Productive study-time log:

Students keep a log of all the time they spent learning and studying for a given course and, alongside each entry, the quality of that time. This acts as a form of self-assessment because it helps both students and educators see how effectively students are making use of their study time.

18. Punctuated lectures:

After listening to a lecture, students reflect (in writing) on how well they were concentrating on the material and, by contrast, how often they became distracted. They may also note how they brought their attention back to the material, if at all, so they can arm themselves with these tools in future lectures. They can even add how the lecture met their expectations and how they connected the lecture to knowledge they already possess. This can be submitted through the class’s live chat while lectures are occurring, so students are able to view their peers’ thoughts and opinions.

Assessing student reactions to learning

These formative assessment examples help instructors assess how well students can identify the key points and learning outcomes of a given lesson. These formative assessment ideas will let students thoughtfully reflect on a given reading or artifact.

19. Feedback forms:

There are several ways to solicit weekly feedback from students after a lesson. Educators can pose a series of questions, or even a single question, about the lesson’s effectiveness. These can be multiple-choice, true/false, yes/no or open-ended questions.

Students compose a brief statement regarding a particular lesson written in the following format: Recall, Summarize, Question, Connect, Comment. This can also take place in a discussion forum, so students can comment on each other’s questions and ideas.

Formative and Summative Assessments. (n.d.). Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/Formative-Summative-Assessments  

What is the difference between formative and summative assessment? (n.d.). Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

50 CATS by Angelo and Cross. (n.d.). University of California, San Diego. https://vcsa.ucsd.edu/_files/assessment/resources/50_cats.pdf

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Feedback is "information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal." Helpful feedback is always goal-referenced: The performer has a clear goal, and the feedback tells whether he or she is on track or needs to make adjustments. Helpful feedback is also tangible, actionable, user-friendly, timely, ongoing, and consistent (Wiggins, 2012).

While feedback is certainly an important component of an effective summative assessment strategy, feedback and formative assessment are intricately linked. Formative assessment consists of “frequent, ‘low stakes’ opportunities for students to monitor their progress towards learning goals.” As long as students receive timely feedback on their performance, many types of assignments – both in-class and outside assignments – can be considered formative assessments (MIT Teaching + Learning Lab, 2020).  

This guide highlights the close relationship between formative assessment and feedback.

Classroom/Learning Assessment Techniques 

Both Classroom Assessment and Learning Assessment embed assessment within active learning activities

Angelo and Cross (1993) developed fifty Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs), a set of formative techniques that faculty can use to quickly determine if students are mastering the content and if modifications should be made to teaching strategies. These techniques can be implemented in class or online, are usually not graded, and are often anonymous (Angelo & Cross, 1993). The fifty techniques are organized into three major categories: (1) Techniques for Assessing Course-Related Knowledge & Skills; (2) Techniques for Assessing Learner Attitudes, Values, and Self-Awareness; and (3) Techniques for Assessing Learner Reactions to Instruction. (The website provides brief descriptions of the techniques. Refer to Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers by Angelo and Cross for complete descriptions and implementation guidance.) 

More recently, Barkley and Major built on the work of Cross and Angelo with Learning Assessment Techniques (LATs), focused on identifying and communicating clear learning goals; helping students achieve these goals through activities that promote active, engaged learning; and analyzing, reporting, and reflecting upon results in ways that lead to continued improvement. A distinctive feature of Barkley and Major’s work is an emphasis on using LATs for collecting learning outcomes data for institutional assessment and assembling evidence of teaching effectiveness for promotion and tenure review (Barkley and Major, 2016). Fifty LATs are organized around Fink’s (2003) Taxonomy of Significant Learning into six major categories: Foundational Knowledge, Application, Integration, Human Dimension, Caring, Learning How to Learn. See Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty (Barkley and Major) for full descriptions of all fifty LATs and guidelines for implementing them.  

Classroom/Learning Assessment Resources 

Self-Check Assignments 

Pyc, Agarwal & Roediger (2014) noted the value of practice quizzes and tests and self-regulated learning to promote long-term student learning and retention. Self-check quizzes can provide frequent feedback for students while helping to manage the grading and feedback workload for faculty. Self-assessments are a valuable source of formative feedback for faculty, facilitating targeted course revisions.  

• Use a variety of question types, including short answers.  
• Consider allowing students multiple attempts on self-check quizzes.  
• You may or not want to grade self-check quizzes. If you do, consider having the student’s highest grade recorded.  
• By limiting the amount of time students have to take the self-check, students may be less likely to look up answers. Faculty get more accurate information about students’ level of understanding. 
• Provide model answers for short answer-type questions and annotate the answers to point out critical attributes of a correct response. The self-check will be a better learning experience if you explain why particular answers are incorrect and suggest specific follow-up actions that students can take to reinforce their understanding. 
• Many textbook publishers have resources available to support student self-checks, including practice quizzes and flashcards. Check with your publisher rep or visit the textbook publisher’s website for more information. 

Adding feedback in Canvas quizzes  : You can add feedback to any assessment question created with New Quizzes. Students can view your feedback when they view their results after submitting an assessment. In addition to general feedback, students will see all feedback comments relevant to their answer choices. 

You can also add feedback to any answer choice when  creating a Multiple Choice question . 

Note: Because Essay and File Upload question types require manual grading, any feedback responses added to these question types only display after the quiz is graded and scores are posted. 

Peer Assessment

In a meta-analysis of studies that evaluated the impact of peer assessment on academic performance, Double, McGrane, and Hopfenbeck (2019) concluded that the effectiveness of peer assessment was remarkably robust across a wide range of contexts.  

Peer assessment can be formative or summative. Students can give feedback on each other’s drafts before a final product is submitted.  

Peer assessment can be used with written work, presentations, performances, posters, videos, and other types of assignments and as a strategy for students to assess the contributions of peers to group work and assignments (University of British Columbia, n.d.). 

When students evaluate and provide feedback on their peers’ work they can benefit in a number of ways: 

• they receive more frequent and timely feedback than when the instructor is the only one providing it, 
• they get feedback on drafts and are able to make improvements, and 
• they engage in the critical analysis and reflection associated with assessing the work of their peers (University of British Columbia, n.d.).  

Peer Assessment Resources  

References 

Angelo, T. A. and Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. Second Edition. Jossey-Bass, Inc.  https://unh.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USNH_UNH/121i3ml/alma991000114889705221 

Barkley, E. F., & Major, C. H. (2016). Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. https://unh.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USNH_UNH/121i3ml/alma99…

Double, K.S., McGrane, J.A. & Hopfenbeck, T.N.. (2019). The Impact of Peer Assessment on Academic Performance: A Meta-analysis of Control Group Studies. Educational Psychology Review, 32(2), 481–509  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-019-09510-3  

Fink, D. L. (2003). A self-directed guide to designing courses for significant learning. Retrieved from  https://www.deefinkandassociates.com/GuidetoCourseDesignAug05.pdf 

MIT Teaching + Learning Lab. (2020). Assess for Learning. Retrieved from https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/assess-learning/how-to-assess-for-learning/ 

Pyc, M.A., Agarwal, P.K. & Roediger, H.R. III. (2014). Test-enhanced Learning In V. A. Benassi, C. E. Overson, & C. M. Hakala (Eds.). Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology website: http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/asle2014/index.php 

University of British Columbia. (n.d.). Ideas and Strategies for Peer Assessments. Retrieved from https://isit.arts.ubc.ca/ideas-and-strategies-for-peer-assessments/ 

Wiggins, G. (2012) Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Educational Leadership 70(1),10-16. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx 

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Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence

Formative assessments.

Nicole Messier, CATE Instructional Designer February 4th, 2022

WHAT? Heading link Copy link

Formative assessments occur before, during, and after a class session and data collected is used to inform improvements to teaching practices and/or student learning and engagement.

• Formative assessments are beneficial to instructors by helping them to understand students’ prior knowledge and skills, students’ current level of engagement with the course materials, and how to support students in their progression to achieve the learning objectives.
• Formative assessments are beneficial to students by providing them with immediate feedback on their learning as well as opportunities to practice metacognition, which is an awareness of one’s own knowledge and thinking processes as well as an ability to self-monitor one’s learning path (e.g., self-assessment of learning) and adapt or make changes to one’s learning behaviors (e.g., goal setting).

Formative assessments can be viewed through two broad assessment strategies: assessments for learning and assessments as learning.

• Assessment for learning (AfL) provides the instructor an opportunity to adapt their teaching practices to support current students’ needs through the collection of data as well as provide practice, feedback, and interaction with the students.
• Assessment as learning (AaL) provides student ownership of learning by utilizing evidence-based learning strategies, promoting self-regulation, and providing opportunities for reflective learning.

Want to learn more about these assessment strategies? Please visit the Resources Section – CATE website to review resources, teaching guides, and more.

Non-Graded Formative Assessments (AfL & AaL) Heading link Copy link

Non-graded formative assessments (afl & aal).

Non-graded formative assessments can be used to examine current students’ learning and provide an opportunity for students to self-check their learning.

• Before class, questions can provide students with an opportunity to self-assess their learning as well as provide instructors with information for adapting their instruction.
• During class, questions can provide a platform for discussion, interaction, and feedback.
• After class, questions can provide students with opportunities to reflect, self-assess, and use retrieval practice .
• Questions to gauge understanding of content in the video.
• Think-pair-share – asking students to turn to their neighbor in class or small breakout groups in an online discussion and share their thoughts, ideas, or answers to a topic or question.
• Muddiest point – asking students to identify a topic or theme that is unclear, or that they do not have confidence in their knowledge yet.
• Three-minute reflection – asking students to pause and reflect on what they have learned during class (e.g., shared in a survey tool like Google Form , or in a discussion tool like Acadly ).
• Asynchronous online sharing and brainstorming using Blackboard discussion boards or EdTech tools like Jamboard or Padlet.

Polling and video questions can be designed as assessment for learning (AfL) by gathering data for instructors to adapt their lectures and learning activities to meet students where they are or to provide opportunities for students to reflect on their learning. In-class activities such as think-pair-share and muddiest point or asynchronous sharing can be designed as assessment as learning (AaL) by providing opportunities for students to self-assess their learning and progress.

Example 1 - Polling Questions Heading link Copy link

Example 1 - polling questions.

An instructor wants to determine if students understand what is being discussed during the lecture and decides to create an opportunity for students to reflect and self-assess. The instructor designs a Likert scale poll where students are asked to rank their understanding of concepts from 1 – extremely muddy (no understanding of the concept) to 5 – ready to move on (a clear understanding of the concept). Based on student responses the instructor decides to revisit a muddy concept in the next class as well as provides additional resources via the course site on the concept to support student learning.

The instructor also encourages students to revisit concepts that they scored a three or lower on and write down questions about the concepts to share before the next class. The instructor decides to continue using the poll and the collection of questions on important concepts in the upcoming units. The instructor will utilize these questions throughout the term to support student learning.

This formative assessment example demonstrates assessment for learning (Afl) and assessment as learning (AaL) by collecting data to adapt instruction as well as provide students with the opportunity to self-assess.

Polling questions can also be used to verify that pre-class work was completed, as a knowledge check while taking attendance, as a quick confirmation of understanding while lecturing, or as an exit poll before leaving class (on-campus or synchronous online).

Non-graded formative assessments can be adapted to provide extrinsic motivation by awarding students credit if they achieve a certain percentage of correct answers (e.g., students complete at least 70% of the questions correctly to receive full credit). This type of extrinsic motivation shifts the focus from the students’ ability to answer the questions correctly to promoting self-assessment, practice, and goal setting.

Graded Formative Assessments (AfL & AaL) Heading link Copy link

Graded formative assessments (afl & aal).

Just like non-graded formative assessments, graded formative assessments can be used to examine current students’ learning and provide an opportunity for students to gauge their learning. Graded formative assessments should provide students with opportunities to practice skills, apply knowledge, and self-assess their learning.

• One-minute essay – asking students to write down their thoughts on a topic at the end of a lecture.
• Concept map – asking students to create a diagram showing relationships between concepts.
• Authentic assessments – an assessment that involves a real-world task or application of knowledge instead of a traditional paper.
• Reflections, journals, self-assessment of previous work
• Discussion forums – academic discussions focused on a topic or question.
• Group work or peer review
•  Video questions using EdTech tools like Panopto or Echo360 .

Formative assessments like in-class work, written assignments, discussion forums, and group work can be graded with a rubric to provide individualized feedback to students. Video questions using EdTech tools like Panopto or Echo360 and quizzes using Blackboard Tests, Pools, and Surveys can be automatically graded with immediate feedback provided to students.

Example 2 - Written Assignment Heading link Copy link

Example 2 - written assignment.

An instructor decides to create four formative written assessments to measure student learning and provide opportunities for students to self-assess and self-regulate their learning. These written assignments are designed to assess each of the learning objectives in the course. Students are required to find new evidence by performing research based on the aligned learning objective(s) in each assignment. In the first written assignment, students are provided with a rubric to self-assess their work and submit their self-assessment and work. The instructor provides personalized feedback using the rubric on their work and self-assessment. In the second and third written assignments, students are asked to submit their work and provide a review of their peers’ work using a rubric. The instructor provides feedback on the peer review only. In the fourth assignment, the students are asked to select one of the previous pieces of work and make revisions as well as write a reflection on the knowledge and skills that were developed by completing a self-assessment and two peer reviews.

This formative assessment example demonstrates the importance of feedback in improving student performance and learning. This example could come from a writing, research, or humanities course where students are expected to produce narrative, argumentative, persuasive, or analytical essays. These written assignments could also be in major coursework and be more authentic (involves a real-world task or application of knowledge instead of a traditional paper), for example, developing a memo, proposal, blog post, presentation, etc. 

Formative assessments are used to provide opportunities for practice, feedback, and interaction ensuring students are active learners, instead of passive recipients of the information. In an active learning environment, student engagement, motivation, and outcomes are improved through the implementation of formative assessments. Students participate in meaningful learning activities and assessments that promote self-regulation, provide practice, and reinforce skills in an active learning environment.

Want to learn more about active learning strategies? Please visit the  Resources Section – CATE website to review resources, teaching guides, and more.

WHY? Heading link Copy link

Why develop formative assessments in your course?

Since the late 90s, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam have been challenging the view that summative assessment is the best way to measure learning and support student success. Black and Wiliam’s research on formative assessment and student achievement started the shift from a summative focus to a more balanced view of assessment for student success.

Studies have shown that students who participate in formative assessments have improved overall performance and higher scores than students who do not participate in the formative assessments (Robertson, 2019) .

Impact on Students Heading link Copy link

Impact on students.

Students who participate in formative assessments develop and improve several essential skills (Koka, 2017) including:

• Communication skills
• Collaboration skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Metacognition
• Self-regulation skills

Student involvement, self-reflection, and open communication between faculty and students during formative assessments are vital to student success (Koka, 2017). Effective formative assessments include (Black, 2009):

• “Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success,
• Engineering effective classroom discussions and other learning tasks that elicit evidence of student understanding,
• Providing feedback that moves students forward,
• Activating students as instructional resources for one another,
• Activating students as the owners of their own learning.”

Use of EdTech Tools Heading link Copy link

Use of edtech tools.

Studies have shown that using EdTech tools for formative assessments improves the immediacy of scores and feedback to students. Student wait time and faculty workload are dramatically reduced by the utilization of EdTech tools (Robertson, 2019). The use of EdTech tools for formative assessments also improves student satisfaction, enjoyment, and engagement (Grier, 2021; Mdlalose, 2021). EdTech tools can be used for synchronous and asynchronous formative assessments; however, synchronous formative assessments can allow the instructor to clarify misconceptions and help foster more engagement during discussions to create a learning community (Mdlalose, 2021).

In a study and literature review by Robertson and Humphrey (2019), they determined elements needed for formative assessment tools to be effective, including timeliness of feedback, elaborative feedback from the instructor, personalized feedback for students, reusability (reusing existing questions or content), accessibility (does the use of the tool exclude some students), interface design (how easy it is to implement), interaction (does it improve the frequency of interactions between student and instructor), and cost (funded by the institution or personal expense). These elements should be taken into consideration as you determine which EdTech tool(s) to use for formative assessments.

Feedback & Formative Assessments Heading link Copy link

Feedback & formative assessments.

A critical component of any formative assessment is the timeliness of feedback. Studies have shown that it is the immediacy of feedback that is most beneficial to student learning (Robertson, 2019) . As you begin to design formative assessments or select an EdTech tool to develop a formative assessment, make sure to determine how you will provide feedback to students.

Reflect on the following questions regarding feedback and formative assessments:

• How will you ensure that feedback to students is timely?
• How will you design multiple opportunities for feedback interactions with you and/or among peers?
• How will you distribute feedback interactions throughout the course?
• How will you provide personalized feedback to students?

Want to learn more about grading and feedback? Please visit the Resources Section – CATE website to review resources, teaching guides, and more.

HOW? Heading link Copy link

How do you start designing formative assessments?

First, you can review your course outcomes and learning objectives to ensure alignment of the formative assessments developed. Formative assessments can help measure student achievement of learning objectives as well as provide students with actionable feedback and the instructor with data to make decisions on current teaching and instruction practices.

So how do you determine what type of formative assessment to design? Or the frequency and distribution of formative assessments in your course? Let’s dive into some of the elements that might impact your design decisions, including class size, discipline, modality, and EdTech tools .

Class Size Heading link Copy link

Formative assessments can be designed and implemented in any course size from small seminar courses to large lecture courses. The size of the class will influence the decisions that instructors make regarding the use of EdTech tools to deliver formative assessments.

Small Class Size

• May allow for more formative assessments distributed throughout the course.
• May allow for more immediacy of feedback and descriptive, personalized, or dialogic feedback from the instructor.

Large Class Size

• May require instructors to utilize EdTech tools to deliver formative assessments that are distributed throughout the course.
• May require instructors to utilize EdTech tools to deliver timely, consistent, and helpful feedback to students.

Discipline Heading link Copy link

Formative assessments can be implemented in any type of course or program. A few considerations when developing formative assessments:

• To understand students’ prior knowledge and skills.
• As learning for students to reflect and self-regulate their learning.
• To measure achievement of learning objectives.
• To collect data to make decisions about teaching and instruction.

In undergraduate general education coursework, instructors should consider using formative assessments to understand student goals and motivations for taking a course and how to support their goals (future learning and connection to future career) and sustain their engagement in a course that may not be directly or obviously related to the major program of study. In major coursework, instructors might want to consider using formative assessments to reinforce knowledge and practice skills needed for summative assessments and external accreditation or licensure exams.

Modality Heading link Copy link

The modality of your course will influence the planning and delivery of formative assessments. Formative assessments can be designed for both synchronous and asynchronous delivery for any course modality.

Synchronous formative assessments (during scheduled classes) can be administered in on-campus, online synchronous, hybrid, and synchronous distributed courses. For example, creating in-class polls or surveys using an EdTech tool like Acadly and   iClickers .

Asynchronous formative assessments (outside of scheduled classes) can be administered in any type of course; however, asynchronous formative assessments are vital for online asynchronous courses to measure and reinforce learning. For example, creating weekly or unit quizzes in Blackboard using the Tests, Pools, and Surveys to reinforce student learning of the content.

Formative Assessment Tools Heading link Copy link

Formative assessment tools.

EdTech tools can help to reduce faculty workload by providing a delivery system that reaches students before, during, and/or after class sessions

Below are EdTech tools that are available to UIC faculty to create and/or grade formative assessments for and as learning.

Video and Questions Tools Heading link Copy link

Video and questions tools.

• VoiceThread

Asynchronous formative assessment tools like videos with questions can help you provide opportunities for students to self-assess learning, receive feedback, and practice.

Questions, Surveys, and Polling Tools

•   iClickers
• Blackboard surveys and quizzes
• Google forms
• Poll Everywhere

Question or polling tools can be administered synchronously to check understanding during a lecture in on-campus or online synchronous courses. Many of these tools can also be used asynchronously by providing a link in the course materials or announcements in the learning management system (LMS) – Blackboard .

Assessment Creation and Grading Tools

• Blackboard assignments drop box and rubrics

Assignments and scoring rubrics can be created in Blackboard for students to practice skills, receive feedback, and make revisions. Formative assessments can be created within Gradescope, or you can score in-class work using AI technology to reduce grading time, provide consistency in grading, and give general as well as personalized feedback to students.

Want to learn more about these formative assessment tools? Visit the EdTech section on the CATE website to learn more.

GETTING STARTED Heading link Copy link

Getting started.

The following steps will support you as you examine current formative assessment practices through the lens of assessment for learning (AfL) and assessment as learning (AaL) and develop new or adapt existing formative assessments.

• Consider creating an outline of the course and determine when a learning objective is covered and should be assessed.
• To collect data for decision-making about teaching and instruction (AfL).
• To provide students opportunities for practice and feedback (AfL and AaL).
• To promote self-regulation and reflective learning by students (AaL).
• To provide differentiation for students to improve individual learning and performance (AfL).
• Format: in-class work, question(s), written assignment, etc.
• Delivery: paper and pencil, Blackboard, EdTech tool, etc.
• Feedback: general (how to improve performance), personalized (student-specific), etc.
• Scoring: graded, non-graded, participation points, or extra credit.
• The fourth step is to review data collected from formative assessment(s) and reflect on the implementation of the formative assessment(s) to inform continuous improvements for equitable student outcomes.

CITING THIS GUIDE Heading link Copy link

Citing this guide.

Messier, N. (2022). “Formative assessments.” Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois Chicago. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://teaching.uic.edu/resources/teaching-guides/assessment-grading-practices/formative-assessments/

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Heading link Copy link

Additional resources.

Academic Planning Task Force. (2020). Guidelines for Assessment in Online Learning Environments .

Clifford, S. (2020). Eleven alternative assessments for a blended synchronous learning environment. Faculty Focus.

Crisp, E. (2020). Leveraging feedback experiences in online learning. EDUCAUSE

Dyer, K. (2019). 27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning. NWEA .

Gonzalez, J. (2020). 4 laws of learning (and how to follow them). Cult of Pedagogy .

Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., Caviglioli, O. (n.d.). Six strategies for effective learning. The Learning Scientists .

Agarwal, P. (n.d.) Retrieval practice website

Hattie, J. (n.d.) Visible Learning website

Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., Caviglioli, O. (n.d.). The Learning Scientists. 

Wiliam, D. (n.d.) Dylan Wiliam’s website

REFERENCES Heading link Copy link

Black, P., Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment Evaluation and Accountability. 21. 5-31. 10.1007/s11092-008-9068-5.

Earl, L.M., Katz, S. (2006). Rethinking classroom assessment with purpose in mind – Assessment for learning, assessment as learning, assessment of learning. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Crown in Right of Manitoba .

Grier, D., Lindt, S., Miller, S. (2021). Formative assessment with game-based technology. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science . 5. 193-202. 10.46328/ijtes.97.

Koka, R., Jurane-Bremane, A., Koke, T. (2017). Formative assessment in higher education: From theory to practice. European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research . 9. 28. 10.26417/ejser.v9i1.p28-34.

Mdlalose, N., Ramaila, S., Ramnarain, U. (2021). Using Kahoot! As a formative assessment tool in science teacher education. International Journal of Higher Education . 11. 43-51. 10.5430/ijhe.v11n2p43.

Robertson, S., Humphrey, S., Steele, J. (2019). Using technology tools for formative assessments . Journal of Educators Online . Volume 16, Issue 2.

Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., Caviglioli, O. (2019). Understanding how we learn – A visual guide. Routledge .

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Formative and Summative Feedback

The terms formative and summative are often used to describe types of evaluation and feedback that instructors develop for students. Here’s how these two types of assessments function in student learning:

Formative feedback activities are typically ungraded or low-stakes opportunities to promote and measure student knowledge and skills. Formative feedback is ongoing and helps faculty to focus on student learning and students to better understand the limits of their own knowledge and how to improve. By determining what students have learned and what is unclear, instructors can focus the class more effectively to meet the learning needs of that group. This may mean reviewing some areas, or spending less time in other areas.  Formative feedback can increase student motivation and self-directed learning and help them to become self-directed learners.  Examples of formative feedback techniques include many interactive classroom activities, homework and surveys.

By way of contrast, summative feedback typically falls at the end of a topic or semester.  It provides an evaluation of how much a student and the class has learned and is often connected to a grade.  When tied to specific class learning objectives it can be used as course feedback, providing the instructor with feedback about the effectiveness of the course design.  Examples of summative feedback techniques include exams, final projects, and research reports.

• Teaching@Tufts’ list of  Assessment Techniques include several examples of formative and summative feedback strategies.
• Integrating Inclusive and Sustainable Assessments in your Online Teaching from Beginning to End

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14 Examples of Formative Assessment [+FAQs]

Traditional student assessment typically comes in the form of a test, pop quiz, or more thorough final exam. But as many teachers will tell you, these rarely tell the whole story or accurately determine just how well a student has learned a concept or lesson.

That’s why many teachers are utilizing formative assessments. While formative assessment is not necessarily a new tool, it is becoming increasingly popular amongst K-12 educators across all subject levels. 

Curious? Read on to learn more about types of formative assessment and where you can access additional resources to help you incorporate this new evaluation style into your classroom.

What is Formative Assessment?

Online education glossary EdGlossary defines formative assessment as “a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course.” They continue, “formative assessments help teachers identify concepts that students are struggling to understand, skills they are having difficulty acquiring, or learning standards they have not yet achieved so that adjustments can be made to lessons, instructional techniques, and academic support.”

The primary reason educators utilize formative assessment, and its primary goal, is to measure a student’s understanding while instruction is happening. Formative assessments allow teachers to collect lots of information about a student’s comprehension while they’re learning, which in turn allows them to make adjustments and improvements in the moment. And, the results speak for themselves — formative assessment has been proven to be highly effective in raising the level of student attainment, increasing equity of student outcomes, and improving students’ ability to learn, according to a study from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 

On the flipside of the assessment coin is summative assessments, which are what we typically use to evaluate student learning. Summative assessments are used after a specific instructional period, such as at the end of a unit, course, semester, or even school year. As learning and formative assessment expert Paul Black puts it, “when the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment. When a customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment.”

14 Examples of Formative Assessment Tools & Strategies

There are many types of formative assessment tools and strategies available to teachers, and it’s even possible to come up with your own. However, here are some of the most popular and useful formative assessments being used today.

• Round Robin Charts

Students break out into small groups and are given a blank chart and writing utensils. In these groups, everyone answers an open-ended question about the current lesson. Beyond the question, students can also add any relevant knowledge they have about the topic to their chart. These charts then rotate from group to group, with each group adding their input. Once everyone has written on every chart, the class regroups and discusses the responses. 

• Strategic Questioning

This formative assessment style is quite flexible and can be used in many different settings. You can ask individuals, groups, or the whole class high-level, open-ended questions that start with “why” or “how.” These questions have a two-fold purpose — to gauge how well students are grasping the lesson at hand and to spark a discussion about the topic. 

• Three-Way Summaries

These written summaries of a lesson or subject ask students to complete three separate write-ups of varying lengths: short (10-15 words), medium (30-50 words), and long (75-100). These different lengths test students’ ability to condense everything they’ve learned into a concise statement, or elaborate with more detail. This will demonstrate to you, the teacher, just how much they have learned, and it will also identify any learning gaps. 

• Think-Pair-Share

Think-pair-share asks students to write down their answers to a question posed by the teacher. When they’re done, they break off into pairs and share their answers and discuss. You can then move around the room, dropping in on discussions and getting an idea of how well students are understanding.

• 3-2-1 Countdown

This formative assessment tool can be written or oral and asks students to respond to three very simple prompts: Name three things you didn’t know before, name two things that surprised you about this topic, and name one you want to start doing with what you’ve learned. The exact questions are flexible and can be tailored to whatever unit or lesson you are teaching.

• Classroom Polls

This is a great participation tool to use mid-lesson. At any point, pose a poll question to students and ask them to respond by raising their hand. If you have the capability, you can also use online polling platforms and let students submit their answers on their Chromebooks, tablets, or other devices.

• Exit/Admission Tickets

Exit and admission tickets are quick written exercises that assess a student’s comprehension of a single day’s lesson. As the name suggests, exit tickets are short written summaries of what students learned in class that day, while admission tickets can be performed as short homework assignments that are handed in as students arrive to class.

• One-Minute Papers

This quick, formative assessment tool is most useful at the end of the day to get a complete picture of the classes’ learning that day. Put one minute on the clock and pose a question to students about the primary subject for the day. Typical questions might be:

• What was the main point?
• What questions do you still have?
• What was the most surprising thing you learned?
• What was the most confusing aspect and why?
• Creative Extension Projects

These types of assessments are likely already part of your evaluation strategy and include projects like posters and collage, skit performances, dioramas, keynote presentations, and more. Formative assessments like these allow students to use more creative parts of their skillset to demonstrate their understanding and comprehension and can be an opportunity for individual or group work.

Dipsticks — named after the quick and easy tool we use to check our car’s oil levels — refer to a number of fast, formative assessment tools. These are most effective immediately after giving students feedback and allowing them to practice said skills. Many of the assessments on this list fall into the dipstick categories, but additional options include writing a letter explaining the concepts covered or drawing a sketch to visually represent the topic. 

• Quiz-Like Games and Polls

A majority of students enjoy games of some kind, and incorporating games that test a student’s recall and subject aptitude are a great way to make formative assessment more fun. These could be Jeopardy-like games that you can tailor around a specific topic, or even an online platform that leverages your own lessons. But no matter what game you choose, these are often a big hit with students.

• Interview-Based Assessments

Interview-based assessments are a great way to get first-hand insight into student comprehension of a subject. You can break out into one-on-one sessions with students, or allow them to conduct interviews in small groups. These should be quick, casual conversations that go over the biggest takeaways from your lesson. If you want to provide structure to student conversations, let them try the TAG feedback method — tell your peer something they did well, ask a thoughtful question, and give a positive suggestion.

• Self Assessment

Allow students to take the rubric you use to perform a self assessment of their knowledge or understanding of a topic. Not only will it allow them to reflect on their own work, but it will also very clearly demonstrate the gaps they need filled in. Self assessments should also allow students to highlight where they feel their strengths are so the feedback isn’t entirely negative.

• Participation Cards

Participation cards are a great tool you can use on-the-fly in the middle of a lesson to get a quick read on the entire classes’ level of understanding. Give each student three participation cards — “I agree,” “I disagree,” and “I don’t know how to respond” — and pose questions that they can then respond to with those cards. This will give you a quick gauge of what concepts need more coverage.

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List of Formative Assessment Resources

There are many, many online formative assessment resources available to teachers. Here are just a few of the most widely-used and highly recommended formative assessment sites available.

• Arizona State Dept of Education

FAQs About Formative Assessment

The following frequently asked questions were sourced from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), a leading education professional organization of more than 100,000 superintendents, principals, teachers, and advocates.  

Is formative assessment something new?

No and yes. The concept of measuring a student’s comprehension during lessons has existed for centuries. However, the concept of formative assessment as we understand it didn’t appear until approximately 40 years ago, and has progressively expanded into what it is today.

What makes something a formative assessment?

ASCD characterized formative assessment as “a way for teachers and students to gather evidence of learning, engage students in assessment, and use data to improve teaching and learning.” Their definition continues, “when you use an assessment instrument— a test, a quiz, an essay, or any other kind of classroom activity—analytically and diagnostically to measure the process of learning and then, in turn, to inform yourself or your students of progress and guide further learning, you are engaging in formative assessment. If you were to use the same instrument for the sole purpose of gathering data to report to a district or state or to determine a final grade, you would be engaging in summative assessment.”

Does formative assessment work in all content areas?

Absolutely, and it works across all grade levels. Nearly any content area — language arts, math, science, humanities, and even the arts or physical education — can utilize formative assessment in a positive way.

How can formative assessment support the curriculum?

Formative assessment supports curricula by providing real-time feedback on students’ knowledge levels and comprehension of the subject at hand. When teachers regularly utilize formative assessment tools, they can find gaps in student learning and customize lessons to fill those gaps. After term is over, teachers can use this feedback to reshape their curricula.

How can formative assessment be used to establish instructional priorities?

Because formative assessment supports curriculum development and updates, it thereby influences instructional priorities. Through student feedback and formative assessment, teachers are able to gather data about which instructional methods are most (and least) successful. This “data-driven” instruction should yield more positive learning outcomes for students.

Can formative assessment close achievement gaps?

Formative assessment is ideal because it identifies gaps in student knowledge while they’re learning. This allows teachers to make adjustments to close these gaps and help students more successfully master a new skill or topic.

How can I help my students understand formative assessment?

Formative assessment should be framed as a supportive learning tool; it’s a very different tactic than summative assessment strategies. To help students understand this new evaluation style, make sure you utilize it from the first day in the classroom. Introduce a small number of strategies and use them repeatedly so students become familiar with them. Eventually, these formative assessments will become second nature to teachers and students.

Before you tackle formative assessment, or any new teaching strategy for that matter, consider taking a continuing education course. At the University of San Diego School of Professional and Continuing Education, we offer over 500 courses for educators that can be completed entirely online, and many at your own pace. So no matter what your interests are, you can surely find a course — or even a certificate — that suits your needs.

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Designing effective online assessment

A staff guide to planning online assessments as an alternative to face-to-face invigilated exams.

Jump straight to the Guide to effective online assessment . 

Guidance for planning your online assessments

Centrally managed assessments will continue to be remote and online this academic year, in line with the agreed 2021/22 UCL  Assessment Operating Model . All centrally managed exams will be delivered through AssessmentUCL, the university’s dedicated digital assessment platform.  For regulatory purposes, the Assessment Operating Model for 2021/22 groups assessments into defined categories with discrete regulations. The majority of assessments should fall into these groups, but there may be occasions where an assessment is difficult to categorise. Departments should contact  [email protected]  if they need assistance in this area.

The alternative assessment suggestions will fit into one of the six assessment types that are described below:  

• Controlled Condition Exams  - Online exams which replicate, as far as possible, the strictly controlled conditions in a face-to-face exam hall. The exam duration accurately reflects the amount of time which a student should spend on the assessment. 
• Take-Home Papers  - Open-book assignments with durations of 24 hours to 7 days. Students are expected to work on the assignment for a maximum of eight hours in any 24-hour period. 
• Quizzes & In-class Tests  - Short tests and quizzes, typically worth no more than 10% of a module. 
• Practical Exams  - Practical assessments with a short, fixed duration such as presentations, group presentations, vivas, clinical exams, OSCEs, lab tests etc. 
• Dissertations/ Research Projects  - Extended, in-depth coursework assignments involving research and independent study. 
• Coursework and Other Assessments  - Assignments where students are typically given a few weeks to complete the assessment. Includes essays, reports, portfolios, artefacts, exhibitions etc. Where an assessment does not fit into one of the other categories, it nominally falls under the 'coursework' regulations. 

This practical guide has been developed to help staff to rethink assessments and to signpost to further support. You can download the full guide as a Word document or dip in and out of sections on this page, below.  

We appreciate this may seem daunting at first; replacing face-to-face, unseen, invigilated exams with more appropriate online forms that will work in a variety of on- and off-campus situations is a complex task.  The 'Effective online assessment guide' will provide information about when specific assessments might be used, their pros and cons, and considerations for going digital.  Where available, we will also point to case studies of each approach in use.  

Engaging students in assessment design

Many of the approaches available to staff provide opportunities for students to contribute to the assessment design, development and quality assurance processes.  For example, students can:

• help to design guidance that is clear, meaningful and meaningful and effective;
• advise you about particular difficulties that their peers might have in complying with requirements that might not be obvious to the assessment designers;
• provide feedback on formats and approaches that require technologies and applications that students may not have at home (good broadband, exclusive use of laptops, the correct software, quiet places to work etc;
• advise on appropriate modes and timings for feedback.

UCL has been home to Disruptive thinking since 1826 - 2020/21 is a time to innovate your assessment and feedback practice. Change inevitably will entail effort and risk - whatever approaches you decide to implement, remember to act with compassion to students, as well as being patient and understanding to ourselves and our colleagues.

Guide to effective online assessment

Exam-based alternatives.

Keywords | Formative or summative  | When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations | Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

Timed exam; closed book exam; take home exam; open book exam; multiple choice exam; remote exam; offline exam.

Used for formative or summative assessment

When to use.

These are accessed online, completed, and then submitted by a specific deadline.

They require appropriately designed questions that do not over-rely on memory and recall, but instead on interpretation and analysis. Students are required to complete questions during a set period e.g. 24 /48/72, etc hours They are often used in professional related disciplines and reflect authentic tasks.   

The key point is that students can access materials during the exam, so they require appropriate question-setting and student preparation

• Without reliance on memorising, the focus moves from recollection to usage of information, so the formats are potentially more authentic;
• can be implemented relatively easily in different environments and contexts;
• can allow students to make successively better drafts;
• can require fewer ‘reasonable adjustments’ for students who need these in traditional invigilated exams;
• are more accessible for those who may typically struggle with the practical aspects associated with time-constrained paper-based written exams;
• can test a range of skills including analysis of a range of data types and sources;
• students with poor memories are not disadvantaged;
• can remove stress for students who do not thrive in the ‘sudden death’ environment of the traditional exam hall;
• can help reframe learning for students who adopt surface approaches to learning in order to ‘cram’ purely for unseen exam questions, rather than assimilate knowledge for longer term application;
• useful assimilation and organisation skills for future work and employment opportunities.

Disadvantages

• Some students will write at excessive length, packing all they can find into their answers without recognising that different approaches are needed for this kind of paper. This makes marking unmanageable;
• students are generally unfamiliar with this method of assessment and will need guidance for preparation. students should be discouraged from thinking it is an easy exam so do not need to revise, plan or prepare in advance;
• can disadvantage students with hectic home lives, with poor internet access or limited it kit (some just work on phones);
• the tight time-limit compared to a standard assignment can be hugely stressful for some students;
• raises concerns about whose work is actually being submitted.

What it can assess

Take home assessments are best used where there is a large range of complex information and data that needs to be mastered in order to demonstrate an understanding of an area of study. Students still need to have a thorough knowledge of the information, how to use it and where to find it.

This method can develop skills in organising large quantities or information, synthesis, and the ability to identify key data and information quickly and accurately.

Considerations (workload, timings, inclusiveness, etc)

Designing good questions is a skill which teachers need to practise to develop effectively.

It is important to set clear expectations  about how long is reasonable to spend on the task (our regulations suggest 8 hours (plus 2 hours for Sstudents with SORAs) per 24 hour period), and to provide a word limit. 

Students are likely to need guidance on what referencing standards you require: as used in a traditional exam (i.e. barely) or full references as required in a standard assignment.

Design (weighting, type balance, etc)

Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules.

Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

Considerations for going digital and challenges for staff

Some thought is required to build in mechanisms for verifying it’s the students’ own work. The use of Turnitin may be an important consideration.  There is provision in the regulations for an investigatory viva where contract cheating is suspected: Where there is suspicion of Contract Cheating, the Chair of the Departmental Panel may, with the approval of the Faculty Tutor, initiate an investigatory viva to establish authorship.

Links to case studies and further information and readings

• Why Open-book tests deserve a place in your course
• Converting to online exams

In tray; box exercise.

Can be used for both.

Students are presented with a hard copy or virtual dossier of documents and other resources to review well before the exam with no idea of the questions being asked.

They are given ample time to review and annotate these resources in preparation.

When the question is presented, they respond to the situation, drawing on the resources in the dossier to support their choices of actions/ recommendations in a time constrained context.

For example, in a Nursing exam, students could be provided with a typical ward managers in-box for the day and be asked to draw up staff rotas, drug rounds etc. for the day. To make the exam as authentic as possible part way through the exam they could be asked to respond in real time to changing context e.g. a road traffic accident and say how their work plans/ priorities would change and why.

Another variation to the in-tray exam could be to ask students to work on preleased material, such as a case study, which students are then asked to critique under exam conditions.

Alternatively, they could be asked to design a resource or a strategic plan in advance, and in the exam they are then asked to adjust it to accommodate a ‘curveball’ to the original scenario, such as needing to respond to a pandemic, or new policy guidelines, as a test of their ability to think critically, and think on their feet.

• This kind of assessment is strong on authenticity, as it measures the skills the candidates will need in their future careers;
• students can demonstrate their fitness-to-practice by justifying how they would decide to do what they chose to do;
• if the reading/preparatory opportunity is offered in advance and tasks/new incidents are represented in real time this approach mitigates against plagiarism and tends to be regarded as a fair judgment of students’ abilities to think on the spot;
• pre-release also allows more time for reading, for those who require it (traditional in-tray exams expect students to read the dossier in the first part of a timed exam period).
• There tends to be a great deal of preparation in putting together the documents and materials required (although the resources can be used in a modified form in future years if the questions and incidents are different);
• if real-time incidents are offered mid-exam to test students’ flexibility, these are reliant on students’ ready access to secure and stable internet links.

Skills; quick thinking; decision making.

Relatively high workload in preparing documents and materials. 

In-tray exercises in paper form have been used for many years in many contents including accountancy and medicine.

The drawback of hard copy unseen versions tended to be the complexity of providing paper documents for each candidate within the exam setting: this is no longer a problem if virtual assessments are undertaken.

MCQs typically require students to choose correct answers from, for example, five presented, although a variety of other computer-supported formats include ‘best match’, ‘drag and drop’, labelling diagrams, marking crucial points on graphs, answering questions on case study scenarios, completing text by filling in gaps in cloze question formats, and many others.

MCQ can be paper-based or online.

Basic use tests knowledge recall but more complex variations can test higher-level thinking, especially where answers are similar but only one is correct.

Keywords | Formative or summative  | Ease of setting up |  When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations | Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

MCQ; MCA; drag and drop; best match; cloze.

Either or both – if summative, recommend formative for practice. Can be used in synchronous or asynchronous environments to provide opportunities to steer/tailor subsequent taught session or as time on task following a taught session.

Ease of setting up

Moodle quizzes are easy to set up. They can be used for module assessment or self-assessment. Multiple kinds of questions are possible including multiple-choice questions and multiple-choice answers.

Time will be required to build the questions depending on the complexity of the questions, and the experience of the tutor.

It has been successfully used for training of students in a given topic along with formative assessment, summative assessment of CWs and also exams. (see list of examples and tips from users below)

• Efficient for rapid testing of factual material;
• well suited to large cohort;
• instant feedback to students;
• marking is automated, straightforward, and fast (moderation is recommended for consistency);
• can connects with Moodle gradebook;
• good track record of their summative usage in disciplines including Medicine and Engineering;
• content coverage rather than question-spotting is good - can cover a full range of module or programme;
• over time a question bank can be developed, which eases some of the following disadvantages (time sink);
• tests can be randomised so no two students get the same questions in the same order;
• students can access or re-take during revision period;
• enables randomization of questions;
• can be time-restricted within a time window;
• scope for varying complexity;
• reusable from year to year (if using large question bank);
• convenient for students via Moodle through single sign-on;
•  easy to handle reasonable adjustments (SoRAs) through group overrides etc.
• Time needed to build the question bank - questions must also be piloted to determine facility values and discrimination indices to select which questions are suitable to include in summative tests;
• expertise needed in question design, subject content;
• poorly designed questions make passing by guesswork easy;
• students may not engage in a serious way – “just an online quiz”;
• students may not check correct answers or put in work to understand why they were wrong.

It is a reliable way to check student knowledge.

MCQs require quick thinking, decision making, and sometimes strategies to gauge the best answer if unsure or purposefully phrased.

The design of questions and overall assessment determines what kinds of skill can be assessed to address the needs of different disciplines (particularly those with external accreditation).

These include:

• recall (especially of core knowledge)
• application/analysis skills
• interpretation
• While marking is automated (some time required for moderation/consistency), the workload is front-loaded in the design, preparation and testing of questions;
• Good practice suggests using questions which are multipart, the first seeking the correct or best answer, the second part seeking the rationale for the choice, potentially a third requiring students to say how certain they are that the answer is correct. incorporating penalties for incorrect answers can discourage guessing answers;
• technical support for staff to set up moodle quizzes;
• technical support for events during assessment (support can be provided retrospectively) – internet issues;  
• moodle permissions etc., to decide on mitigation considerations.

Weight of the assignment and time commitment expected from the students is highly customizable.

This type of assignment can be used at any point within the course, and it provides immediate feedback to the students. Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules. Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

• Bandwidth/moodle capacity during assessment window may be a constraint especially if larger modules are more likely to do this kind of assessment;
• different browsers may display equations, etc, differently;
• resilience of question banks from year to year, when moodle snapshot occurs;
• end user internet speed/reliability – if this is picked up in moodle logs, this is easy to handle though extenuating circumstances;
• if students complete the tests online simultaneously in different time-zones, some may be assessed at unsocial hours;
• providing a longer time window for completion may allow students to share questions and answers.
• Successful examples and observations/tips from users ;
• Case study of a successful implementation of complex quizzes ; Poster
• Technical guide on Moodle quizzes
• Technical guide on STACK online assessment for mathematics and science .

The objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is a type of examination often, but not only, used in health sciences. It is designed to test clinical skill performance and competence in a range of skills. It is a practical, real-world approach to learning and assessment.

Keywords | Formative or summative   |  When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations | Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

OSCE; medical professional; digital skills.

It can be used for both forms of assessment.

An OSCE is a well-established format of assessment that tests a series of integrated tasks. It is common in medical and allied medical professionals’ assessment but has also been used in aerospace industry, business, law and engineering amongst others.

A vOSCE is testing the same tasks but in a virtual environment. It involves a series of timed task/stations involving a mixture of role players, video clips, practical skills, and written tasks e.g. prescribing.

It allows candidates to be thoroughly tested in a timely manner whilst preserving patient (and candidate) safety.

Initial set up is complicated and time consuming. Stations/tasks need to be selected carefully and modified for a virtual environment. Students, role players, examiners and administrative staff all need considerable training. A run through with admin, examiners and role players prior to the assessment is required. It is also difficult (but not impossible) to run a circuit with large numbers of candidates.

In medicine, we test communication skills, clinical and practical skills, interpretation of data (clinical signs, results, images), team working, prescribing, note keeping, ethics and law, professionalism.

• Requires a significant lead in period to ensure that candidates are taught appropriate skills e.g. performing a remote consultation;
• Requires admin staff that are familiar with the remote platform which is being used in the assessment;
• Actual circuit takes longer and requires more staff than traditional OSCE.

Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules. Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

• Do you have the IT expertise to make video clips?
• Do you have enough admin staff to be able to ‘host’ the stations?
• Have you taught your students the appropriate skills?
• The medical school held a vOSCE on 23 June, 2020. Please contact Alison Sturrock for further details.
• OSCE guidance from GeekyMedics.com

Coursework-based alternatives 

Note: Multiple choice questions (MCQs) could be used for both purposes. 

This is an umbrella term that includes many different types of assessment that are not formal, time-constrained written examinations.

Coursework may comprise of many of the assessments listed in this guidance such as essays, multiple choice/answer (MCQs), online tests, oral presentations, book reviews, group projects, reports, multimedia artefacts, etc.

Coursework; authentic; skills; work-based; groupwork; teamwork; collaborative.

Both. Summative coursework is compulsory and results in grades; formative coursework offers students opportunities for receiving feedback on their progress and to prepare for their summative (coursework or exam) assessment.

Ease of setting up

Varied.  The workload may be high if you are creating marking criteria and rubrics from scratch.

You will also need to provide feedback on work in a timely way that feeds into subsequent assessments, and/or set up reliable peer-assessment. See guidance on specific assessments below.

Coursework should be constructively aligned to the module or programme learning outcomes. Each coursework component should therefore relate strongly to one or more of these.

Ideally, all summative coursework should be informed by a prior formative assessment, with standards clearly communicated through the use of clear briefs which provide details of expectations, deadlines, marking criteria, rubrics, work count (or equivalence) and examples of guided marking.

A  common complaint of students is the clarity of expectations and standards.

Coursework allows students to demonstrate and receive actionable feedback, on a variety of knowledge and skills that do not rely on a high degree of memorisation.

There are many diverse possibilities and formats which can align closely to the learning outcomes, especially if these test the development of application of knowledge in an authentic setting or develop employability focused skills.

Coursework can develop students’ ability to  work independently in making their own judgements and provide opportunities for team- and groupwork. It enables continuous assessment of progress and maintains students’ motivation. It is ideal for developing student self- regulation.

Using more than one assessment format can improve the quality of the information used to calculate course grades.

It can be time-consuming to set up and design the brief (see ‘when to use above’).

Striking a good  balance of student workload where they work to a high level and meet standards but don’t overwork can be challenging.

It is also important to be realistic about the volume of assessment and avoid an over heavy marking workload where timely feedback to students may be compromised.

It is particularly good for assessing individual and groupwork, and making assessment authentic.

It can be time-consuming to set up and design the brief.

Design (weighting, type, balance, etc)

Coursework promotes formative assessment, however UCL does not permit marks for participation in online forums.

There are many other ways to encourage students to participate and take responsibility by evidencing their input and contribution to the module/programme:

• at the start of the module set clear expectations – e.g. everyone should contribute at least one post per week (responsibility is on them);
• ensure you step in regularly and comment on posts; stating specific times in the week when you will respond on the forums, and communicating how you will respond, will allow you to respond judiciously  and reduces students’ anxiety that you haven’t see their responses, as well as reducing traffic to your staff email;
• set tasks that have to be completed each week and which link students in pairs or groups, so they are responsible to someone else in their group;
• create tasks that are linked over several weeks and culminate in a larger input (either individual or group) so they have to maintain participation in order to complete them;
• it is valid to ask students to all submit evidence of their postings at points in the course – they can each select the two they think are ‘strong’ examples of responses to a task or a discussion activity with others;
• you can make minor amendments to the validation documents for your modules to add in some/all of these kinds of requirements but note that they are not graded content as the use of marks for ‘showing up’ is not something we want to encourage;
•  ask for a reflection on their learning through their forum activity as part of their summative coursework assessment.
• Kreiter CD, Gordon JA, Elliott S, Callaway M. Recommendations for assigning weights to component tests to derive an overall grade. Teach Learn Med. 2004;16(2):133-138. doi:10.1207/s15328015tlm1602_3
• Assessment mapping template

Portfolio; employability; creative; media; collection.

Students submit collections of work in hard copy format or, more usually nowadays, electronic format demonstrating the achievement of the course learning outcomes through systematically structured evidence.

Portfolios are particularly useful in practical / applied disciplines where evidence can be provided in very diverse forms including text, image, video, audio, practice notebooks etc.

Students can also use a portfolio as a modern CV. By building a library of their achievements over the course of their degree they can subsequently showcase example of their skills to prospective employers.

• They allow learners to present wide-ranging evidence of achievement, and to show originality and creativity alongside mastery of subject knowledge;
• portfolios can be maintained over a considerable time scale. They show development and can be useful evidence of achievement to show to prospective employers, so authenticity can be high;
• digital formats especially amenable to designing-in and tracking dialogic feedback processes, including uptake/subsequent action over time;
• the personalised nature of the portfolio can also help to ‘design out’ plagiarism by promoting a sense of student voice/ownership and, hence, promote academic integrity.
• Hard copy portfolios tend to be bulky to submit, handle and store; online portfolios may be difficult to upload to some repositories where file size is restricted;
• portfolios take time to mark, especially if volume/length constraints are not provided;
• assessment reliability can be quite low as different assessors tend to look for different things when assessing wide-ranging evidence of achievement.

What it can assess

Digital and academic skills; knowledge; personal growth; development of ideas.

• Provide clear guidance on maximum timings for video/audio material included, otherwise assessors can spend many hours scrolling through material;
• be aware that portfolios often include components that may increase assessment volume, especially if this mode of assessment applies to several modules the student is taking at the same time;
• it is helpful to provide a matrix demonstrating how evidence aligns with learning outcomes alongside a guide to the evidence provided in the portfolio, advising students that assessors will rely strongly on these to help them select which evidence to sample (i.e. they don’t promise to read/ view every word of the whole portfolio). You might, additionally, ask learners to submit an executive summary, self-evaluation or similar, in which you require them to reflect on where, and how, their portfolio components demonstrate they meet the learning outcomes/criteria or critically review what has been learned;
• you may need to support students to appreciate what critical reflection or critical thinking looks like.

The components in a portfolio can be hidden if it is expressed as a single summative assessment. Assessment volume might be very high, especially if portfolio is used in coexisting modules. Ensure that your assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules. Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

• A variety of sophisticated and simple software tools e.g. Mahara, MS Office productivity tools or a blogging tool, such as UCL Reflect can be used to make it easier for students to collect and structure portfolio elements;
• as with many innovative formats, assignment checklists can help guide student effort appropriately and aid the marking process, too;
• it is useful to consider issues of curation, feedback processes and whole-of-programme focus to maximise ongoing developmental learning opportunities, as opposed to having an exclusive focus on recording achievement.
• Preparing students for the workplace: why I introduced digital assessments (case study)
• Reflect blogging platform

A patchwork consists of a variety of small completed sections that although planned in advance, is finalised retrospectively, when the ‘patches’ are ‘stitched together’. It is similar but different to portfolio assessment.

Keywords | Formative or summative   |  When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations | Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

patchwork; components.

Each ‘patch’ is carefully designed, as part of a larger pattern, to act as a pivotal learning moment (so patchwork assessment is not synonymous with portfolio assessment).

Patchwork processes involve students in the ongoing and cumulative formative production of their materials, whereby meanings are linked and built by the student over time. Patches are ultimately stitched together to produce a fully justified summative account, which is submitted for marking.

Universal design principles readily apply:-

• takes account of the different ways that students learn and are able to express their learning in various ways;
• fosters continuous development and application over time;
• allows for diversity  -  enables students to meet relevant learning outcomes in a format of their own choosing, according to their own perceived areas of strength;
• always owned by the student, who selects, critiques and justifies the work, making it an authentic and (inclusive) approach to assessment;
• allows for creativity and gradual development - final ‘stitching’ patch encourages students to integrate their understanding of the whole module or integrated across programme of study;
• highly amenable to digital production, which enables sharing, discussion, peer review and developmental feedback processes to be threaded throughout;
• flexible and evolving process which is responsive to change;
• provides vehicle in which to extend personal, professional and theoretical boundaries – process can valuably be used to disturb assumptions about knowledge and how it can be applied to a real-life context/issue;
• draws on personal knowledge, therefore harder to farm out to essay mills;
• feedback, reflection and development of evaluative judgment/metacognition are integral to the design.
• Cannot simply be ‘dropped in’ as a replacement assignment as it needs to be fully integrated with pedagogical approaches;
• students may need significant briefing and guidance on how to achieve what may be to them an unfamiliar task;
• students may resist the process, as it is unfamiliar and less teacher-directed and led than other more familiar formats they are used to;
• takes substantial and careful preparation in advance on your part to ensure that students form a sense of the pattern, pace and scale which underpins the whole process.

Reflection; development of evaluative judgment; metacognition; creative thinking, criticality.

Considerations (workload, timings, inclusiveness, etc.)

• Initial briefing, student preparation and preparatory workshops on reflective writing, peer review processes, feedback literacy and appropriate skills development are essential – to build student confidence and appreciation of the process;
• carefully design the patches to link to the intended learning outcomes and articulate the skills you anticipate students will develop (e.g. synthesis, creative thinking, criticality). brief students clearly about this;
• think carefully about the timing of the patches and think through the relevant logistics - e.g. is there an overarching theme to the ‘stitching’? do you anticipate students having free choice in all or just some selection of patches and content? it can be a good idea to decide core and optional elements in advance and to make these clear to students;
• start small if you are unfamiliar with the approach;
• check out whether suitable technological infrastructures and systems are in place and troubleshoot them with regard to your designs;
• establish clear processes for sharing and reviewing each patch so feedback feeds forward to the next patch. Tailor patch themes to authentic contexts e.g. consider professional practice from client’s viewpoint, create an information leaflet, critique an article from a professional journal, review current news items, analyse data;
• indicate some sample genres so students get the idea e.g. series of Q and A, a letter of application, a press release;
• discuss exemplars and run FAQs;
• guide the overall synthesis clearly and engage students meaningfully with assessment criteria and standards.

A variety of digital formats could be used such as:

• UCL blogging service ( easy to use and set up)
• Blogger, Tumblr, and Medium
• Penzu has a range of e-journals if you prefer that over a diary style notebook
• MS Office Sway allows curation of media, reports, newsletters, web pages, and presentations in an interactive, web-based canvas. All staff and students have free access to this.
• Extract from Chapter 4 of A connected Learning Curriculum for Higher Education (Dilly Fung) [PDF]

Reflection; critical analysis; inclusive; subjective.

Both formative and summative.

Students are required to write critically about what they have learned, drawing upon their experiences and/or practice, and relating it to their reading.

Reflective writing involves producing an analytical piece of work in which the candidate describes an event or idea, reflects deeply using a range of differing perspectives, and attempts to analyse this. It often incorporates references to previous models or theories on the subject.

• Reflective writing can be a powerful means of enabling students to demonstrate complex learning outcomes including critical thinking;
• regular journaling can help students develop good working habits and routines;
• students can deepen their learning by reflection, and can demonstrate analysis, creativity and originality;
• when reflective journaling works well, students continually develop their learning through reflection;
• students can be encouraged to incorporate reflection on any formative feedback;
• as this is highly personal, students are unable to use essay-writing services and plagiarism is reduced;
• regular engagement from staff allows them to gain a good idea of the student’s progress and where additional support is required;
• encourages autonomous learning and increased learner autonomy.

Such analytic abilities can enhance employability and develop evaluative judgement. It might also be used to support employment applications and references.

• Students may not fully understand what is required of them in reflective writing. The tutor may need to test assumptions and spend considerable time setting expectations;
• students may be put off by the idea of keeping a “diary” for assessment;
• many students, at the start at least, write descriptively, extensively and uncritically, and may need extensive guidance on how to write more systematically;
• unless constraints are provided, the length of their writing may make marking unmanageable;
• digital media can replace the handwritten form although some students may prefer handwriting to think, and then rewrite into an electronic form extending the time needed for the assessment;  
• some students may feel they need to write what they think you want to read;
• potential difficulties in verifying content and timing of when reflective notes were actually written (all in one go or throughout the expected time span);
• objective marking is difficult due to the personal, narrative tool. Specific criteria needs to be established and communicated to all.
• Development of reflective, and critical thinking, and to document the student’s learning journey through a topic, module or programme. It can also assess a different writing ability and serve as evidence for other assessed work (e.g. artefacts, presentations);
• can be used in any learning setting – no definitive design.
• can work across longer or shorter time spans. The key is to get the student to think about what they have learned from the experience they are describing;
• links should be made to problem-solving and practical exercises.

Time spent in exploring what critical analysis and reflection mean in academia is well spent. Carefully guided discussion of illustrative exemplars are useful. It can be really helpful to suggest tight indicative word limits on several sections to produce a critical incident account as a starting point to reflective writing e.g.:

• choose and outline an incident that you have experienced in your last placement (200 words)
• describe the context in which you were working (200 words)
• what action did you take? (200 words)
• why did you choose that particular course of action? (200 words)
• how did your choice of actions relate to your university classes and reading in the area? (200 words including at least 3 references)
• how would you do things differently next time? (200 words)
• what did you learn from this experience? (200 words)
• how were you changed (if at all) in your orientation and approach by this, or were your previous convictions borne out? (200 words).
• is this a standalone assessment or being used in conjunction with another assessment type?
• are you setting a prescribed format or leaving it freeform for the student to personalise?
• how often will you check the students are completing this through the timespan?
• There is a UCL blogging service that is easy to use and set up.
• Penzu has a range of e-journals if you prefer that over a diary style notebook.
• Blogger, Tumblr, and Medium could be used.
• Engaging students in active reflection as part of the academic feedback cycle  [case study]

Padlet for assessment toolkit [Imperial]

Collaboration; reflection; groupwork; teamwork.

It can be used for both forms of assessment. It is particularly useful for students to reflect on roles and performance within a team environment.

Students are put into groups and each group is allocated a case study or topic on a weekly basis. Groups work to consider any data, plan their goals and consider recommendations. Learning is scaffolded by mini lectures/exemplars. Students can present a product for formative feedback towards the end of the course/time plan.

The summative assignment might take the form of a practical element or task. The students learn about the cases/topics together through own and guided research. Encourage students to engage in deep critical thinking of the case or topic over consecutive weeks. It works well for authentic case or topic linked to the students’ circumstances/programme.

• Students are used to this form of assessment in traditional classroom teaching but can be equally used well in an online setting using bespoke tools;
• encourages students to actively engage in their learning and form a learning community;
• develops soft skills or communication and teamwork, with added digital skills for collaboration;
• structure provided allows students to focus on “doing” rather than navigating a more vague task;
• exposes students to peer feedback, formative staff feedback and reflection;
• peer group work aids motivation to engage online;
• engage students in critical thinking with exemplars.
• Needs student buy-in and motivation to engage with task and peers;
• time consuming for tutor set up;
• some students have difficulty in assimilating multiple feedback with different or opposing viewpoints;
• many students prefer a single correct “perfect” answer/example;
• can be difficult to determine individual contribution.

Critical thinking and integration across modules or programme, and soft skills.

• Is the assignment well planned?
• Are the internded learning outcome clear?
• Are there external factors which could influence success? (e.g. Connectivity, time zone, familiarity with software)?

Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules. Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience  and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

Collaborative assignments require online platform (BB Collaborate/MS teams/zoom). Think about access and bandwidth issues (inc. international students);

provide or encourage student groups to define code of conduct or time plan for their group interactions around time zone and other individual constraints;

in face-to-face settings, the final product might be a live presentation. in remote sessions this might be redesigned so that students prepare a pre-recorded presentation for review and feedback from peers and staff. The tutor should provide one or two exemplar presentations – demonstrating typical errors and invite students to grade/comment on the exemplars. The tutor can provide a recorded rating/comment on the exemplars;

final product/presentations are uploaded to a secure folder (Moodle/Onedrive). During the scheduled presentation time students are expected to view and provide feedback on peer presentations using a Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES) form based on marking rubric (e.g. University of Sydney Teaching Tips: Provide easy, efficient, personalised feedback to your students ). Staff/tutors also complete same form with formative feedback. SRES should be simple and accessible;

students review and reflect on their feedback during formal lecture time, mediated online. students can then modify presentations ahead of final presentation (we suggest including an additional slide on their own reflections from the learning process).

Collaborative assignments via Zoom: it was a new experience but a good one [University of Sydney case study]

Digital art project makes most of free web technology [UCL case study]

Supporting online lab-based group work with OneNote [Imperial]

wiki; collaboration; digital

A wiki is a website developed collaboratively by a community of users (students) – allowing any user to add or edit content.

A wiki can be used where a topic benefits from the experience of many different students or where students are likely to need to revisit the topic in the future (e.g. ongoing assessment/feedback as understanding changes or develops).

• Students can bounce ideas off each other, using a collaborative approach to increase the understanding and insight of all;
• students develop teamwork skills and knowledge of software that they can refer to in subsequent job interviews;
• the form reflects the way many industries now share information;
• a digital footprint is kept that can help staff evaluate how and when students are accessing information;
• students are unable to use the essay-writing services to do this type of work for them, and thus it is harder to plagiarize;
• a history of individual’s contributions is captured by the system.
• Students engage with wikis differently, some posting frequently and others posting little at all, making it difficult to mark consistently;
• time must be taken for both the tutor and the students to familiarize themselves with the platform on which the wiki is hosted
• students might be unfamiliar with this form of assessment and so more time will be needed to set out the expectations.

What can it assess?

Wikis lead to improved technical competence and allow students to demonstrate where they have worked collaboratively to further a goal.

• What is the purpose of the wiki?
• Will the blog be public or viewable only by students/assessors?
• How long will the student be expected to use the wiki?
• How often will the students be expected to update the wiki?
• How will you ensure each wiki has academic validity?
• What platform will you host the wiki on?
• Is specialist training needed for you, students and assessors?
• UCL has a range of wikis providing useful information on subjects, teaching and learning. These can be flagged as exemplars.
• Digital education can provide support.
• When UCL students edit Wikipedia

Peer assessment; IPAC.

It works with both, and in fact it is beneficial if it is used as combination of the two. At the end of a project, the IPAC can be used to give formative feedback to the students as well as summative marks. In long projects, one can also use it as formative first, in the middle of the project, giving a chance to staff to know how the groups are doing, and also helping with the group dynamics moving forward in the project.

The IPAC methodology should be used when students are completing a group work, particularly in cases where the weight of that activity counts significantly towards students’ grades.

It gives tutors the chance to assess the level of contribution of each student to the group work, assessed by their peers. This presents multiple advantages and possible uses as listed in the advantages section.

• Can improve student group dynamics;
• discourages passengers/free riders in the team, encourages students to participate in the group work;
• addresses staff and students’ concerns regarding the fairness of individual marks;
• addresses the accrediting bodies' concerns regarding the fairness of individual marks;
• provides opportunities for students to practice (learn/become trained) on how to provide constructive and professional feedback to their peers – this is a type of external facing assessment;
• shows students how their contributions have been perceived by their peers – a very important element in improving teamwork;
• provides insightful information to staff on how the groups are working and allows the possibility to address any issues early on;
• it compensates /substitutes/complements other more time-consuming methods of observation of individual contribution to group work, e.g. tutor observations in class. Therefore, the IPAC becomes key during group work activities run online;
• it reduces the number of overall complains from students regarding group dynamics, while providing a formal mechanism to give students feedback;
• can be used to track individual student development;
• it is fast to implement using the IPAC LTI and software, available at UCL;
• customizable by staff.
• The IPAC assessment methodology should be explained to students at the start of the group work activity (including the aim and benefits), particularly if the students have not used it previously;
• students do not need long to complete peer feedback (5-30 minutes) but it can be perceived as an additional deadline unless made optional (not recommended).

The IPAC methodology can assess a variety of things. It is completely customizable by the staff. Some types of questions and example attributes are:

• general engagement with the project, e.g. overall contribution to the project, effort, quality of the work, etc.;
• professional skills, e.g. ability to work in teams, leadership, communication, etc.;
• contribution to a particular part of the project, e.g. contribution to ideas, contribution to the writing of final report;
• compliance with team contract defined by members of the group at the start of the project.

Students only need 5-30 minutes to complete, depending on how extensive the comments that they write to their peers are.

the IPAC methodology used software that is very fast to set-up and implement even in very large classes; it is available at UCL and tutors can set it up in 5-60 minutes depending on how much one wants to customize. It processes all the data in five minutes and provides feedback and marks to students in five minutes.

If you want to use this methodology, you need to inform students at the start of the group project. That is not just common good practice, it also plays an important part of getting the most benefits out of the assessment methodology, particularly in terms of students’ engagement.

The methodology allows staff to customise parts. A guide on this is available below.

• IPAC project wiki
• Introduction to the methodology and guidelines on how to use it: Garcia-Souto MdP et al (2019). Individual peer assessment of contribution to group work (IPAC): Key points and recommendations. Full text: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10092391/
• Garcia-Souto, MdP (2019). Is it safe to use peer assessment of individual contribution level when assessing group work?
• IPAC software and LTI – Contact Dr Pilar Garcia Souto to get a copy and also to get trained:  [email protected]

Viva; viva voce; interviews; presentations.

Orally, students individually, or in groups, are required in real time to answer questions from one or more examiner on prepared topics. Sometimes questions are preceded by a short presentation from the examinee.

When on-site vivas are not possible, virtual formats can be used, as has been the case for international PhD examinations for some years.

• Allows probing questions to check for understanding;
• encourages the students to prepare thoroughly on the topic or area of study;
• allows assessment of higher-level thinking without the barrier of written communication;
• can encourage and develop confidence in oral skills if used formatively and consistently;
• widely used for high-stakes assessment, such as at doctoral and master’s students and readily usable virtually by other levels;
• regarded as authentic, as many careers and professions may depend on face-to-face skills at answering questions and giving persuasive explanations;
• the face-to-face/ live virtual dimension allows assessors to gauge students’ speed and confidence at answering questions in ‘real time’, even virtually, in contrast to most other assessment methods;
• probing questions can be used, e.g. ‘how else…?’, ‘why else’ and so on, to explore students’ depth of knowledge (cognitive challenge);
• reduces plagiarism concerns;
• Virtual vivas can enable recordings to be made which are useful not only for quality assurance purposes but also, with permission, as resources for future students.
• With large cohorts, managing virtual vivas can be time consuming;
• some candidates can be adversely affected by nerves;
• students may be unfamiliar with the assessment method and so may need additional guidance and support, with opportunities to practice;
• technical difficulties with broadband connections, different time zones and live links are unpredictable and can be hugely disruptive;
• students with greater social capital and advantage are likely to do better than other students;
• students with voice impairments may not do themselves justice, and hesitation (e.g. from stammering) may be misinterpreted as lack of knowledge;
• difficult to guarantee fairness between candidates, especially when variations in levels of probing occur;
• where students are viva-ed in groups, there may be issues around apportioning the contributions fairly;
• assessment may be affected by a range of factors (e.g. unconscious bias, uncongenial environment…).

Oral examinations can be used to assess student’s(s’) engagement with a topic, to explore their thinking and assist the development of new ideas or avenues of research. The student(s) might propose an argument or be given a specific topic/area, while the examiner(s) can discuss, debate or ask further questions.

• There is a strong case for the increased use of oral assessment as part of a balanced range of assessment methods in present-day contexts but this has to balanced with the time needed to set up and conduct;
• as with all forms of novel assessment on any programme, students will need guidance on how best to undertake a viva as well as practice opportunities with feedback (maybe including peer feedback) to ensure confidence;
• when, where and how will the examination be conducted?
• how will you measure quality of response, and maintain consistency across students and examiners?
• how will any recording be used and kept securely?
• how many examiners will be used for each student, and have you addressed any EDI concerns in the examiner/student ratios?
• Suggest the use of open questions and positive body language (Incl. eye contact and active listening).

Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules. Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see  how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

• Platforms might include MS Teams or BB Collaborate;
• think about how you can enhance your positive body language and rapport with the student via online medium?
• as with any other form of live assessment, recordings or other forms of documentation of the events will be needed for quality assurance/external examining purposes;
• consider scaffolding student learning via, say, a series of authentic assessment tasks which culminate in interactive oral assessments;

NB. There is provision in the regulations for an investigatory viva where contract cheating is suspected: Where there is suspicion of Contract Cheating, the Chair of the Departmental Panel may, with the approval of the Faculty Tutor, initiate an investigatory viva to establish authorship. Undertaking random vivas is not permitted.

• Oral assessment Toolkit [UCL]

Presentation; performance.

May be used effectively for both.

These may be individual or group presentations/performances, usually to a live audience (other students, the public) and not just the assessor. Assessment criteria should be known in advance, and may include the ability to articulate clearly, coherently and competently the answers to reasonable questions arising from the presentation/performance.

• Allows candidates to demonstrate communication skills (e.g. oral, visual, physical) alongside subject mastery;
• authentic: presentational (oral, visual, physical) skills are important in future employment;
• peer-assessment can make presentations/performances a better learning experience for all;
• can include ability to respond to spontaneous questions from the assessor and/or the audience.
• Assessing presentations can be hugely time-consuming;
• may be hard to strike a balance between mastery of content, and skills of presentation;
• ‘raising the bar’: expected standards can become higher over a series of presentations/performances as assessors expect more and more;
• in presentations, ‘impression’ marks can be associated with the quality of presentation slides or resource materials used in the presentations;
• where multiple assessors are involved, inter-assessor reliability can be problematic.
• communication skills for a variety of audiences
• ability to respond to questions.
• It is important to set and stick to time limits;
• clarity on assessment criteria is imperative so students recognise weightings of diverse assessed elements (e.g. information content, presentation techniques, ability to answer questions etc.);
• as above, briefing/training and rehearsal are important to give each student a fair chance to succeed since some will have done these before and others won’t.

Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules. Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience: https://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Play/26730 and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

• It may be more sensible to rely on recorded and submitted rather than live presentations to allow for technical issues;
• recorded presentations can create large file sizes which are difficult to manage;
• recordings and other records will need to be made and kept for QA/ external examiners for any live presentations;
• it may be challenging to replicate the ‘live audience’ virtually if a synchronous approach is desired.
• Project presentations to webinars [Imperial case study]

Video; audio; digital skills; podcast.

Can be used effectively for both.

The production of video or audio content provides an alternative to the written form and can promote a more inclusive approach to assessment. Students are required to submit data files containing their video/ audio recordings, and podcasts to provide evidence of achievement of specific learning outcomes. They gather information on a subject and present it in audio or visual form within a specific time duration. The report needs a structured narrative, similar to an essay, but with evidence, analysis and conclusion taking place in an audio/video format.

• Students can see the value of producing outputs in what they are likely to use as a very 21st Century medium. May link to employment opportunities and skills set;
• these forms are likely to be relatively difficult to plagiarise or farm out to essay mills;
• allows more flexibility and choice than traditional pen-and-paper approaches (inclusivity);
• allows demonstration of creative approaches to exploring ideas/problem;
• scripting and voicing requires both writing and speaking skills – reading a script out loud can help develop more fluent writing styles;
• encourages students to focus their argument and avoid waffling within a time constraint;
• suitable as either a group or individual assignment.
• Students may not at first realise how much work is needed to prepare for, plan and deliver a seemingly informal output like a broadcast and may consequently leave it up to the last minute;
• students and staff, may need training to use appropriate software;
• conversely, they may concentrate so much on the medium that they neglect the message;
• there can be technical issues about recording and data files might be very large to submit electronically;
• external review may comment on this assessment lacking academic rigour;
• shy/introverted students may find this assessment method particularly challenging;
• students may focus more on production techniques than on the content;
• risk of unconscious bias in assessment if the student has poor speaking skills or speaking impairments;
• extra care is needed to ensure this assessment is academically rigorous and that sources are properly cited;
• There can be substantial problems concerning ‘digital equity’ in that some students will have significantly better access to good quality kit than others.

What it can assess

How cogently a student can synthesise and communicate complex ideas relating to a specific topic.

Critical thought needs to be demonstrated beyond standard written format.

Particularly useful for assessing how students can portray complex ideas in an accessible way.

• Is it clear what is being assessed (content rather than production techniques)?
• Will students have technical support in compiling the video/audio?
• How long will the student(s) have to prepare, and what is their expected recording duration?
• Who will assess? Just academic staff or a combination with external/peer assessment and feedback.
• How will marking be maintained and consistent across different examiners and markers?
• How will you address any EDI concerns?
• We suggest providing exemplars.

Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules. Weights assigned to assessment components should indicate importance and address reliability and validity implications.  View the animation to see how to balance assessments to create a holistic student experience  and produce a simple visualisation of your intended design using the template.

• As with other innovative assessment media, good briefing, training, discussion and rehearsal are imperative;
• It is important that assessment criteria are based on students’ capability, expertise and knowledge rather than technical specifications when they are working from home without access to loan equipment;
• Be careful to issue indicative expectations of workload and remember to include time for learning how to use tools, for example video or audio editing software. A lack of equipment might prevent some students from participating fully;
• Students may use a wide variety of sophisticated software or use more simple recording options in PowerPoint or Webcast. YouTube might be appropriate if issues of open content, IP and data security are taken into ccount. LinkedIn learning can help students with technical issues;
• Creative Commons – catalogue of licence-free music and audio that can be used in presentations. Facility to download audio files from the internet;
• OpenShot – free video editing software, compatible with Mac, Linux and Windows;
• Windows (Movie Maker) or Mac (iMovie) – free inbuilt software for Windows / Mac devices, basic and easy-to-use video editors;
• For podcast Audacity is a free open-source recording software, compatible with Linux, Mac and Windows. User friendly, with facilities to export and compress files easily;
• You might also consider giving audio or video record feedback to your students, rather than written accounts. Student react to the different format and engage in different ways – often at higher levels.
• Assessing internship experiences using video blogs (vlogs)  [UCL case study]
• Undergraduates use interpretivist research methods to make podcasts about being Jewish at UCL  [UCL case study]

The video documentary assignment is a communication task where groups of two or three students investigate a topic of their choosing. It provides an alternative to written communication assignments which predominate in science courses.

The production of a documentary film can encourage teamwork, develop new skills, reinforce concepts, and generate new knowledge.

The resources can be used by future students.

Keywords | Formative or summative   | Ease of setting up   |   When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations | Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

Vlog; steaming; broadcast; film; documentary.

Mostly summative but could be used for formative.

Relatively easy. Establishing and assessing an authentic task using a video requires little or no revision of your existing module.

You will need to provide detailed guidance on the terms of engagement, timing and sequence of scaffolding activities, marking criteria, rubrics, and provide examples.

The bulk of the instructional activities occur in the first week. 

A variety of assessed and non- assessed components may be used, for example, non-assessed but mandatory components might include group meeting minutes and a draft storyboard or script.

The primary aim of these elements is to assist students in time management and planning for making their documentary.

Assessed components include:

• an annotated bibliography as background research and justification for selection of sources of evidence – students conduct this as individuals and receive an individual mark;
• a peer assessment of group member contribution to the assignment based on the criteria of participation, reliability and contribution (see ipac assessment and software guidance for managing groupwork);
• the video product – students conduct this as a group and receive a group mark.

A video documentary assignment can be used when you wish to develop students communication, digital and critical analysis sills in your discipline.

You can also use it when you want to students to create direct links with researchers within your faculty.

• Video documentary assignments facilitate student learning of teamwork, information and digital literacy, structure of a logical argument, basic audience analysis, and how to engage an audience as well as oral and visual presentation skills.
• Student engagement with the video documentary assignment is very high. Many students report that it provides an enjoyable bonding experience which helps them to find and make friends.
• Data collected through anonymous student surveys consistently report the highlight of the video assignment as being factors that foster intrinsic motivation, including the opportunity to make friends, novel hands-on and outdoor experiences, establishing links with UCL researchers and independence in topic choice and presentation style.

The challenge that is likely to cause hesitation about implementing a video task is how to supply, manage and support students’ use of the technology involved. An approach you may adopt is to encourage students to use whichever technology they are familiar with, but to emphasise that support may be available for particular tools. UCL students have access to LinkedIn Learning that can support skills development. If students feel uncomfortable with producing a video, give them the opportunity of producing a PowerPoint presentation.

Marking is possibly the second challenge that comes to mind when considering the implementation of a video style assignment. Requiring students to work in groups certainly helps in keeping the marking load manageable (e.g., one assignment per four students). Marking video assignments is an acquired skill as both novice and experienced markers are easily seduced by entertaining stories, ‘wow’ footage and background music. Explicit and specific marking criteria and inclusion of a moderation activity at the start, and part way through the marking process will help to establish and maintain consistency of judgement between markers. 15 min per assignment for marking to allow the video to be viewed in front of the whole class, a Q&A session and for marks to be entered and feedback written is a reasonable amount to time.

• Student learning about teamwork;
• information and digital literacy;
• structure of a logical argument;
• basic audience analysis;
• how to engage an audience;
• oral and visual presentation skills
• Students are expected to explain the concepts that underpin an issue of their choosing and communicate its relevance to an audience in a five to seven-minute film that will be created over a 10-week period.
• Students must be given guidance about the balance of tone that addresses the audience and the depth of disciplinary knowledge required.

Involve students with the assessment criteria (e.g. via co-production exercises or in guided discussion) so they are clear about the standards, meanings and relevant weightings of criteria and can use them to evaluate their own work in progress.

• The assessment design must be aligned with the learning goals so that the purpose of the documentary as a whole is clear to students. Without this, students may lose sight of the end goal. Students are less likely to put effort into the formative assessment if they cannot see how this will help them with the summative.
• Make sure to assign students to teams so they complement each other’s’ technical, presentation and academic skills. Students should be encouraged to share their final video with friends and family - they have reported very positive outcomes.
• To provide incentives for students interested in filmmaking and/or communication, the top 5 videos can be uploaded to the UCL Media server or YouTube channel, where this exists.
• Ensure your students understand that documentaries are assessed using standard marking criteria and video quality and technical skills are not part of the assessment. Provide students information about copyright issues, for example organise an information session with the UCL Copyright officer.
• Spend one or two sessions providing students with basic technical skills including video editing, knowledge about various video editing software and an ability to create a plan of action for making the video. You may ask students to take online courses for video filming, production, animation and script writing for informational videos using Linkedin Learning .
• If your students include interviews with researchers or others, ensure you obtain written consent from both the student and the researcher/external before you make the video publicly available. Students should send the researcher/external they interviewed a link with the final version of the video and check if the researchers/external are happy with content accuracy.

Novel assessment on anatomy module inspires reconfiguration of assessment on entire programme  

How video assignments can boost student engagement

• Making documentary videos: basic tutorial
• Armstead Archaelogy blog: Girl's on Film

Students as science communicators and film makers

William A. Callahan: Visual International Politics Student Movies  [LSE case study]

Keywords | Formative or summative   | Ease of setting up   |   When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations | Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

Artefacts; creative; creative industry; portfolio; digital portfolio.

Both summative and formative assessment.

It depends on the complexity of the portfolio and the platform you may choose to support it. It requires considerable preparation and may impact on other assessments within a single module or with others where assessment volume may be increased. If introducing for the first time, portfolios require thought and guidance.

Traditional written exams are rarely used in many subjects aligned to the creative industries. The reduction of lack of face to face raises challenges for on-site assessments, for example in subjects requiring sculptures, paintings, architectural designs and engineering models. In addition to assessing artefacts, the process by which they have been achieved, and work in progress, is central to both summative and formative assessment.

A portfolio of artefacts may be taken into the digital environment photographs, video, audio descriptions or other digital media. A digital portfolio allows demonstration of how the student generated or connected the items they compiled on a given subject. Portfolios can include written reflective texts.

In normal times, assessment in situ would be the norm, but currently many are using photographic or video evidence of output, so these are likely to need a reflective commentary as well as other forms of documentation of progress to provide rigor and enhance assessor’s confidence.

Students can complete their work in stages and build up work slowly. This practice will help students to develop the skills needed for longer pieces of work, like a dissertation or large project. Tutors can observe how students’ ideas have developed over time, potentially reducing opportunities for academic misconduct;

it encourages students to tackle the module/programme and the issues in smaller inter-related parts, allowing them time to think and reflect on their ideas;

assessment of artefacts such as these is high on validity and authenticity;

progress can be monitored through staged feedback and review or a summative portfolio;

diversity or a range in material can be presented and included;

students are encouraged to develop planning and organisation skills for both development of the artefact and supporting portfolio/reflective commentary;

reflective commentaries on work in progress can help demonstrate the thinking that underpins the creative production;

documented evidence provides indicators of the standards of evidence of achievement for future students to work towards;

artefacts are useful as evidence of achievement to show prospective employers;

students are unable to use essay-writing services, difficult to plagiarise (however there is higher potential when on a digital portfolio is presented. hence suggested incorporation of reflective commentary or journal to support authenticity).

It may be hard to assure inter-assessor reliability unless criteria are really effectively negotiated and shared among the assessment team;

Engaging students and maintaining motivation and commitment;

marking can be time consuming;

possibility of plagiarism in digital realm if only marking final product/artefact;

can conceal a high volume of assessment. For example, a portfolio may contain many components;

marking a work in progress requires a different set or number of marking criteria to marking a completed final output.

A portfolio of artefacts can be used to show the development of ideas and skills over a period of time.

It may be used to demonstrate students’ capabilities as well as the quality of an artefact. It can be a collection of work on several topics (demonstrating integration) or a single topic.

Discuss with colleagues what they imagine the student workload might be within each context that it is used.   A portfolio can often conceal a high volume of assessment as ‘the portfolio’ may be labelled as a single assessment but contain many components. Involve students with the assessment criteria (e.g. via co-production exercises or in guided discussion) so they are clear about the standards, meanings and relevant weightings of criteria and can use them to evaluate their own work in progress.

Please ensure that your module formative and summative assessment strategy takes account of the overall assessment load for the student studying multiple modules, especially where portfolio assessment is used on other modules.

• In seeking evidence of achievement, it is quite useful to ask for notebooks and evidence of work in process when this is produced remotely to ensure that the person submitting was the person who created it. This shift from just ‘making’ to ‘making and explaining’ is also invaluable in encouraging reflective approaches to creative production and revision which can demonstrate core learning outcomes;
• note guidance on ‘reflective journal’ and portfolio assessment;
• explore UCL’s My Portfolio software.
• Creating digital portfolios [UCL]
• See a range of examples in practice-based contexts , especially the video Moving Online, Creative Art and Design, Staffordshire Uni, which explicitly discusses some advantages of moving to digital submission.

A blog (abbreviated from "web log") is a website or webpage that is updated by the student throughout a course or assessment period; it details, for example, a learning journey. It can be authored by one or more students.

Keywords | Formative or summative   | Ease of setting up   |   When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations | Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

Blog; digital skills; multimedia; reflection.

High. Establishing and assessing an authentic task using a blog may require you to significantly revise your existing module or even rebuild from scratch.

Students will need to register for a blog. You will need write guidance on the terms of engagement – how to register, marking criteria, rubrics, word limits, how often students should comment and post, and provide examples.

Depending on whether it is individual or group assessment, you may need to put in considerable time early on monitoring and motivating. Your students will look to you to set the pace and style of engagement

A blog should be used when you wish the student to develop one idea or concept over an extended period of time. It should be used to help monitor how students have engaged with the material presented and how their views changed as they were presented with new material and ideas.

These can be used for formative or summative assessment. As part of the assignment, they might be asked to comment constructively on other student’s blogs. They can be a useful vehicle to help reflective learning.

• Students can complete their blog in stages and develop it slowly. This practice will help students to develop the skills needed for longer pieces of work, like a dissertation or large project. Tutors can observe how students’ ideas have developed over time, potentially reducing opportunities for academic misconduct;
• blogs can provide an invaluable online record of student work, offering opportunities to be reflective, improving writing and analytic skills, and enhancing student learning and promoting academic integrity;
• blogs can have a professional focus to heighten authenticity;
• it encourages students to work in small steps, allowing them time to think and reflect on their ideas;
• students are unable to use the essay writing services to do this type of work for them;
• student can embed other resources such as hyperlinks, images, videos and podcasts and encourage peer’s/readers' comments;
• blogs can be used to demonstrate the student’s writing and digital skills in future employment application;
• many students are already blogging and so the context is reasonably familiar for them;
• tutors can monitor students’ progress before final submission and ensure the assignment is being completed appropriately, i.e. that it is not left to the last minute;
• since they are relatively short in length, they are likely to be manageable to mark.
• Students may be unfamiliar with this form of assessment and so need clear expectations establishe;
• students may need guidance on registering, using references and setting the right tone;
• some colleagues/quality assurers, PSRBs etc. may need convincing that blogs are serious academic tasks;

Dynamic and concise writing, application of theoretical connections with the ‘real world’,  transferable (non-academic) skills and digital skills.

Students can engage in self and peer reflection by constructing knowledge collaboratively. Peer assessment can enhance students' discrimination skills and learning from each other.

Many of our students will go on to use blogs and social media as part of their future work, particularly if they are going to engage in further research work. This assessment will give them a concrete example of where they have used these skills when asked about them at interview so this type of assessment will give them a concrete examples of where they have used these skills when asked about them at interview.

The assessment design must be aligned with the learning goals so that the purpose of the blog as a whole, and of individual blog posts is clear to students. Without this, students may lose sight of the end goal of the blog and let their contributions slide. Students are less likely to put effort into formative assessment if they cannot see how this will help them with the summative. Useful questions to answer….

• What skills are you expecting students to have or develop – what support is there for this (Linkedin Learning, writing style/tone, etc)?
• How will students know when, what and how much to post?
• How will you ensure the blogs have academic validity?
• What criteria will you use?
• How will you mark it (feedback sheets or direct annotation on the blog)? What criteria will you use?
• Does the blog need to be locked down: are you assessing their ability to blog (ongoing) or a specific point in time, especially if it is a summative assessment?
• Will the blog be public or viewable only by you and the student?
• How long will students be expected to use the blog?
• Is any specialist training needed in order for the students to be able to use the platform?

The UCL blogging service, Reflect , is straightforward to set up.

Following set -up, you will need to respond to student queries and remind them of the rubrics, marking criteria and module learning outcomes.

As this media form may be novel for students, you may need to offer individual advice on how to regulate writing or posts to maximise responses.

Plan to assess early when students are posting and commenting frequently. Students who receive feedback early on will continue to post and comment throughout the module

Other useful questions to ask are:

•            Will the blog be public or viewable only by you and the student?

•            How long will students be expected to use the blog- how long should blog be live after the assessment deadline?

•            Is any specialist training or resources that students can access to develop the digital skills required?

• Medical Science students use UCL Reflect to create scientific blogs for assessment  
• Blogging as a method of assessment [LSE]
• Assessing blogs [University of New South Wales]

Keywords | Formative or summative   | Ease of setting up   |   When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations  |  Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

Publication; journals; newsletter; magazine.

It can be used for both.

Relatively easy. Guidance in the form of ‘Guides for Authors’ is needed to shape assessment criteria and rubrics.

Students are asked to write as if for a journal, newsletter or magazine submissions.

• This can be a very authentic assessment method, of which students can recognise the value;
• They can helpfully prescribe wordage, referencing, style etc.;
• By emulating the writing of published resources, students may develop a better appreciation of how journal articles are organised and structured, which might make them more usable in their information searches.
• Full length journal articles are lengthy to assess;
• students may see the task as rather daunting and the requirements may be unfamiliar.

What can it assess

• Knowledge, critical analysis, writing and academic skills, employability/higher level study prepapartion.

Considerations (workload, timings, inclusiveness, etc

• Students will need careful briefing of requirements so they can fully appreciate the task;
• A side benefit is that if they are really good, the student can consider submitting for actual publication: quite a few do, and some succeed. Some journals for undergraduate research or student engagement also provide useful opportunities;

There are online journal platforms (such as PKP) that allow for rapid setting up for online submission of articles or working papers. These may be used for outwards facing student publication or professional communication.

• Assessing students' multimedia work [UCL Toolkit]
• Open Journal Systems

Keywords | Formative or summative   | Ease of setting up   |   When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations  |  Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

Guides; leaflets; documents.

Ease of setting up

Relatively easy. Guidance is needed to shape assessment criteria and rubrics.

As an alternative to producing a published paper, students can be asked to produce a guide, infographic, graphic novel, video, explainer, diagrams with exploded text, workshop guide, instruction manual or similar, which educates a specified audience about a complex topic.

These can be undertaken individually as ‘chapters,’ which are collated into a folio/booklet to encourage collaboration.

• Students can often see the point of preparing outputs which have the potential for actually being used by the target group, as opposed to jumping through assessment hoops simply to please a marker;
• where these are applied (e.g. a guide for professionals, or members of public etc.) they can be highly motivating forms of assessment;
• drafts and finished versions are amenable to submit for review and constructive feedback from a range of audiences, including the intended audience;
• readily adaptable to promote and foster collaborative, asynchronous approaches to (online) working within peer groups, thus building learning resources and communities (especially important when remote working likely).

Students can get carried away with the novelty of the format, so guidance is important.

Professional knowledge and communication.

It might be a good idea to require students to submit assignment checklists which help guide them to consider all the key features you are looking for. If these are generated in advance by the teaching team in dialogue this will help ensure staff have shared expectations and standards.

Be careful to issue indicative expectations of workload and remember to include time for learning how to use tools, for example video or audio editing software. A lack of equipment might prevent some students from participating fully.

Evaluation; assessment for learning; sustainable assessment; peer assessment; self-regulated learning.

Ease to set up

Relatively easy.

Staff can set evaluative tasks which require students to carefully choose and evaluate, say three, websites or similar on a given topic.

• Careful and challenging question-setting for tightly focused assessment tasks (see “considerations”) can focus students on achieving high-order learning outcomes while focusing on choosing personalised source materials to evaluate/review;
• students are likely to perceive that the task requires original thought and their own voice, so boosting a sense of academic integrity and authenticity, as well as allowing you to spot similarities;
• avoids students simply cutting and pasting from the wealth of material they can find, while allowing students the flexibility to source a variety of material (rather than rely on a few sources).
• Students who have previously become familiar with tried and tested surface approaches to gathering academic material for their reports or essays may need support/briefing and practice in tackling the task effectively;
• If the task involves sustained access to websites or data bases, digital equity may be an issue.
• Evaluative judgement is the capability to make decisions about the quality of work   of oneself and others;
• Evaluative judgement is the capability to make decisions about the quality of work   of oneself and others
• Evaluative judgement to help critical analysis. Considerations (workload, timings, inclusiveness, etc.

Ensure clear instructional guidance. For example: 

Avoid: Explain the effects of obesity on public health.   Instead use: Create a set of five criteria and standards for judging the quality of websites about obesity, and apply your criteria/standards to three websites, one of which is the best and one of which is the worst  (adapted from ‘Designing out plagiarism: A brief guide for busy academics’, University of Surrey).

Avoid: Compare and contrast economic theories X and Y.   Instead use: Locate three websites or printed texts that deal with X economic theory, then contrast the views expressed in these sources with the economic situation in country Y, and make recommendations for this country’s economic future (adapted from Carroll, J., & Appleton, J., 2001, ‘Plagiarism: A good practice guide’)”.

Design clear assessment task and brief. There are no particular challenges for going digital.

Tai, Joanna & Ajjawi, Rola & Boud, David & Dawson, Phillip & Panadero, Ernesto. (2018). Developing evaluative judgement: enabling students to make decisions about the quality of work. Higher Education. 6. 467-481. 10.1007/s10734-017-0220-3.

Keywords | Formative or summative   | When to use | Advantages | Disadvantages | What it can assess | Considerations  |  Design | Going digital: challenges and considerations  | Key resources

Annotated bibliography; formative assessment.

Generally used for formative assessment.

Students are required to list and discuss a number of references on a particular topic, explaining how they located them, why they chose these rather than other references, what they learned from them and how they can apply the learning to their particular contexts.

They are often used early in a programme when students are learning how to manage information prior to essay writing.

May take the form of a short summary paragraph per paper, or some form of a summary table, bullet points or audio files.

• This is a useful way to engage students with the relevant literature, rather than just collecting information on it, thereby building information literacy;
• candidates can demonstrate their depth of study of the sources and the breadth of the source material they have reviewed;
• encourages reading full article rather than a surface scan. Can be used to engage with methodology and their impact on conclusions;
• well established assessment method with wider range of support material online;
• plagiarism is limited. Although students may choose the same sources, it would be easy to spot identical annotations.
• Students do not write extended critical text, this is short prose;
• students might be unfamiliar with this form of assessment – needs clear expectations and alignment;
• students may find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer range of resources available and may have poor information retrieval skills at the outset;
• some students from cultures where set texts are used, or where teachers mandate the reference sources they are to use, may find the open-endedness of the task scary.

Where you want a student to explore articles or text in depth. Introduction to literature or deeper critical engagement with literature.

Support development of critical reasoning skills, evaluative skills.

Serves as preparation for writing longer essays and dissertations.

• Will you provide the refences or expect the students to seek their own?
• Will you give a specific topic or a wide area of study?
• Is the assessment standalone, or feeing into future work?
• Specify expect number of references and/or word count (e.g. 10-20 references).

If early in studies, student might need support in accessing material, including search engines and quality control of source material.

A collection of annotated bibliographies can be turned into a resource-bank and issued to future students as a starting place for them to develop their own bibliographies.

• Writing an annotated bibliography [University of Toronto]

Glossary of assessment related terms

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | X | Y | Z

This is a reference list where the student has added extra information on each reference given. Usually, this extra information will summarise and critically explore the reference it concerns. Though the norm is for the extra information to take the form of a short paragraph, it may take many different forms depending on the specific requirements laid out in the assessment criteria. For example, the assessment criteria may state that the information should be presented in bullet points, as audio files, etc.    

This should detail exactly what students are required to do and must align with the data stored in Portico and published on the Module Catalogue. Moodle should be used to amplify and support that information, perhaps to include sources of advice, etc.  

These are the details that explains what evidence the candidate needs to demonstrate (e.g. knowledge, or a skill, etc.) in order to attain a  particular grade  or level. They are detailed enough to be able to demonstrate how an assessment will be marked. If you are using rubrics or grading forms, make these available as a part of the criteria.  

For assessment purposes, you should focus on assessments that are asynchronous but need to be completed by a  particular deadline .  Synchronous assessments are risky in that they rely on specific access and they should only be attempted with significant support/advice from the ISD.  

A blog is a website or webpage that is updated by the student throughout a course or assessment period; it details, for example, a learning journey. You can use these are part of an on-going assessment as a type of journal – they can be formative and summative – it depends on how you want students to use them to evidence their learning.   

These are assessments which mean students will be evaluated against some specific learning, behaviour, or performance objective. This objective, and/or the level of performance that represents "competency" is clearly established in the curriculum and represents an expected level of expertise or mastery of skills or knowledge.  

  'Constructive alignment' starts with the notion that the learner constructs his or her own learning through relevant learning activities. We therefore need to create a learning environment that supports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the desired learning outcomes of the module and programme. All components (the curriculum and its intended outcomes, the teaching methods used, the learning activities designed and the assessment tasks) - are aligned to each other. The learner finds it difficult to escape without learning appropriately.

A course report is a selection of notes an academic will make during a student’s study, usually over the course of the module. Usually, this report will consider the student’s input in the lectures and/or seminars. It may take several forms, from short written notes to a tick box sheet.  

A dissertation is a large body of work which provides students the opportunity to engage in independent research study. A dissertation is not a long essay, but rather a review of different points of view about the subject. It should also include original research, which may be designed to test hypotheses and to further understanding of the topic.  

An essay is a written text exploring a  particular subject . They are useful in online learning settings as students can upload drafts, build work using patchwork assessments and then submit a final assignment via a VLE or similar.   

it should be noted that managing the access to online examination settings, providing remote invigilation and ensuring that students abide by criteria for resources, e.g. open book. Are all validated and agreed. These situations need careful handling, explanation and might need additional IT security.   

' In-tray’ exams   can take the form of exams where candidates are already provided with factual detail about a scenario (for example, the staffing and facilities of a hospital ward, or a business portfolio) and are given time to familiarise themselves with the information provided.  Managing the use of materials for online testing situations is complex and would need professional support.  

Open-book exams  where candidates are provided with texts or journal articles and sometimes, reference materials of their own choice, to be used in an examination setting. The advantages include reducing the emphasis on memory recall. A disadvantage can occur if different candidates have different resources to use.  Managing the use of materials for online testing situations is complex and would need professional support.  

Open-notes exams   where candidates  are allowed to  bring in with them a limited quantity of prepared material – handwritten or word-processed – to assist them in answering the exam questions.  Managing the use of materials for online testing situations is complex and would need professional support.  

Oral exams  

An oral examination is an assessment conducted through speech. The candidate may propose an argument and then provide evidence to prove or disprove it, while the examiner  is allowed to  discuss, debate and ask further questions.  

Takeaway exams  can be where candidates are given a question paper or task to take out of the exam room and asked to submit their answers  at a later time  in the same day (or beyond). Such exams can have the advantage of simulating real-world situations, where people  are allowed to  use resource materials and talk to other people when solving problems.  Managing the use of materials for online testing situations is complex and would need professional support.  

Timed online exams

AssessmentUCL and Quiz tools in Moodle can be used to schedule online, timed tests or exams. Quizzes and tests can be set up to:  

• be taken during a specific time period (e.g. on a specific day or at any time during a specific week)  
• have a time limit, requiring the student to complete the quiz or test within a specified timeframe (e.g. 60 minutes from the time they begin)  

An exercise or task set by the examiner will help determine the student’s aptitude. Exercises and tasks vary from subject to subject and from examiner to examiner. For example, field work provides an opportunity for assessed on-site work on a project in a context relating to the subject.  

Feedback is information given to the learner about the learner’s performance relative to  learning goals or outcomes. It should aim to (and be capable of) producing improvement in  students’ learning.

Feedback redirects or refocuses either the teacher’s or the learner’s actions  to achieve a goal, by aligning effort and activity with an outcome. It can be about the output of  the activity, the process of the activity, the student’s management of their learning or self-regulation, or them as individuals.

This feedback can be verbal or written, or can be given  through tests or via digital technology. It can come from a teacher or someone taking a  teaching role, or from peers. 

A ctionable feedback (also known as ‘feed-forward) specifically identifies what needs improvement and offers a plan of action to make the necessary improvement possible.  

Formative assessment refers to any form of assessment, such as quizzes, tests, essays, projects, interviews, or presentations, in which the goal is to give students feedback about their work while it is in progress, to help students correct errors or missteps, or to improve the work along the way to the final product. In contrast,  summative evaluation  is to make a judgment about a final product or about the quality of performance at the end of an instructional unit or course.  

Group presentation  

A group presentation where two or more students work collaboratively to present a piece of work. It may be an oral, visual, poster or written presentation.  

Group project report  

A group project report is a log of the entire process of creating a group project. Usually, it is written in conjunction with a group project or presentation.  

Peer review exercises  

A peer review exercise is one in which students review each other’s work and have a critical dialogue concerning it.  

A wiki is a website or database developed collaboratively by a community of users, in this case students, allowing any user to add and edit content.  

A lab notebook is a primary method of research – for example, the physical paper that chemists use to write down their results in the lab. It is used by researchers as a memory aid, an organizational tool and to document their experiments, hypotheses and initial analysis.  

A learning objective is a specific statement that describes what the student is to learn, understand, or to be able to do as a result of a lesson or a series of lessons.  

A learning outcome represents what the student  actually achieved  as a result of a lesson or a series of lessons. The success of lessons may be influenced by the students' prior knowledge, their effort and attention, teaching methods, resources, and time. Learning outcomes refer to the  results  of instruction, while learning objectives refer to the intended  goals and purposes  of lessons.  

A literature review is a secondary source, as it does not propose any new or original experimental work. It includes findings relevant to a  particular topic , as well as pre-existing theoretical and methodical ideas.  

Multiple-choice questions are a method of assessment where a candidate is tasked with selecting the right answer (or answers) from a list of incorrect answers. It may be taken in timed conditions, as part of a formal examination, or in an informal setting; it is possible to use these effectively in online settings and they can both computer and human marked.   

A podcast is a recorded speech,  similar to  an essay but spoken aloud. The candidate will gather information on a subject and present it in audio form, usually within a given duration.  

  A practical examination is an examination of a candidate’s practical skills. For example, a chemistry practical examination may involve a supervised experiment, where the candidate’s method and practises are assessed.  

Reflective writing involves producing an analytical written piece in which the candidate describes an event or idea, thinking in depth and from differing perspectives, and trying to analyse the item, often referencing a previous model or theory on the subject.  

A research plan is a proposed idea for a study (or gathering of research) on a  particular subject . The proposal should cover what questions will be asked and how, any prior research that has taken place on the subject, how the results will be evaluated and how much time the process will take.  

A rubric is a chart or plan that identifies criteria for evaluating a piece of a student's work, be it an essay test, a paper, or some other student production. The best rubrics offer the clearest details for each category of evaluation so that a student's products can be evaluated consistently.   

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of a module by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative assessments are often high stakes as they credit and/or professional recognition is awarded on successful completion.

Validity is a term that describes how well a test, or a test item, measures what it claims to measure, accurately predicts a behaviour, or accurately contributes to decision making about the presence or absence of a characteristic.  It is vital that all assessments have strong validity so that they meet the required standards within the university for all phases of learning.    

  A video report is a presentation via video (and often audio) on a  particular subject . The report will take on a structured narrative  similar to  that of an essay, but with the evidence, analysis and conclusions all taking place in video format.  

Download a Word version of the 'Guide to effective online assessment'

Further support

The UCL Arena team member assigned to your Faculty are also available to provide advice on both assessment design and marking/feedback considerations for each approach. 

The Arena teaching fellows are assigned to faculties as follows:

• Bartlett  – Alex Standen and Brent Carnell
• Engineering  – Nick Grindle
• Maths and Physical Sciences   – Peter Fitch 
• Brain Sciences  – Karen Matthewman
• Life Sciences   – Martin Compton
• Population Health Sciences  – Rebecca Lindner 
• Medical Sciences  – Jenny Griffiths
• Joint Faculties  –  Jesper Hansen – (A & H) and Jason Davies
• Laws   – Alex Standen
• IoE   – Silvia Colaiacomo

UCL Changemakers  in Arena provides support and guidance for staff/student partnerships, including co-design of assessment.

For questions, suggestions or feedback, email the  Teaching Continuity mailbox .

Further information

Word version of the 'Guide to effective online assessment'

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Assessment | Career and Technical Education (CTE) | Classroom Planning

Formative vs. Summative Assessments: What's the Difference?

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March 19th, 2024 | 8 min. read

Brad Hummel

Coming from a family of educators, Brad knows both the joys and challenges of teaching well. Through his own teaching background, he’s experienced both firsthand. As a writer for iCEV, Brad’s goal is to help teachers empower their students by listening to educators’ concerns and creating content that answers their most pressing questions about career and technical education.

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Whether you’re an administrator, supervisor, or teacher, you’ve heard of formative assessments and summative assessments . They're both essential parts of any curriculum map . But what do these terms actually mean?

In a nutshell, formative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how someone is learning material throughout a course .

Summative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how much someone has learned throughout a course .

In the classroom, that means formative assessments take place during a course, while summative assessments are the final evaluations at the course’s end. 

That's the simple answer, but there's actually a lot more that makes formative and summative assessments different. To fully understand formative vs. summative assessments, you'll need to understand the details of these two important forms of assessment.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at formative and summative quizzing and assessing. When you've finished reading, you'll understand how to better test student knowledge in your classroom.

What Are Formative Assessments?

Formative assessments are evaluations of someone’s learning progress in a classroom.

Common formative assessments include:

• Presentations
• Group activities

Formative assessments work great when they’re used on a regular basis. That regularity could be based on a calendar (every Monday, every Thursday, etc.) or your lesson plans (every unit).

They’re also more flexible than summative assessments. You don’t always have to use pencil and paper to get a feel for your students’ progress. Instead, you can use in-class games, group presentations, and hands-on activities to evaluate student progress.

Ultimately, the formative assessments you use are up to you. After all, no one knows your classes better than you. So if you’d prefer to get an overview of how well your students are learning, you can use a group-style assessment like a game. If you want to know where each student struggles, you can use an individual assessment like a quiz.

This flexibility is perfect for keeping students engaged in your class. It lets you stick to a syllabus while mixing up the exact task each student has to perform. That way, you don’t fall into a predictable routine of teach-test-teach-test. Instead, you have a varied routine of teach-game-quiz-teach-presentation-project or another interesting format.

By the time your course ends, you’ll have a full understanding of how students are learning as you teach a subject. Then, you can keep all of your grades to look for patterns among different class sections.

Is there an area where students seem to do worse than others? Could you adjust a lesson and shoot for better results?

Naturally, you’ll never get a class that’s straight A’s from top to bottom. But you can still design your classroom assessments to work for as many students as possible!

Top 3 Formative Assessment Examples

Formative assessments are excellent opportunities to let your students flex their creative muscles.

Even if a student isn’t much of a writer or artist, they can still have a little fun with these assessments.

1. Make an Advertisement

Have your students create an advertisement for a concept they just learned. Use visuals and text to really sell an idea.

This makes students apply what they’ve learned into a creative exercise, which helps with long-term retention.

2. Idea Comparisons

Instruct students to lay out the main ideas of a new concept they learned. Then, have them compare that concept to another to see where they agree and disagree.

In addition to helping students remember these concepts, this exercise makes them apply previous knowledge to a new format so they can remember it better in the future.

3. Misconceptions

After you introduce a concept to students, introduce a popular misconception about it. Have students discuss why the misconception is false and where it may have started.

This exercise makes students think critically about what they’ve just learned while showing them how to debunk misinformation.  

How Do You Track Formative Assessments?

You can track formative assessments in one of three ways: by grade, by feel, and with student data .

Let's take a closer look at using each of these methods to monitor student progress.

Track by Grade

First, you can track them by grade . This gives you a specific, concentrated view of how a student (or group of students) learns. However, graded assessments are sources of stress for many students. So if you want to make a unit fun or loose, graded assessments may not work well for you. 

Track by Feel

Second, you can track them by feel . This is more based on your teacher instinct, allowing you to pick which students need additional support based on your observation. On the downside, you can’t “show” this information to your administrators. If you have certain standards to meet throughout a marking period, you won’t be able to prove you’ve fulfilled those standards without grades.

Track with Student Data

Finally, you can track formative assessments with  student data . This is non-graded information that may reflect how your students are learning, such as questions they've frequently answered incorrectly or subject areas where they've had trouble. After all, not everything has to be a grade!

When you have a comprehensive data management system in place, tracking with student data can be the most effective way to measure student progress.

With all of that said and done, let’s next consider summative assessments.

What Are Summative Assessments?

Summative assessments are evaluations of what someone has learned throughout a course. 

Common summative assessments include:

• Final exams
• End-of-class projects

Summative assessments almost always take place at the end of a course unless a teacher decides to break a course into more manageable chunks. They’re often cumulative, and they’re used to evaluate a student’s long-term information retention.

In summative assessments like final exams , you can include questions from the first week or two of a course to ensure students retained introductory information. In other assessments like papers, your students can pull from a full marking period of learning to apply to a topic.

Either way, your students have to do some serious reflecting and critical thinking to bring together the information from an entire course.

This is a great way to ensure students retain essential information from one course to another. So if you teach introductory courses, summative assessments are perfect to set students up for success in their next classes.

That’s important because a student’s success in your classroom is just one step for them. When you prepare them for the next step, you make it easier for them to succeed in the future as well.

In that way, summative assessments serve two purposes:

First , they evaluate what someone learned while they’ve been in your class.

Second , they evaluate how prepared someone is to go to the next academic level.

Combined with the rest of a student’s performance in class, summative quizzing and assessments are excellent ways to gauge progress while ensuring long-term information retention.

Top 3 Summative Assessment Examples

Summative assessments are traditionally more structured and standardized than formative assessments.

Still, you have a few options to shake things up that go beyond a pen-and-paper test.

1. In-depth reports

Instruct students to choose a topic that resonated with them in class and report in-depth on it. This is a great opportunity for students to take an idea and run with it under your supervision.

These reports often showcase a student’s interest, and you’ll be able to evaluate a student’s engagement level in the class by how they approach the report.

The goal is a passionate, intelligent, and comprehensive examination of a concept that matters to a student. 

2. Cumulative, individual projects

Have your students pick a project to complete. This project should somehow reflect what they’ve learned throughout the course.

Projects are great for any practical application class from health science to physics. Creating a cross-section of the human heart, designing a diet, or creating a protective egg-drop vessel are all fun ways students can show off their knowledge of a topic.

3. Personal evaluation papers

Require students to apply principles from your class to their personal lives. These papers are excellent fits for psychology, nutrition, finance, business, and other theory-based classes.

In a nutshell, personal evaluations let students look at themselves through a different lens while exploring the nuances of the principles they learned in class.  Plus, it lets students do something everyone loves — talk about themselves!

Now that you have a few ideas on summative assessments, how can you track their success?

How Do You Track Summative Assessments?

While everyone has their own ideas on this topic, grades are the best way to evaluate someone’s success with a summative assessment.

How you grade is ultimately up to you. Presentations are great ways to grade someone based on a number of factors, including soft skills like public speaking. Written exams or project-based assessments are ideal to see a student’s full-scope understand of your class after a marking period.

Whatever you choose, stick to a consistent grading scale so you can identify your own strengths and weaknesses in the classroom as students complete your course. 

What’s More Important: Formative or Summative Assessments?

Many new teachers have this question — are formative or summative assessments more important?

In a perfect world, they’re equally important. Formative assessments let students show that they’re learning, and summative assessments let them show what they’ve learned.

But American public education values summative assessments over formative assessments. Standardized tests — like the SATs — are great examples of high-value summative assessments.

It’s rare to find the same emphasis on formative quizzing and assessments. That’s because formative assessments act like milestones while summative assessments show the bottom line.

We encourage teachers to look at these assessments as two sides of the same coin. Formative and summative assessments work together flawlessly when implemented properly.

With all of that in mind, you only have one question left to answer. How are you going to add these assessments to your curriculum ?

Use Formative and Summative Assessments and Meet Your Challenges

As a teacher, you’ll likely need to employ both summative and formative assessments in your curriculum. An effective balance of these assessments will help you understand your students’ needs while meeting your standards.

However, CTE teachers face challenges in the classroom each day that sometimes get in the way of connecting with students and preparing them for these assessments.

If you want to feel less overwhelmed and spend more time helping your students succeed, download your free guide . You’ll learn about five of the most significant challenges teachers face and how you can overcome them.

Economics Formative Coursework Essay

The main issue that needs to be addressed under the case is the concern of market failure. The growth in cities has pressured urban transportation systems characterized by congestion and delays. The problem has further caused an escalation in health challenges propagated by the adverse effects of the unsustainable transport system. The primary argument is on the poor allocation of merit goods and the inefficient allocation of resources resulting in negative externalities, which require appropriate solutions.

Failure by Urban Transport Systems to Deliver Efficient Market

Market failure occurs once the market needs to provide an adequate quantity of a product to meet the demand in the market or what is provided is inferior quality. There are four main market failure types: public goods, monopoly, externality, and information asymmetry. Market failure is denoted by a high level of inefficiency or poor allocation of resources as a result of the shortcomings of the market (Gillespie, 2019). As a result, the market becomes chaotic since individual decisions cannot result in the good of the public resulting in negative externalities.

Figure 1 above visualizes the problem of market failure involving the public transport system. The diagram indicates that point A is the equilibrium point where the supply equals market demand; at this point, MPB = MPC. However, when the supply goes down, the supply curve shifts to the left such that equilibrium shifts from point A to B. Therefore, a shortfall in supply causes a negative externality since demand cannot go down despite a fall in supply.

The negative externality that affects the transport system gives rise to several challenges leading to the increased preference for private transport, as the public system is ineffective. The trend further introduces health challenges, and the increased emission of greenhouse gases leads to climate change. There is a need for a sustainable transport system to be established to provide a safe system without compromising people’s health and the destruction of the environment.

Policy Option to Ensure Efficient and Sustainable Urban Transport Systems in the Future: Subsidy

Investment in the transport system is capital-intensive and would require the government to develop incentives to attract private involvement to remedy the situation. One critical approach the government can consider is providing incentives, which will bring down the cost of acquiring the equipment needed to attract the public to prefer the public transport system. The government facilitates a subsidy as an advantage to a person, a business entity, or an institution to entice them to participate in providing goods or services for the public good. The government can provide the subsidy directly by giving monetary payments or reducing prices (Gillespie, 2019). An indirect subsidy is provided through various means, including a favorable tax regime, labor benefits, and enhanced welfare programs. The intention is to relieve the investor of the burdens they face in providing goods and services that benefit the general public. They help support market behavior that will result in positive externalities.

Figure 2 above shows the reverse of the first diagram due to the introduction of subsidies. The subsidies introduced by the government will support investment that will improve the quality of public transport. The increased supply of public transport services will cause the supply curve to shift from left to right resulting in positive externalities. Therefore, the equilibrium point will shift from C to D.

An example is when the government offers subsidies to private investors in a public rail transport system in a city. The system’s efficiency will attract more users from the public, hence reducing the number of private cars on roads, reducing congestion on the roads, accidents, and pollution due to gas emissions.

Introducing subsidies may attract new entrants, which will increase competition leading to better services following the participation of more players. It will further boost the provision of merit goods that generate positive externalities. On the contrary, subsidies may force the government to divert resources from preference areas to support a few businesses. Gillespie (2019) states that the population may suffer due to a lack of other essential services. Subsidies can distort the market as they involve a monetary gain rather than enhanced efficiency. The government may face challenges in removing the subsidies once people become accustomed to their benefits.

Considering the positive externalities of the solution, the policy should be adopted.

Policy Option to Ensure Efficient and Sustainable Urban Transport Systems in the Future: Odd-Even Rule

The government can consider implementing traffic restrictions based on even-and odd-numbered license plate systems. The system works by setting conditions or specific routes to be used by cars depending on whether they have an odd- or even-numbered number plate. The decision can involve indicating the days when odd-numbered and even-numbered vehicles can use the roads.

Restricting the number of private cars on the roads through the odd-even rule will reduce the number of cars on the public transport system. As a result, there will be a shift in the demand curve from right to left such that the equilibrium shifts from point G to H. Therefore, more people will have to use the public transport system, which means fewer cars on the roads.

The odd-even rule has been applied successfully in India to manage pollution in New Delhi, particularly during Diwali celebrations when the smog increases. However, the government made exceptions for using electric cars and two-wheelers.

The approach helps reduce gas emissions since the number of cars on the road is restricted, thus reducing pollution. In addition, fewer cars on the public transport system reduce congestion and accidents, ensuring the population enjoys a higher quality of life (Gillespie, 2019). However, the policy may inconvenience many people since they would feel that their freedoms are being interfered with by the state. The government can be exposed to activist acts from human rights bodies, including legal action.

The odd-even rule is suitable in modern and organized cities where the public transport system is efficient. We may need a better transport system to be effectively deployed in cities with a poor transport system as it will significantly inconvenience the citizens.

Policy Option to Ensure Efficient and Sustainable Urban Transport Systems in the Future: Subsidize the Use of Clean Energy Sources

The government can create a friendly operating environment by subsidizing sustainable means of transport that involve the use of clean sources of energy, such as electricity.

Government subsidies targeting to promote the use of clean energy will boost preference for sustainable means of transport, especially the use of electric cars. The solution will introduce positive externalities since there will be less pollution, reducing the effects of climate change (Gillespie, 2019). As indicated in figure 3 above, an increase in the demand for electric cars will cause the demand curve to shift from left to right; hence the equilibrium will move from E to F.

The United States is among the top countries that produce a vast amount of carbon gas emissions to the environment. The government can subsidize the large-scale use of electric cars, such as from companies like tesla.

The increased use of electric cars will reduce the amount of carbon gas emissions to the environment and ultimately reduce pollution and the effects of climate change. However, the technology is capital-intensive since the production of cars is at an early stage of development, and the necessary infrastructure, including charging points, must be developed.

In the short term, the solution can be avoided as the government supports basic programs that will facilitate implementation in the long run.

In conclusion, the government can consider supporting businesses by providing subsidies to promote the use of renewable energy. Supporting the private sector will create jobs by attracting colossal investment and supporting cities’ better development. Additionally, the government can engage in more than one policy action. For instance, while providing subsidies in one city, the administration can implement travel restrictions in another part of the city where the approach would not cause significant inconveniences and would be more acceptable to the population.

Reference List

Gillespie A.R. (2019) Foundations in Economics. 5 th Ed. Oxford University Press

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IvyPanda. (2023, December 4). Economics Formative Coursework. https://ivypanda.com/essays/economics-formative-coursework/

"Economics Formative Coursework." IvyPanda , 4 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/economics-formative-coursework/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Economics Formative Coursework'. 4 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Economics Formative Coursework." December 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/economics-formative-coursework/.

1. IvyPanda . "Economics Formative Coursework." December 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/economics-formative-coursework/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Economics Formative Coursework." December 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/economics-formative-coursework/.

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March 8th, 2023

How to make the most of formative coursework feedback.

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Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Formative assessments are a handy tool for understanding where you stand academically, and they’re worth completing if you have the time. I’ve experienced my fair share of formative assessments during my three years at LSE, and from the essays I’ve submitted, I’ve collated my guidelines for making the most out of the feedback you receive. 

One of the first things to do when you receive feedback is to read it. This may seem obvious, but many people are so preoccupied with the grade that they don’t read the teacher’s comments. It is important to take a thorough look at what your teacher has written in response to your work. Sometimes, when you are given a high grade, it is tempting to just celebrate that without really looking at what has been written. Whether you received positive feedback, negative feedback  or a mixture of both, the most beneficial approach to take is to read it all. Once you’ve done this, you can make a note of what you did well and what you can improve on next time. Some departments do not provide a grade, but will give you comments. If you feel as though you’d like a more concrete assessment of your work, it’s a good idea to compare the comments with the mark scheme. Here, you can usually get a rough idea of your grade by deciphering the language used. 

Secondly, don’t just focus on the positive comments. This is very tempting, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t respond well to negative feedback. However, it’s helpful to re-frame the comments in your mind and try to see them from a different perspective. If you have a mindset that understands the importance of continual improvement, then you will take note of what has been said and make a note of which areas you need to work on. It also helps to know that your teacher is on your side. When teachers mark your work and point out areas for improvement, they are trying to help you and want you to succeed. Even the harshest feedback does not have the aim of fostering discouragement, but rather the aim is to help you do better next time. Taking time to look at the less positive comments will help you to implement them for your summative essay, when it really counts.

It’s also very helpful to book an office hour with the teacher who gave you the assignment. Office hours are an essential way to gain information on how to improve your technique as well as understand what your lecturer is looking for in an assignment. Often, your lecturers will give you guidance regarding where you can improve in future work that you complete, but sometimes there will be areas which may seem vague to you as a student. Booking some time to have a one-to-one chat with the teacher who gave you the feedback will provide you with some clarity if there are any ambiguous comments. If you’re someone who likes to plan ahead, an office hour will also be the perfect opportunity to run through some potential ideas for future summative essays which may be based on a similar topic to your formative essay. 

Finally, use the feedback to inform the material that you will incorporate in your summative essay. Formative essays are a great way to gauge whether you will do well in a summative essay later on in the term, and many departments will assign similar questions so that you can use some of the same content or ideas. This varies between courses, however, so make sure that you read the essay guidance carefully to avoid plagiarism. If you are allowed to reuse your formative material, pay attention to what your lecturer particularly likes and explore those ideas further. If they provide you with further options for reading, then make sure you take a look at those sources. Spending enough time reviewing your feedback will make you a better essay writer in general, and if you do it properly, you will see a definite change in your grades.

About the author

My name is Cece and I’m a final year Social Anthropology student here at LSE. I moved to the outskirts of London a few years ago having spent my formative years growing up in the countryside. Throughout my three years at LSE, I’ve lived off campus with my family which has allowed me to have a unique and lovely experience of university. As I draw close to the end of my time here, I’ve very much appreciated studying at the heart of London in one of its most exciting universities. I’m really passionate about all things creative. In my spare time, I’ve always loved to draw, read books and write. I’m currently in the middle of writing a novel, something that I’ve been working on for 3 years. Outside of this, you can usually find me practicing the bass guitar, playing the piano, or singing a tune, all of which I also do most Sundays at my church!

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What Is Formative Coursework?

For students, this is the time when they really start to learn and form their opinions and concepts. It’s also when they start to try to figure out what they want to do with their lives. For example, if you were going into motorsport as a young adult, you would most likely have a few key objectives – such as reading more, gaining more knowledge, finding a career, and so forth. During this time of education, students should be thinking about their goals and trying to determine which path will be the best for them to take. This is the basic coursework that students must take during their time in education.

Unfortunately, there are people out there who abuse the system and try to take advantage of the students. They strategically plan their courses in order to give the impression of importance to the student. They will often alter class requirements in order to meet “exam requirements” or to “meet certain GPA requirements.” During the course of their studies, students should be thinking about what they want out of their education and career. They should be asking themselves how long they want to take this course, what will they be studying, and what will happen throughout the years.

You, as a teacher, can help your students answer these questions by being informative and encouraging. Be sure to use language that students can understand, and always use real examples when discussing topics in class. For example, if you are discussing constructions, you could use an example, such as the ABCs, to show how each word is formed.

Students have a lot to learn in this new academic era, so it is important to keep things interesting. One way that you can do this is to provide students with multiple examples of what is formative coursework. You may not want to spend one whole class talking about this coursework, but provide a few handouts or other items that explain concepts to students in class. This will give them something to study because they won’t have to read something from a book. You will also be able to teach them a little bit more while they are in class.

Another thing to consider is the organization of the coursework. Students need to learn where they can find their notes and take them with them. Keep a small pen and paper on hand, and make sure you keep track of your class schedule – especially the set schedule for essay and papers. You will need to schedule your time accordingly, and students will most likely appreciate having some control over the order of their assignments.

Finally, remember that students are working on what is Formative Coursework, so they need to be treated with respect and dignity. When they are doing their research and looking at various examples of the course, they should be able to ask a question if they do not understand. You should also allow them to do a follow up if they did not like an example of your course. It is your job as the teacher to let them know that you respect their time and that you expect to provide them with answers to all of the questions they have.

Formative courses can be the first step in a student’s educational career. They can help prepare them for the rigors of higher education. They can also help prepare them for the realities of work and career – and what kind of job might fit them. If students do not learn what is Formative Coursework, then chances are that they will never learn it.

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We’re thrilled to announce that a brand new Formative Certified Educator (FCE) course is in the works!

We’re thrilled to announce that a brand new Formative Certified Educator (FCE) course is in the works! This Spring, we’ll be bringing you an even better FCE experience that includes updated training on our newest product features and best practices for using Formative in your classroom. That means, while we’re hard at work creating a new course, the previous FCE course will not be available. But the learning doesn’t have to stop! Keep your Formative skills sharp with our lesson library !

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Build your entire course for free in Formative and start teaching and assessing right away! (That's right, no trial here.) ‍

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Setting up your team for data driven conversations, whether you’re an individual free user or a partner user with extended features, supports student growth through powerful professional learning communities. If you are an individual user, consider bringing your Formative data to conversations with the team.

When your team is creating and assigning common assessments in Formative, you can completely customize your assessments to meet your learning targets, and by tagging your questions to standards you can view student’s individual areas for growth on the standard level. This enables you and your team members to provide targeted reinstruction to close gaps and make the most out of your instructional minutes.

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Formative is flexible by design, and is used by teachers all over the world in a variety of formats. Not only is it a powerful tool for formative assessment, but it allows you to provide differentiated learning activities, projects, digital portfolios, and more! Integrated Formative assessment questions, or checks for understanding, within your lessons provide you the information needed to make changes to instruction, or form a small group for reteaching, but when you do this in Formative, you’ll receive comprehensive data - no more pulling popsicle sticks and getting scattered feedback on your teaching. With your formative assessment questions built into your lesson and Formative’s live data, you’ll be able to make informed decisions quickly!

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In this final portion of our learning we will be learning about how to use your data to form groups for differentiated instruction, sending powerful feedback that makes your assessment formative, and an upcoming release - progress reports! By looking at how to use the student data you receive, you can complete the formative feedback loop, by providing students with their next steps on their path to continue to accelerate student growth. Progress reports will provide a holistic view of both whole class and individual student progress, all calculated by the standard, to know your student’s by name and need, enabling you to accelerate student learning through formative assessment.

We’ll conclude our learning with the capstone project, found here. ‍

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In the capstone you will create a Formative to use with a planned lesson, including reflection on how the data received will inform your teaching. You can use whatever lesson planning format you prefer, and you can also submit a summary of how the Formative will be used.

Once you submit the Capstone project, the lesson and reflection a Formative team member will review all your submitted materials and application and will reach out to let you know you are now a Certified Formative Educator!

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Educators completing this course who submit a Capstone Project as specified above will be awarded a completion certificate and badge. If you haven't submitted your Capstone Project yet, please click the button below to submit it now. Once submitted, your Capstone Project will be reviewed by a Formative team member and you will be notified once a certificate and a badge have been issued for you. Please allow 2 weeks for our team to complete the review process.