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Home » Blog » Formative and Summative Assessments: Examples and Differences

Formative and Summative Assessments: Examples and Differences

One of the primary benefits of using formative and summative assessments is that you aren’t forced to choose between them. They work exceptionally well when used in combination.

In this article, we’ll be breaking down precisely what formative and summative assessments are, the key differences between them, the benefits of their use, and providing a range of examples to help illustrate how they can be implemented in the classroom.

If you’re looking for an effective way to assess student learning and measure progress, read on to find out how formative and summative assessments can help.

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Formative assessments: definition and purpose.

Before we get into examples of their use, it’s essential that we first define precisely what both formative and summative assessments are and how they differ.

Formative assessments are employed regularly throughout a set learning period, be that a chapter, unit, or term, and help track progress and identify areas where students may struggle or need more support.

They also give the teacher and course designer the data they need to improve the learning experience and make any necessary changes that may be required throughout a system.

Rather than strict exams, formative assessments are usually relatively low-stakes, meaning they do not always need to be graded or even marked. This helps to create a non-threatening atmosphere and encourages students to take risks in their learning without fear of failure.

Formative assessment tasks usually rely on feedback from both students and the teacher, with learners receiving feedback on performance as soon as possible.

Uses of Formative Assessments

As mentioned, one of the primary uses of a formative assessment is to gauge student understanding and identify knowledge gaps that may need extra work.

Formative assessments can also be used to help inform curricular decisions, provide valuable data on the effectiveness of a course or lesson, and allow students to monitor their progress over time.

In addition, formative assessments are valuable in helping teachers gain real-time insight into a group’s collective understanding, allowing them to rapidly adapt their training or lessons accordingly.

Benefits of Using Formative Assessments

There are a range of benefits to employing formative assessments as part of your teaching strategy, including the following:

• Improved student or employee engagement and motivation – By allowing students to track their learning journey, you can help them take ownership of their learning experience. This can be highly motivating for students, as it encourages a sense of progress and accomplishment.
• Better assessment of real-world understanding – By using formative assessments that involve practical skills or application, you can better understand how well your students understand the real-world implications of the content they are studying.
• Enables rapid identification of areas of difficulty for learners – Through formative assessments, you can quickly identify areas that students may be struggling with. This helps to ensure that these areas are addressed rapidly and effectively.
• Allows teachers to tailor their lessons to the needs of the group – Teachers and course designers can use the data from formative assessments to tailor their studies according to the group’s needs and ensure that they meet all learning objectives.

Examples of Formative Assessments

To clarify how formative assessments can be used, below are a few examples of tasks that could be used both in the classroom and in a digital learning environment.

Classroom-Based Examples

The following examples can be valuable to employ in a classroom setting:

1. Quizzes and polls

Simple and easy to execute, quizzes and polls are a low-effort way of gauging student understanding at regular intervals throughout a lesson.

2. Peer feedback and self-assessment

Peer-based feedback sessions and self-assessment questionnaires can help identify areas where students may need extra support or guidance while giving vital insight into how students perceive their progress.

3. Class discussions and debates

Encouraging students to discuss their different perspectives on a given topic or concept allows teachers to better understand how well they comprehend the material. It also gives students the opportunity to have their ideas heard and helps create a sense of solidarity within the classroom.

Online and Digital Examples

With the rise in the use of digital learning tools and technologies , there is also a range of online-based practices that can be used as formative assessments, including:

1. Interactive quizzes and games

The gamification of quizzes or other learning activities can provide an engaging way to assess student understanding and offer real-time feedback.

2. Virtual simulations and case studies

Where more vocational skills are being taught, virtual simulations and case studies can test students’ problem-solving capabilities in a low-stakes environment.

3. Online discussion forums and feedback platforms

One of the benefits of using an online learning platform is the wide range of features available to assess student understanding. Discussion forums, peer feedback platforms, and automated feedback systems can all be used as formative assessment tools.

Summative Assessments: Definition and Purpose

Compared to formative assessments, summative assessments are conducted at the end of a defined learning period and often represent the final grade for the course.

To provide a comprehensive assessment grade, summative assessments evaluate a student’s overall understanding and performance of the skill or concept studied.

They can also be used to track educational progress over time, such as in standardised testing, as well as help to inform curricular decisions and the effectiveness of teaching methods.

Uses of Summative Assessments

Summative assessments test student mastery of content, assess their overall understanding of a subject or topic area and generally give them a final mark.

For teachers and course designers, a summative assessment allows them to measure the effectiveness of their teaching and make any necessary changes or improvements.

Summative assessments can also be used to compare student performance across different classes, courses, and programs.

Benefits of Summative Assessments

As with formative assessments, there is a range of benefits associated with the use of summative assessments, including:

• Provides an overall assessment score – Summative assessments can provide a more accurate assessment of student understanding and performance, offering an overall grade or score.
• Helps track educational progress over time – Educators can track student progress to identify improvement areas through standardised testing or other summative assessments.
• Helps inform curricular decisions – Summative assessments can assess the effectiveness of a particular course or program and help inform future curricular choices.
• Offers an efficient way to measure learning outcomes – By providing an overall assessment grade, summative assessments offer a convenient way to measure the success of a teaching strategy in one go.

Examples of Summative Assessments

To clarify how summative assessments can be implemented, here are a few examples of traditional assessment methods, such as essays and exams, and performance-based assessments, such as presentations and projects.

Traditional Assessment Methods

Below are some examples of traditional assessment methods:

1. Examinations and final tests

Examinations are widely used to assess student knowledge and understanding at the end of a course or program. They are easy to implement and provide a quick and efficient way to evaluate student performance.

2. Term papers and essays

Essays and term papers are another traditional assessment method used alongside examinations. Essays test students’ ability to analyse a given topic or concept in detail, providing insight into their understanding of the subject matter.

3. Projects and presentations

Where skill-based or vocational courses are being taught, projects and presentations can test a student’s performance in class. These assessments allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter and show their ability to apply and transfer the knowledge in a practical context.

Performance-Based Assessments

Performance-based assessments are best employed when assessing practical skills or processes. Examples of performance-based summative assessments include:

1. Practical exams and demonstrations

Practical tests and demonstrations are often used to assess students’ physical abilities, such as in sports or vocational courses. These assessments test a student’s understanding of a particular skill or concept by having them demonstrate it in a real-world setting.

2. Portfolios and showcases

Where creative or design-based courses are being taught, portfolios and showcases allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts in a practical way. These assessments require students to use their creative skills to produce a tangible output, such as an artwork or multimedia presentation.

3. Capstone projects and dissertations

Dissertations and capstone projects are often used to assess students’ understanding of complex topics or skills. These assessments require students to demonstrate their knowledge of the subject matter by producing an in-depth research or project that meets specific criteria.

Critical Differences Between Formative and Summative Assessments

Now that you have a fuller understanding of what both formative and summative assessments represent and how they can be employed, here’s a summary outlining the key differences between the two:

Timing and Frequency

One of the most essential distinctions between the two types of assessment is when they are conducted. Formative assessments occur throughout the course and act as checkpoints to monitor student progress.

In contrast, summative assessments are shown at the end of a defined learning period and only count towards an overall grade or score.

Purpose and Focus

Formative assessments are designed to provide feedback on understanding and inform instruction in real-time. In contrast, summative assessments evaluate student performance of a skill or concept and can help inform curriculum decisions.

Feedback and Evaluation Process

The feedback and evaluation process for formative and summative assessments differs significantly. Formative assessments are designed to offer real-time feedback on performance.

In contrast, summative assessments provide an overall assessment score or grade that reflects the student’s understanding of the subject matter at the end of a course or program.

Which is the Right Assessment Approach to Utilise?

Choosing the correct assessment approach for your students ultimately depends on the goals you are trying to achieve, the type of course or program being taught and the knowledge and skills that need to be assessed.

To help you decide, consider the following:

Considerations for Selecting Formative Assessments

Some of the critical considerations for making use of formative assessments include:

• Regular feedback – Formative assessments should be implemented regularly to ensure students receive regular feedback on their understanding and performance.
• Low-stakes testing – As formative tests don’t count towards an overall grade, they should be designed as low-stakes tests to help encourage participation.
• Inform instruction – Formative assessment results can inform instruction in real-time, allowing educators to tailor their teaching approach to student needs.

Considerations for Selecting Summative Assessments

When making use of summative assessments, it’s essential to consider the following points:

• Assessment goals – Before designing a summative assessment, clearly define the purposes of the evaluation and how it will be used to evaluate student performance.
• Assessment criteria – When creating a summative assessment, ensure that you set clear and concise evaluation criteria that allow students to demonstrate their understanding fully.
• Inter-rater reliability – To ensure fairness and accuracy, consider having multiple assessors score each student’s work when creating a summative assessment.

Using Both Formative and Summative Assessments in Learning and Development

As mentioned, one of the primary benefits of using formative and summative assessments in learning and development is that they can provide a more comprehensive evaluation of student performance.

By implementing both assessment forms, educators can better understand their student’s progress and tailor their instruction for maximum impact.

Formative assessments can measure progress and inform instruction in real-time, while summative assessments provide an overall score or grade that indicates learning success.

Final Thoughts

While formative and summative assessments have apparent differences, such as in their purpose, timing and feedback mechanisms, there are significant benefits to using both assessment types in learning and development.

Educators can better assess student performance and tailor instruction by implementing formative and summative assessments. Additionally, the use of both reviews provides a comprehensive view of understanding that can be used to inform curriculum decisions.

If you are looking for more guidance and resources on creating and implementing formative and summative assessments, check out the other articles on the Skillshub blog .

As an eLearning company , we are committed to creating efficient and impactful learning experiences. Our team are experts in developing eLearning content , so skillshub can help create customised learning materials tailored to your organisation’s needs. To learn more about our services, get in touch with us today.

Sean McPheat

Sean is the CEO of Skillshub. He’s a published author and has been featured on CNN, BBC and ITV as a leading authority in the learning and development industry. Sean is responsible for the vision and strategy at Skillshub, helping to ensure innovation within the company.

Updated on: 20 September, 2023

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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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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.

Formative and Summative Assessment

Assessment helps instructors and students monitor progress towards achieving learning objectives. Formative assessment is used throughout an instructional period to treat misconceptions, struggles, and learning gaps. Summative assessments evaluate learning, knowledge, proficiency, or success at the conclusion of an instructional period.

Below you will find formative and summative descriptions along with a diagram, examples, recommendations, and strategies/tools for the next steps.

Descriptions

Formative assessment  (Image 1, left) refers to tools that identify misconceptions, struggles, and learning gaps along the way and assess how to close those gaps. It includes practical tools for helping to shape learning. It can even bolster students’ ability to take ownership of their education when they understand that the goal is to improve learning and not apply final marks (Trumbull and Lash, 2013). It can include students assessing themselves, peers, or even the instructor, through writing, quizzes, conversation, and more. Formative assessment occurs throughout a class or course and seeks to improve student achievement of learning objectives through approaches that can support specific student needs (Theal and Franklin, 2010, p. 151). In the classroom, formative assessment centers on practice and is often low-stakes. Students may or may not receive a grade.

In contrast,  summative assessments (Image 1, right) evaluate student learning, knowledge, proficiency, or success after an instructional period, as a unit, course, or program. Summative assessments are almost always formally graded and often heavily weighted (though they do not need to be). Summative assessment can be used to significant effect in conjunction and in alignment with formative assessment, and instructors can consider a variety of ways to combine these approaches. 

Examples of Formative and Summative Assessments

Formative: l earn and practice.

• In-class discussions
• Clicker questions (e.g., Top Hat)
• 1-minute reflection writing assignments
• Peer review
• Homework assignments

Summative: Assess performance

• Instructor-created exams
• Standardized tests
• Final projects
• Final essays
• Final presentations
• Final reports
• Final grades

Formative Assessment Recommendations

Ideally, formative assessment strategies improve teaching and learning simultaneously. Instructors can help students grow as learners by actively encouraging them to self-assess their skills and knowledge retention, and by giving clear instructions and feedback. Seven principles (adapted from Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2007 with additions) can guide instructor strategies:

1. Keep clear criteria for what defines good performance

Instructors can explain criteria for A-F graded papers and encourage student discussion and reflection about these criteria (accomplish this through office hours, rubrics, post-grade peer review, or  exam/assignment wrappers . Instructors may also hold class-wide conversations on performance criteria at strategic moments throughout the term.

2. Encourage students' self-reflection.

Instructors can ask students to utilize course criteria to evaluate their own or peers’ work and share what kinds of feedback they find most valuable. Also, instructors can ask students to describe their best work qualities, either through writing or group discussion.

3. Give students detailed, actionable feedback

Instructors can consistently provide specific feedback tied to predefined criteria, with opportunities to revise or apply feedback before final submission. Feedback may be corrective and forward-looking, rather than just evaluative. Examples include comments on multiple paper drafts, criterion discussions during 1-on-1 conferences, and regular online quizzes.

4. Encourage teacher and peer dialogue around learning

5. promote positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem.

Students will be more motivated and engaged when assured that an instructor cares for their development. Instructors can design assignments to allow for rewrites/resubmissions in assignments to promote learning development. These rewrites might utilize low-stakes assessments, or even automated online testing that is anonymous, and (if appropriate) allows for unlimited resubmissions.

6. Provide opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance

Related to the above; instructors can improve student motivation and engagement by making visible any opportunities to close gaps between current and desired performance. Examples include opportunities for resubmission, specific action points for writing or task-based assignments, and sharing study or process strategies that an instructor would use to succeed.

7. Collect information to help shape teaching

Instructors can feel free to collect useful information from students to provide targeted feedback and instruction. Students can identify where they are having difficulties, either on an assignment or test or in written submissions. This approach also promotes metacognition, as students reflect upon their learning. 

Instructors may find various other formative assessment techniques through  CELT’s Classroom Assessment Techniques .

Summative Assessment Recommendations

Because summative assessments are usually higher-stakes than formative assessments, it is especially important to ensure that the assessment aligns with the instruction’s goals and expected outcomes. 

1. Use a Rubric or Table of Specifications

Instructors can use a rubric to provide expected performance criteria for a range of grades. Rubrics will describe what an ideal assignment looks like, and “summarize” expected performance at the beginning of the term, providing students with a trajectory and sense of completion. 

2. Design Clear, Effective Questions

If designing essay questions, instructors can ensure that questions meet criteria while allowing students the freedom to express their knowledge creatively and in ways that honor how they digested, constructed, or mastered meaning.

3. Assess Comprehensiveness. 

Effective summative assessments allow students to consider the totality of a course’s content, make deep connections, demonstrate synthesized skills, and explore more profound concepts that drive or find a course’s ideas and content. 

4. Make Parameters Clear

When approaching a final assessment, instructors can ensure that parameters are well defined (length of assessment, depth of response, time and date, grading standards). Also, knowledge assessed relates clearly to the content covered in course; and provides students with disabilities required space and support.

5. Consider Anonymous Grading. 

Instructors may wish to know whose work they grade, to provide feedback that speaks to a student’s term-long trajectory. If instructors want to give a genuinely unbiased summative assessment, they can also consider a variety of anonymous grading techniques (see hide student names in SpeedGrader Canvas guide ).

Explore Assessment Strategies and Tools

Instructional strategies.

CELT’s online resources are organized to help an instructor sequentially work through the teaching process.

Learning Technology

A listing with applications that have been proven to meet the ISU’s security, accessibility, and purchasing standards.

Academic Integrity

Explore the following approaches and methods which emphasize prevention and education.

• Nicol, D.J. and Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006) Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education 31 (2): 2-19.
• Theall, M. and Franklin J.L. (2010). Assessing Teaching Practices and Effectiveness for Formative Purposes. In: A Guide to Faculty Development . KJ Gillespie and DL Robertson (Eds). Jossey Bass: San Francisco, CA.
• Trumbull, E., & Lash, A. (2013). Understanding formative assessment: Insights from learning theory and measurement theory . San Francisco: WestEd.

Formative and Summative Assessment, by the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at Iowa State University is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 . This work, Formative and Summative Assessment, is a derivative of Formative and Summative Assessment developed by the Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning(retrieved on June 23, 2020) from https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/Formative-Summative-Assessments.

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Formative And Summative Assessment: The Differences Explained

Tim Handley

The assessment landscape in schools is often confusing and ever-changing. With the debate between the merits of formative vs summative assessments raging on, it can be difficult to know when to use either of these assessment types in your classroom. That’s why, in this article, we will discuss when you should use either type of assessment and explain why.

• Formative vs summative assessments – what is the difference?

What is formative assessment?

What is summative assessment, formative and summative assessments should be adaptable, formative vs summative assessment comparison chart.

• Formative assessment – Constantly assessing ‘in the moment’.

How to bring formative assessments into your classroom

Formative assessment ideas for your class, ensure each formative assessment routine has a purpose.

• Don’t leave any potholes – why formative assessment is important

4 things you must remember regarding summative assessment

• Formative vs summative assessments – the pros and cons

Formative vs summative assessments – what is the difference?

When teachers discuss assessment, they often refer to two types – ‘formative’ and ‘summative’, however the distinctions and lines between the two types of assessment can often be blurred and misunderstood.

This article will compare and contrast formative and summative assessments to give you a true view of the difference between both types.

Formative assessment is the use of day-to-day assessments to gauge and explore students’ understanding of a topic.

It is best thought of as an assessment for learning. 

Formative assessments are what we carry out to help inform the learning ‘in the moment’. Formative assessment is continuous, informal and should have a central and pivotal role in every math classroom.

If used correctly, it will have a high impact on current learning and help you guide your instruction and teaching by giving ongoing feedback on learners’ progress.

Having an assessment with low stakes allows students to develop their skills, confidence and user experience before attempting a summative assessment with high stakes. It also makes room for self-assessment.

Summative assessments take place after students’ have completed a block of work, whether that be at the end of a unit or at the end of a quarter. They are a more formal way to sum up student progress and are often compared against a standard benchmark.

They are best thought of as assessments of learning.

There are different types of summative evaluations that we carry out ‘after the event’, often periodic (rather than continuous), and they are often measured against a set standard.

Summative assessment can be thought of as helping to validate and ‘check’ formative assessment – it is a periodic measure of how children are, overall, progressing in their mathematics learning.

If formative assessment has been continually carried out, then the results of summative assessment shouldn’t yield any surprises.

Some common examples of summative assessment include:

• Final projects

Importantly, it is not the ‘form’ that assessment takes that determines whether it is formative or summative, instead it is how it is being used.

For example, ‘test style questions’ can be used both as formative assessment (perhaps as exit tickets – questions given to students at the end of the lesson to check student understanding) or summative (perhaps as an end of an instructional unit test or check).

It is important that in all subjects, but especially in math, that we use a combination of both assessment strategies, but that formative assessment, due to its constant nature, makes up the bulk of our assessment activities.

This Venn diagram shows the difference and similarities between the two assessment types very clearly.

Formative assessment – Constantly assessing ‘in the moment’.

Formative assessment is an intrinsic part of both teaching and student progression. This form of assessment does not rely upon tests and results, but rather the ability to adapt to classroom blockers as they arise. 

It should indicate what a good piece of work is and why this is the case, but it also gives you as a teacher a chance to see when things are not going so well and act upon it and see improvements. 

Good formative feedback will enable both the teacher and student to plan together what the next stage of their progression will be and future learning goals.

During a lesson, all adults in the classroom should be on a ‘constant assessment mission’ through interactions with students. 

Teachers should be moving around the room, interacting with each child, and assessing their progress towards the learning objective in real-time.

In the moment, assessment can take many forms:

• You could use a question from your shared learning to assess where you need to give independent work, or which students need further support

• It could be as simple as asking key questions to students during their independent work 

• You could use ‘exit tickets’ to assess children’s understanding at the end of a lesson

However, it is important that this ‘in the moment’ assessment that is carried out has a purpose, and that this information is used to adapt the learning experiences and opportunities that you are providing to each child.

The information obtained from formative assessments can help you understand the student’s learning processes and adapt to this in future lesson plans.

If your assessment shows that students are secure, then how are you going to deepen their learning?

If your assessment shows that students have some misconceptions, then how are you going to support these?

These are just two of the questions you should be asking yourself throughout a formative assessment.

If you are looking for a way to bring formative assessments into your classroom, take a look at our blog containing your Math Intervention Must-Have: Formative Diagnostic Assessment Tests.

There are a lot of different assessment routines you can use to keep up with the progression of your math class.

Common types of formative assessment include:

• Group activities
• Class projects
• Presentations

Make sure that your assessment ‘routines’ have purpose and use. 

For example, if you are going to do the ‘math lesson classic’ and ask children to show you an answer on a mini-whiteboard, make sure you are actually looking at the answers given by all students. 

You should then be using these to inform the next step in your lesson and the learning for each student.

I have observed many lessons where teachers have carried out the mini-whiteboard ‘routine’, not actually looked at the responses given, and carried on with what they had planned regardless. 

Remember- it is not the activity or ‘thing’ that you do that represents effective assessment, but what you do with the information you gather from it. 

It is through effective in-lesson assessment that you can ensure that each student is supported and challenged, and that every student is learning rather than constantly rehearsing what they already know.

Don’t leave any potholes – why formative assessment is important

I often use a ‘pothole’ analogy with the schools I work with. Imagine a local council were filling in potholes but that their road maintenance vehicles were themselves creating new holes in the road.

They wouldn’t be doing a very good job at improving the overall quality of the road surface would they?

Yet, schools often inadvertently do the same with math. They are often very good at carrying out a plethora of intervention activities to fill gaps (or potholes) that have been ‘left’ from previous years, but, at the same time, often allow new gaps (or potholes) to be created.

It is therefore important that we use our constant, ‘in the moment’ assessment to help ensure that no new gaps are being allowed to form in a student’s mathematical understanding and learning.

Make sure that you use your ‘in the moment’ and ‘end of lesson’ assessment to help fill any new gaps that are starting to emerge.

Then, at the end of the math lesson, you formatively check that all students are secure with the objective for that lesson, and if not, you carry out some form of intervention to help address these gaps.

If you are not going to address the gaps now, then who is and when?

Summative assessment helps to demonstrate the extent of students’ success in meeting specific goals. It is a method that can be used to quantify achievement, and due to its data driven nature, it is a great way to provide a numerical basis for a student’s next step.

However, while the principles of summative assessment are simple, there are 4 key points you need to consider before implementing it in your classroom.

1- Assessment systems vs framework – What are you assessing against?

Despite the power of ‘in the moment’ formative assessment, schools do need a way to track the attainment and progress of students throughout the school. 

It is this need that means that schools also need to consider the assessment framework they are using- i.e. what you are assessing against. This decision is often one that is taken at district level.    

However, it is important that you are clear about the difference between your assessment system and the framework you are using. 

Often with my work in schools, I am told that they are using ‘student asset’, ‘classroom monitor’, ‘target tracker’ (and many others) as their assessment. In fact, these are all assessment systems – bits of software that allow you to record and track student’s progress against a framework that has been chosen by your school. 

They are not what you are using to ‘assess’- merely what you are using to record your assessment.   

These assessment systems all allow you to select (and often create your own) framework upon which to assess your students – and it is these frameworks that are vitally important.

2- Balancing the frameworks is crucial

When choosing, or creating, the assessment framework that you are using, it’s important to consider the balance of objectives and target areas of mathematics within the framework.

Some end-of-grade tests may give a higher weight towards number based objectives, with number, calculations and proportionality making up between 75-85% of a child’s final result. 

Yet, most grades have an even split between all standard domains.

This essentially means that a child could be legitimately marked as ‘secure’ or ‘working at aged related expectations’ against the whole curriculum, on the basis of their strength in geometry, but they wouldn’t be classed as ‘secure’ or ‘working at aged related expectations’ in a standardized test.

It is therefore important that whatever framework you use is balanced, and includes an equal weighting of standards-based questions.

There are many ways in which you can do this, including:- 

• Use built-in ‘weighting’ functions of some assessment systems that allow you to weight each objective. 

• Assess against key objectives only, which overall, have the balance of number vs non-number objectives.

• Group objectives together, creating the overall numbers vs non-number balance. 

• Use a commercially available assessment framework which has the weighting work done for you.

3- Teacher assessment plays a huge role in summative assessment

Once your school has decided on a framework to use for assessment, next comes the question of how it is actually used. 

These frameworks can be used both in a purely ‘summative’ way, or in a formative way that leads to, over time, an accurate summative assessment. 

The traditional use of these frameworks is for schools to ask for each child to be assessed against the framework at set points – for example, midway through the school year or end-of-grade tests. 

This often leads to ‘assessment panic’ with teachers feeling overwhelmed having to create the assessment against many objectives for all students in their task in a short period of time.

If this is the only way in which these frameworks are used, then these are being used purely summatively – it is the teacher’s judgment at the end of a quarter/year. 

Due to the stress of having to meet a deadline and make a judgment against each objective for all students in your class, this can often mean that these summative only teacher assessments are not as accurate as many would like.

Luckily, you can adapt these assessments very easily

However, these frameworks can also be used in a more formative way – with teachers being encouraged to record the learning progress towards objectives on the framework or rubric as they are being taught .

An example of this is recording and amending judgements each week as a result of the ‘ongoing’ assessment. This leads to an ever-changing snapshot of each child’s performance, which can be really powerful.

This can be used to inform interventions and subsequent teaching, and help to identify common misconceptions, giving the assessment framework used by your school both a summative and formative use. 

These assessments can then just be finalized in time for whatever deadline of ‘snapshot’ date your school set.

It is fantastic that many schools and districts are favoring teacher assessment to provide this ‘data.’ 

Teacher assessment is incredibly powerful, and gives teachers the professional autonomy that they deserve. 

4- Testing can’t be forgotten about either

Many schools will also choose to use some form of testing alongside their assessment frameworks.

This can be seen as helping to validate teacher assessment judgments, and can also help to ensure there are no ‘nasty’ surprises when it comes to state standardized tests.

However, testing is only as good as the quality of the tests that you use. It is important that the tests your schools rely on have the same degree of ‘standardization’.

They should be standardized so you know how children across the country perform, and be based on a clear test development framework, and have been trialed and refined in schools. 

Some popular tests that have been developed in this way include STAR Math and Terra Nova.

Regardless of what tests are used, it is also important that schools and teachers understand that they provide a snapshot of the performance on the day the test was taken.

Children, just like adults, all have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ days, and it is important that these tests are seen as a supplement to good quality teacher assessment, not a replacement for it.

Formative vs summative assessments – the pros and cons

Both formative and summative assessment have a very important role to play in the classroom and in schools. However, it is very important to ensure that you find the right balance between the two approaches for your own class’s learning needs.

Constant formative assessment can prove difficult if not implemented properly, but consistent assessment of students strengths and weaknesses can prove invaluable in helping them to progress.

Summative assessment can often not show the whole picture of a students’ progression, but it is a fantastic way of getting a data driven overview of how a student has progressed and grown over a period of time.  

The goal of this blog was to summarize the difference between formative and summative assessment, and the conclusion is that both approaches have their flaws, but they can also both provide a valuable insight into how a class is getting on throughout the school year.

All that is left is to use assessments of both kinds to inform your teaching!

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The content in this article was originally written by math consultant and author Tim Handley and has since been revised and adapted for US schools by elementary math teacher Katie Keeton.

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• Formative Vs Summative Assessment: 15 Key Differences & Similarities

Today, we will look at 2 of the most common methods of course evaluation—summative assessment and formative assessment. While the primary goal of both methods of evaluation is to assess students undergoing a particular course, they have different objectives and use data differently. 

Sometimes, the lines between summative and formative evaluation can be blurry. But how do these 2 methods of assessment compare against each other and more importantly, when should you opt for one option over the other? In this article, we will discuss 15 key differences and similarities between formative and summative assessment. 

What is Formative Assessment?

Formative assessment is an on-going method of evaluation that helps teachers to monitor learners’ progress and identify any challenges that students are facing as they learn. It includes a series of quick-fire tests that provide on-time feedback on students’ performance. 

The objective of formative assessment is to find out how much students know as they move from one learning phase to another. There are no high stakes attached to formative evaluation and the students’ performances are not measured against a rubric or standardized benchmark. 

Quizzes, polls, and dipsticks are common examples of formative assessment . Discussion-based assessments like 5-minute unstructured interviews work well for this too. Interviews take you right into the minds of the students and provide relevant contexts for understanding how much they know. 

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What is Summative Assessment?

Summative assessment is a traditional method of evaluation where the teacher measures the student’s performance using a standardized benchmark. It is done at the end of the course or instructional unit and it focuses on the program’s outcomes. 

Unlike formative evaluation, summative assessment has a high point value which is why it is used to determine whether the student gets a promotion, passes a course, or moves to the next level in her learning. A teacher can solely rely on the results of an end-of-term examination to grade the students and promote them. 

Summative assessment methods are not spontaneous; they follow defined processes with controlled conditions that limit inconsistencies. One of the strong points of summative assessment is it produces similar results when it is done in a controlled context. Other examples of summative assessment include chapter tests, portfolios, and final essays. 

Differences Between Formative and Summative Assessment  

Summative assessment is a type of course evaluation that happens at the end of a program while formative assessment is a method of collecting real-time feedback from learners during the course. Summative assessment is all about measuring the student’s performance at the end of the class using some defined criteria. 

On the other hand, formative assessment methods focus on how much the students know. Formative evaluations use different approaches to monitor the students’ progress, gather feedback from them and identify any learning gaps that need to be filled. 

Characteristics  

The characteristics of summative assessment include validity, reliability, variety, and practicality. Summative assessment is a standardized method of knowledge-based assessment that is easily-reported. This means it always ends up with a concise summary of the outcomes of the evaluation.  

Unlike summative assessment, the formative evaluation does not measure the student’s progress against a benchmark or rubric, and this means its findings are non-graded. Instead, formative assessments focus on gathering actionable feedback that can improve the learning experience for the students. 

End-of-term examinations, in-class chapter tests, hands-on performance tasks, and oral tests are common summative assessment types. On the other hand, impromptu quizzes, silent polls, and dipsticks are some of the most common methods of formative evaluation. 

Summative assessment methods help the instructor to measure the student’s performance against a standard or rubric. On the flip side, methods of formative evaluation are used to monitor the student’s knowledge as they move from one level to the other in the learning process. 

Examples of summative assessment include organizing an end-of-term recital or presentation for a course, and standardized admission examinations like SAT, IELTS, and A-levels. For formative assessment, the instructor can ask students to create visual sketches or write a summary of a lecture topic or theme. 

Advantages of Formative Assessment

Unlike summative assessment that waits till the end to assess students, formative assessment provides instant feedback on students’ progress by evaluating them as they learn. Another advantage of formative assessment is it allows for changes and modifications to the teaching method as learning progresses. 

Formative assessment supports personalized learning; teachers can use the feedback they get to create unique learning experiences for every student. It also boosts the students’ participation in the training program and makes them actively involved in monitoring their own progress. 

Advantages of Summative Assessment  

One major strong point of summative assessment is that it motivates the students to learn and pay attention in class. Unlike what you get with formative assessment, students know that their grades depend on how well they perform in summative evaluations and this boosts their commitment to the training.  

Summative assessments produce consistent results and this is why it works best for grading. Unlike formative assessment methods that are uniquely tailored to the needs of the students, summative evaluation methods are designed to produce similar results when applied in similar contexts. 

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One of the most important tools used for summative assessment is a rubric or scoring guide which is used to assess the quality of responses given by the students. During formative assessments, the instructor does not need to use a rubric because it is a non-graded evaluation method.

Quizzes, examination software, and online test platforms are other common tools used for summative assessment. Formative evaluation, on the other hand, uses surveys, polls, focus groups, and different types of interviews to monitor students’ experiences and knowledge as they learn. 

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate the student’s understanding of the course and the course materials within a specific period. On the other hand, the primary purpose of formative assessment is to observe students as they learn and get real-time feedback on their knowledge and experiences. 

Formative assessments use different tools and methods to monitor knowledge and skill-acquisition at different points in the learning curve. Summative assessment, on the flip side, is all about grading the quality of a student’s knowledge based on his or her performance. 

The goal of formative evaluation is improving the teaching and learning process based on the feedback from students while the goal of summative evaluation is to grade a student’s performance with a performance marker like a rubric or other defined benchmarks. 

This means that while formative assessment evaluates learning and knowledge-progression, summative assessment collects evidence as proof of a student’s proficiency in the course. 

Summative assessment pays attention to the outcome as measured by a performance marker while formative assessment focuses on the on-going learning process. Due to its focus on the on-going learning experience, formative assessment encourages changes and modifications to the learning process based on the feedback from the program participants. 

Summative assessments produce quantitative data as results while formative assessment results in qualitative data. Quantitative data has statistical value because it is measured in the form of numbers while qualitative data is the type of data that describes information using groups and categories. 

Summative data produces quantitative results because it grades the students’ performance using a standard benchmark. Summative results are non-graded and are typically presented as descriptions with feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the students. The instructor uses this feedback to improve the teaching method. 

Frame of Reference

Formative assessments use a normative frame of reference during evaluation. A frame of reference is a complex set of assumptions that defines our perceptions and creates meaning. 

A normative frame of reference entails comparing a student’s performance to the performance of other students. For instance, after a reading exercise, a student can rank 12th in a group of 43 other learners. 

Summative assessment, on the other hand, has a criterion frame of reference. A criterion frame of reference means that the students are evaluated using standard criteria. Criterion-referenced interpretations allow us to compare a student’s performance to a well-defined content domain, to show their level of knowledge of a subject matter. 

Formative assessment gives feedback on the students’ progress as they learn and teachers act on this feedback to improve the course, learning materials, and the teaching method. After a formative assessment, the students continue to learn while the teacher makes any changes to improve their learning experience. 

On the other hand, feedback is not an important part of summative evaluation. Although students may receive feedback on their performance, this may not change their grades or trigger a re-evaluation of their performance. Summative assessment is the final evaluation of a student’s performance. 

Summative assessments have a rigid benchmark known as the benchmark of learning while formative assessment uses the benchmark of progress to evaluate students as they learn. The benchmark of progress monitors student progress and provides feedback that improves the teaching method. 

On the other hand, a benchmark of learning measures the students’ performance against institution standards that serve as the standard of evaluation. 

Time-Frame  

Summative assessment happens at the end of a course, training, or program while formative assessment happens as learning takes place. This means that while there may only be 1 summative assessment for an instructional unit, formative evaluation happens many times within the learning process. 

Read More: Formative Assessment: Meaning, Types & Examples

Similarities Between Summative and Formative Assessment?  

Course evaluation methods.

Summative assessment and formative assessment are methods of course evaluation. Course evaluation happens when an instructor assesses students based on their performance or participation in training. It helps the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of the course; whether during the course or at the end. 

Summative and formative assessments are used to gather students’ feedback. However, while feedback is an important part of formative assessment as teachers need to act on it, summative assessment feedback is routine and does not have any immediate influence on the results of the evaluation or how the students are graded. 

Summative and formative assessments can be done using surveys, questionnaires, and quizzes. However, these tools will be used distinctly, and the data will be interpreted differently, depending on the type of assessment. 

When to Use Formative Assessment

You should use formative assessment when you need to monitor students’ knowledge and progress on the learning curve. Formative assessment helps you to discover concepts that students are struggling to understand, skills that are difficult for them to acquire, or learning standards they have not yet achieved. 

When to Use Summative Assessment

You should use summative assessment when it is time to evaluate learning. It works best in cases where you need to evaluate how well the information has been absorbed and retained by the students. Summative assessments help you discover student mastery of the course content. 

Conclusion  

Having a clear understanding of summative and formative assessments helps you to monitor the progress towards the learning objectives and to also improve the teaching and learning process. Summative and formative assessments work simultaneously to define the learning and teaching experience. 

A strong classroom assessment program combines formative and summative assessment methods to give a balanced evaluation of the students’ knowledge and skills. With careful thought and planning processes, the instructor will collect useful and important information that speaks to specific learning purposes. 

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Formative, Summative, and More Types of Assessments in Education

All the best ways to evaluate learning before, during, and after it happens.

When you hear the word assessment, do you automatically think “tests”? While it’s true that tests are one kind of assessment, they’re not the only way teachers evaluate student progress. Learn more about the types of assessments used in education, and find out how and when to use them.

Diagnostic Assessments

Formative assessments, summative assessments.

• Criterion-Referenced, Ipsative, and Normative Assessments

What is assessment?

In simplest terms, assessment means gathering data to help understand progress and effectiveness. In education, we gather data about student learning in variety of ways, then use it to assess both their progress and the effectiveness of our teaching programs. This helps educators know what’s working well and where they need to make changes.

There are three broad types of assessments: diagnostic, formative, and summative. These take place throughout the learning process, helping students and teachers gauge learning. Within those three broad categories, you’ll find other types of assessment, such as ipsative, norm-referenced, and criterion-referenced.

What’s the purpose of assessment in education?

In education, we can group assessments under three main purposes:

• Of learning
• For learning
• As learning

Assessment of learning is student-based and one of the most familiar, encompassing tests, reports, essays, and other ways of determining what students have learned. These are usually summative assessments, and they are used to gauge progress for individuals and groups so educators can determine who has mastered the material and who needs more assistance.

When we talk about assessment for learning, we’re referring to the constant evaluations teachers perform as they teach. These quick assessments—such as in-class discussions or quick pop quizzes—give educators the chance to see if their teaching strategies are working. This allows them to make adjustments in action, tailoring their lessons and activities to student needs. Assessment for learning usually includes the formative and diagnostic types.

Assessment can also be a part of the learning process itself. When students use self-evaluations, flash cards, or rubrics, they’re using assessments to help them learn.

Let’s take a closer look at the various types of assessments used in education.

Diagnostic assessments are used before learning to determine what students already do and do not know. This often refers to pre-tests and other activities students attempt at the beginning of a unit.

How To Use Diagnostic Assessments

When giving diagnostic assessments, it’s important to remind students these won’t affect their overall grade. Instead, it’s a way for them to find out what they’ll be learning in an upcoming lesson or unit. It can also help them understand their own strengths and weaknesses, so they can ask for help when they need it.

Teachers can use results to understand what students already know and adapt their lesson plans accordingly. There’s no point in over-teaching a concept students have already mastered. On the other hand, a diagnostic assessment can also help highlight expected pre-knowledge that may be missing.

For instance, a teacher might assume students already know certain vocabulary words that are important for an upcoming lesson. If the diagnostic assessment indicates differently, the teacher knows they’ll need to take a step back and do a little pre-teaching before getting to their actual lesson plans.

Examples of Diagnostic Assessments

• Pre-test: This includes the same questions (or types of questions) that will appear on a final test, and it’s an excellent way to compare results.
• Blind Kahoot: Teachers and kids already love using Kahoot for test review, but it’s also the perfect way to introduce a new topic. Learn how Blind Kahoots work here.
• Survey or questionnaire: Ask students to rate their knowledge on a topic with a series of low-stakes questions.
• Checklist: Create a list of skills and knowledge students will build throughout a unit, and have them start by checking off any they already feel they’ve mastered. Revisit the list frequently as part of formative assessment.

Formative assessments take place during instruction. They’re used throughout the learning process and help teachers make on-the-go adjustments to instruction and activities as needed. These assessments aren’t used in calculating student grades, but they are planned as part of a lesson or activity. Learn much more about formative assessments here.

How To Use Formative Assessments

As you’re building a lesson plan, be sure to include formative assessments at logical points. These types of assessments might be used at the end of a class period, after finishing a hands-on activity, or once you’re through with a unit section or learning objective.

Once you have the results, use that feedback to determine student progress, both overall and as individuals. If the majority of a class is struggling with a specific concept, you might need to find different ways to teach it. Or you might discover that one student is especially falling behind and arrange to offer extra assistance to help them out.

While kids may grumble, standard homework review assignments can actually be a pretty valuable type of formative assessment . They give kids a chance to practice, while teachers can evaluate their progress by checking the answers. Just remember that homework review assignments are only one type of formative assessment, and not all kids have access to a safe and dedicated learning space outside of school.

Examples of Formative Assessments

• Exit tickets : At the end of a lesson or class, pose a question for students to answer before they leave. They can answer using a sticky note, online form, or digital tool.
• Kahoot quizzes : Kids enjoy the gamified fun, while teachers appreciate the ability to analyze the data later to see which topics students understand well and which need more time.
• Flip (formerly Flipgrid): We love Flip for helping teachers connect with students who hate speaking up in class. This innovative (and free!) tech tool lets students post selfie videos in response to teacher prompts. Kids can view each other’s videos, commenting and continuing the conversation in a low-key way.
• Self-evaluation: Encourage students to use formative assessments to gauge their own progress too. If they struggle with review questions or example problems, they know they’ll need to spend more time studying. This way, they’re not surprised when they don’t do well on a more formal test.

Find a big list of 25 creative and effective formative assessment options here.

Summative assessments are used at the end of a unit or lesson to determine what students have learned. By comparing diagnostic and summative assessments, teachers and learners can get a clearer picture of how much progress they’ve made. Summative assessments are often tests or exams but also include options like essays, projects, and presentations.

How To Use Summative Assessments

The goal of a summative assessment is to find out what students have learned and if their learning matches the goals for a unit or activity. Ensure you match your test questions or assessment activities with specific learning objectives to make the best use of summative assessments.

When possible, use an array of summative assessment options to give all types of learners a chance to demonstrate their knowledge. For instance, some students suffer from severe test anxiety but may still have mastered the skills and concepts and just need another way to show their achievement. Consider ditching the test paper and having a conversation with the student about the topic instead, covering the same basic objectives but without the high-pressure test environment.

Summative assessments are often used for grades, but they’re really about so much more. Encourage students to revisit their tests and exams, finding the right answers to any they originally missed. Think about allowing retakes for those who show dedication to improving on their learning. Drive home the idea that learning is about more than just a grade on a report card.

Examples of Summative Assessments

• Traditional tests: These might include multiple-choice, matching, and short-answer questions.
• Essays and research papers: This is another traditional form of summative assessment, typically involving drafts (which are really formative assessments in disguise) and edits before a final copy.
• Presentations: From oral book reports to persuasive speeches and beyond, presentations are another time-honored form of summative assessment.

Find 25 of our favorite alternative assessments here.

More Types of Assessments

Now that you know the three basic types of assessments, let’s take a look at some of the more specific and advanced terms you’re likely to hear in professional development books and sessions. These assessments may fit into some or all of the broader categories, depending on how they’re used. Here’s what teachers need to know.

Criterion-Referenced Assessments

In this common type of assessment, a student’s knowledge is compared to a standard learning objective. Most summative assessments are designed to measure student mastery of specific learning objectives. The important thing to remember about this type of assessment is that it only compares a student to the expected learning objectives themselves, not to other students.

Many standardized tests are criterion-referenced assessments. A governing board determines the learning objectives for a specific group of students. Then, all students take a standardized test to see if they’ve achieved those objectives.

Find out more about criterion-referenced assessments here.

Norm-Referenced Assessments

These types of assessments do compare student achievement with that of their peers. Students receive a ranking based on their score and potentially on other factors as well. Norm-referenced assessments usually rank on a bell curve, establishing an “average” as well as high performers and low performers.

These assessments can be used as screening for those at risk for poor performance (such as those with learning disabilities) or to identify high-level learners who would thrive on additional challenges. They may also help rank students for college entrance or scholarships, or determine whether a student is ready for a new experience like preschool.

Learn more about norm-referenced assessments here.

Ipsative Assessments

In education, ipsative assessments compare a learner’s present performance to their own past performance, to chart achievement over time. Many educators consider ipsative assessment to be the most important of all , since it helps students and parents truly understand what they’ve accomplished—and sometimes, what they haven’t. It’s all about measuring personal growth.

Comparing the results of pre-tests with final exams is one type of ipsative assessment. Some schools use curriculum-based measurement to track ipsative performance. Kids take regular quick assessments (often weekly) to show their current skill/knowledge level in reading, writing, math, and other basics. Their results are charted, showing their progress over time.

Learn more about ipsative assessment in education here.

Have more questions about the best types of assessments to use with your students? Come ask for advice in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, check out creative ways to check for understanding ..

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25 Formative Assessment Options Your Students Will Actually Enjoy

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Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

• Formative and Summative Assessment

Formative Assessments: Formative assessments (interactive classroom discussions, self-assessments, warm-up quizzes, mid-semester evaluations, exit quizzes, etc.) monitor student learning.

• These are short term, as they are most applicable when students are in the process of making sense of new content and applying it to what they already know.
• The most striking feature of these types of assessments is the immediate feedback, which helps students make changes to their understanding of the material and allows the teacher to gauge student understanding and adapt to the needs of the students.
• These types of assessments often do not carry any credit associated with the student grade.

Interim Assessments: Interim assessments (concept tests, quizzes, written essays, etc.) may be more formal and can occur throughout the semester.

• Typically, students are given the opportunity to revisit and perhaps revise these assessments after they have received feedback.
• This type of assessment can be particularly useful in addressing the knowledge gaps in student understanding and can help you formulate better lesson plans during the course.
• The feedback to students is quick but not necessarily immediate.
• These types of assessment may count toward a small percentage of the student grade.

Summative Assessments: Summative assessments (typically midterm or final exams) evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

• These assessments are formal and have a direct impact on student grades.
• The feedback to the student may be extremely limited.
• Generally students do not have the opportunity to re-take the assessment.
• The results of these assessments can help students understand where they stand in the class by comparing grades and, if applicable, by looking at the descriptive statistics such as average, median and standard deviation.

For an explanation of specific techniques you can use for formative and interim assessment, please see [Hyperlink to PDF of Classroom Assessment Techniques (Angelo and Cross) .pdf]

Summary of Indirect Assessment Techniques

(Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education by Allen 2004)

Summary of Direct Assessment Techniques

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Choosing The Right Assessment Tool

Pro's and con's of various assessment tools, quick links.

• Teaching and Learning Assessment Overview
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• Bias and Exclusion in Assessment 
• ChatGPT AI impact on Teaching and Learning
• 50 Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATS)

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The impact of formative assessment: 5 examples for student success

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In the world of education, the power of formative assessment cannot be underestimated. Assessment, as a whole, provides valuable insights into a student's progress and understanding, guiding educators in tailoring their instruction to meet individual needs and academic leaders in making informed decisions about programs and policies. With formative assessments, specifically, instructors can go beyond simply measuring knowledge; they actively engage students in their own learning journey.

By providing timely feedback and gauging comprehension throughout the learning process, formative assessment helps educators to identify misconceptions and gaps in knowledge while there is still time to address them. And with formative assessment, students are empowered to improve their own work to reach their full potential.

In this blog post, we will explore the profound impact of formative assessment on student success, highlighting its benefits and offering five practical examples that demonstrate its effectiveness in the classroom.

What is formative assessment?

Before diving into the impact, let's clarify what formative assessment entails:

Formative assessment takes place during instruction and serves as a powerful diagnostic tool to monitor progress, identify areas of improvement, and guide instructional planning.

Formative assessments are not limited to traditional pen-and-paper tests; they can take various forms such as quizzes, discussions, observations, projects, or even educational technology tools. The key lies in their ability to provide ongoing feedback that fosters continuous growth and development.

The difference between formative and summative assessment

Understanding the distinction between formative and summative assessment is crucial for educators seeking to maximize student success. While both types of assessments play vital roles within a comprehensive evaluation system, they serve different purposes.

Summative assessments are “the most high-stakes type of assessment and often come at the endpoint of learning, whether at the end of a unit, course, or curriculum, serving largely as a pure evaluation of knowledge” (Lee, 2023 ). They are typically used to measure student achievement at specific points in time to determine overall mastery of content. They offer little opportunity for providing student feedback because of their positioning at the end of a learning unit.

On the other hand, formative assessments are designed to monitor progress along the way and provide immediate feedback that informs instruction and learning. They can also provide a safe space for failure , where students feel encouraged to try again and reconsider setbacks as chances to strengthen their resilience and understanding. Additionally, “low-stakes instruction around attribution and citation helps students understand how to pivot from missteps and transform misconduct like plagiarism into teachable moments” (Lee, 2023 ).

Where summative assessments focus on outcomes and final grades, formative assessments prioritize growth and learning. By implementing regular formative assessments alongside summatives throughout a unit or semester, educators can create a dynamic feedback loop that supports student development while still ensuring accountability.

Discover everything you need to know about assessment

The value of formative assessments for instructors and academic leaders

Instructors and academic leaders can leverage the wealth of data generated by formative assessments to inform curricular changes, strategic planning, and policy-making. With these insights, they can identify trends, forecast future performance, and implement proactive measures to address potential challenges.

Moreover, this data empowers administrators to allocate resources more effectively, targeting areas where support is most needed and thus increasing overall institutional efficiency. By using formative assessments, decision-makers are not just reacting to educational outcomes, but actively shaping them, creating a dynamic and responsive educational environment.

The impact of formative assessment on student achievement

Research has consistently shown that formative assessment positively impacts student achievement. When implemented effectively, it can enhance learning outcomes, increase student engagement and self-regulation, and foster a growth mindset.

Here are some of the key ways formative assessment contributes to student success:

Enhancing understanding and retention

Formative assessments provide valuable insights into student comprehension levels on an ongoing basis. By identifying areas of strength and weakness in real time, educators can adjust their instruction accordingly, ensuring that students grasp concepts before moving forward. This targeted approach improves understanding and retention of material, laying a solid foundation for long-term success. Draft Coach , for example, is a Google Docs Add-On that offers formative feedback on students’ grammar and citations, which means they immediately see where/how they are making mistakes and can correct their errors in real time.

Guiding instructional decision-making and differentiation

Formative assessment equips educators with the necessary data to make informed instructional decisions. By analyzing student responses and feedback, educators can tailor their teaching methods to address individual needs, differentiate instruction effectively, and implement interventions where required. This personalized approach ensures that every student receives the support they need to thrive.

Fostering student engagement

When students are actively involved in their learning through regular formative assessments, they become more engaged in the educational process. These assessments encourage active participation, critical thinking skills, and self-reflection—all crucial components for fostering intrinsic motivation and a love for learning.

Promoting self-regulated learning

Formative assessment empowers students to take ownership of their learning journey by providing them with timely feedback on their progress. Through self-assessment opportunities and reflection exercises embedded within formative assessments, students develop metacognitive skills and become self-regulated learners who can set goals, monitor their growth, and make adjustments accordingly.

Cultivating a growth mindset

By emphasizing continuous improvement rather than fixed ability levels or grades alone, formative assessment cultivates a growth mindset among students—a belief that intelligence is not fixed but can be developed through effort and perseverance. According to Carol Dweck , who coined the concept of growth and fixed mindsets in her 2006 book, Mindset : “Challenging situations can be catastrophic for those with fixed mindsets because of the implication that if they don’t already have the skills or intelligence to complete a task, there’s no chance of improvement.” This shift in mindset encourages students to embrace challenges, view mistakes as learning opportunities, and persist in the face of obstacles.

Learn more about Draft Coach

Five examples of formative assessment strategies

Let's explore five examples of how educators can incorporate formative assessment into their classrooms to promote student success and engagement.

1. Entry and exit tickets

An entry or exit ticket is a brief assessment given at the beginning or end of a class to gauge student understanding and provide valuable feedback for teachers. For example, an entry ticket may ask students to summarize the main points of the previous day’s lesson, or an exit ticket may ask students to explain how they plan to use what they learned that day, or identify any areas where they may still have questions. This strategy allows teachers to quickly assess student comprehension and make necessary adjustments to their teaching for the next lesson.

2. Peer feedback

Peer feedback gives students an opportunity to receive constructive criticism from their classmates, promoting a sense of collaboration and community in the classroom. This can be done through peer review sessions or group projects where students are encouraged to provide feedback to their peers. By evaluating their peers' work according to pre-established criteria, students gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter while developing critical analysis and communication skills. Additionally, peer feedback allows students to practice giving and receiving feedback, a vital skill for future success in the workplace. PeerMark™ is a tool that can help to facilitate seamless peer evaluation and constructive feedback exchange between students, whether anonymously or attributed.

3. One-minute papers

One-minute papers are quick and informal writing assignments given at the end of class to check for student understanding and provide immediate feedback. Students can be asked to answer a prompt related to the lesson or summarize the main points in their own words. One-minute papers not only allow teachers to assess student learning, but also give students a chance to reflect on their own understanding of the material.

4. Student self-assessment checklists and reflection journals

Empowering students to self-assess their own learning is an effective way to promote self-regulation and a growth mindset. Teachers can provide students with rubrics or checklists to use when reflecting on their own work or progress. This encourages students to take ownership of their learning and identify areas for improvement. Additionally, self-assessment promotes a growth mindset by encouraging students to view mistakes as opportunities for growth and development.

Reflection journals are also a powerful tool for promoting self-reflection and critical thinking. Students can use these journals to reflect on their learning, set goals, and track their progress over time. Teachers can provide prompts or questions for students to answer in their reflection journals related to the lesson or their overall growth as learners. This practice not only encourages students to think critically about their learning, but also allows them to see their growth and development over time.

5. Misconception Check

Rebecca Alber offers the idea of a misconception check: “Provide students with common or predictable misconceptions about a specific principle, process, or concept. Ask them whether they agree or disagree and explain why. Also, to save time, you can present a misconception check in the form of multiple-choice or true/false.” This offers immediate feedback on which areas of the lesson need clarification and which skills require additional practice.

Learn how to use student-centered learning to guide assessment and outcomes

In sum: The impact of formative assessment on student success

Formative assessments are integral to fostering an enriching educational environment that prioritizes learner-centric approaches. They empower students with the ability to take charge of their educational journey, instilling in them a growth mindset and the confidence to navigate challenges with resilience. The success of any educational experience greatly hinges on the continuous feedback loop between teachers and students, facilitated by formative assessments.

• Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning
• Instructional Guide
• Formative and Summative Assessment

Assessment is the process of gathering data. More specifically, assessment is the ways instructors gather data about their teaching and their students’ learning (Hanna & Dettmer, 2004). The data provide a picture of a range of activities using different forms of assessment such as: pre-tests, observations, and examinations. Once these data are gathered, you can then evaluate the student’s performance. Evaluation, therefore, draws on one’s judgment to determine the overall value of an outcome based on the assessment data. It is in the decision-making process then, where we design ways to improve the recognized weaknesses, gaps, or deficiencies.

Types of Assessment

There are three types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative. Although are three are generally referred to simply as assessment, there are distinct differences between the three.

There are three types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative.

Diagnostic Assessment

Diagnostic assessment can help you identify your students’ current knowledge of a subject, their skill sets and capabilities, and to clarify misconceptions before teaching takes place (Just Science Now!, n.d.). Knowing students’ strengths and weaknesses can help you better plan what to teach and how to teach it.

Types of Diagnostic Assessments

• Pre-tests (on content and abilities)
• Self-assessments (identifying skills and competencies)
• Discussion board responses (on content-specific prompts)
• Interviews (brief, private, 10-minute interview of each student)

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment provides feedback and information during the instructional process, while learning is taking place, and while learning is occurring. Formative assessment measures student progress but it can also assess your own progress as an instructor. For example, when implementing a new activity in class, you can, through observation and/or surveying the students, determine whether or not the activity should be used again (or modified). A primary focus of formative assessment is to identify areas that may need improvement. These assessments typically are not graded and act as a gauge to students’ learning progress and to determine teaching effectiveness (implementing appropriate methods and activities).

A primary focus of formative assessment is to identify areas that may need improvement.

Types of Formative Assessment

• Observations during in-class activities; of students non-verbal feedback during lecture
• Homework exercises as review for exams and class discussions)
• Reflections journals that are reviewed periodically during the semester
• Question and answer sessions, both formal—planned and informal—spontaneous
• Conferences between the instructor and student at various points in the semester
• In-class activities where students informally present their results
• Student feedback collected by periodically answering specific question about the instruction and their self-evaluation of performance and progress

Summative Assessment

Summative assessment takes place after the learning has been completed and provides information and feedback that sums up the teaching and learning process. Typically, no more formal learning is taking place at this stage, other than incidental learning which might take place through the completion of projects and assignments.

Rubrics, often developed around a set of standards or expectations, can be used for summative assessment. Rubrics can be given to students before they begin working on a particular project so they know what is expected of them (precisely what they have to do) for each of the criteria. Rubrics also can help you to be more objective when deriving a final, summative grade by following the same criteria students used to complete the project.

Rubrics also can help you to be more objective when deriving a final, summative grade by following the same criteria students used to complete the project.

High-stakes summative assessments typically are given to students at the end of a set point during or at the end of the semester to assess what has been learned and how well it was learned. Grades are usually an outcome of summative assessment: they indicate whether the student has an acceptable level of knowledge-gain—is the student able to effectively progress to the next part of the class? To the next course in the curriculum? To the next level of academic standing? See the section “Grading” for further information on grading and its affect on student achievement.

Summative assessment is more product-oriented and assesses the final product, whereas formative assessment focuses on the process toward completing the product. Once the project is completed, no further revisions can be made. If, however, students are allowed to make revisions, the assessment becomes formative, where students can take advantage of the opportunity to improve.

Summative assessment...assesses the final product, whereas formative assessment focuses on the process...

Types of Summative Assessment

• Examinations (major, high-stakes exams)
• Final examination (a truly summative assessment)
• Term papers (drafts submitted throughout the semester would be a formative assessment)
• Projects (project phases submitted at various completion points could be formatively assessed)
• Portfolios (could also be assessed during it’s development as a formative assessment)
• Performances
• Student evaluation of the course (teaching effectiveness)
• Instructor self-evaluation

Assessment measures if and how students are learning and if the teaching methods are effectively relaying the intended messages. Hanna and Dettmer (2004) suggest that you should strive to develop a range of assessments strategies that match all aspects of their instructional plans. Instead of trying to differentiate between formative and summative assessments it may be more beneficial to begin planning assessment strategies to match instructional goals and objectives at the beginning of the semester and implement them throughout the entire instructional experience. The selection of appropriate assessments should also match course and program objectives necessary for accreditation requirements.

Hanna, G. S., & Dettmer, P. A. (2004). Assessment for effective teaching: Using context-adaptive planning. Boston, MA: Pearson A&B.

Just Science Now! (n.d.). Assessment-inquiry connection. https://www.justsciencenow.com/assessment/index.htm

Selected Resources

Suggested citation

Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. (2012). Formative and summative assessment. In Instructional guide for university faculty and teaching assistants. Retrieved from https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide

• Active Learning Activities
• Assessing Student Learning
• Direct vs. Indirect Assessment
• Examples of Classroom Assessment Techniques
• Peer and Self-Assessment
• Reflective Journals and Learning Logs
• Rubrics for Assessment
• The Process of Grading

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Formative and Summative assessments: A teacher's guide

December 17, 2021

How can we use formative and summative assessments to drive student understanding forward? A classroom guide for teachers.

Main, P (2021, December 17). Formative and Summative assessments: A teacher's guide. Retrieved from https://www.structural-learning.com/post/formative-and-summative-assessments-a-teachers-guide

What is the difference between formative and summative assessment?

Summative assessment and formative assessment are two kinds of testings that serve different purposes in evaluating student learning. Summative testing measures school attainment and knowledge growth at the end of a unit of study, providing a snapshot of student progress . In contrast, formative assessment strategies focus on ongoing development and long-term information retention, with evaluations taking place on a regular basis.

While summative assessments are useful in determining overall academic performance, formative assessments offer real-time insights into student learning, allowing teachers to adjust their instruction and better support individual needs for continuous improvement.

Many people consider ‘ assessment ’ as a test . But, this term is wider than that. There are two main categories of assessment: formative assessment and summative assessment . These types of assessment are sometimes called A 'for' L and A 'of' L , respectively.

At some level, both types of appraisal are conducted in the classroom but they have two different purposes. To maximise the effectiveness of each type of classroom practice , it is essential to understand the basic functions of these appraisals and how each of these assessment types contributes to the student motivation and learning process. 

Providing comprehensive feedback for students is a fundamental part of lessons. In this article, we will demonstrate some engaging ways of going beyond the standard multiple-choice questions. Although plenary questions are a good way of gauging what students have understood, there are more interactive strategies that get to the essence of what pupil understanding.

What are the Formative assessments?

Formative activities are taken more frequently and during regular classes for insightful purposes , allowing educators and students to assess pupil progress and attainment levels more often. Formative appraisals can start from diagnostic questions , demonstrating what gaps may exist in knowledge and what a student already knows. Knowing what has been learned to date, makes it easier for both the student and the teacher to plan the next stages of learning . As the learning proceeds, further appraisals specify whether instructional methods need to be modified to extend or reinforce students' current theoretical knowledge.

Formative tasks may be carried out through strategies such as key questions, exit tickets , quizzes, tasks, and many other types of formative review activities . Most of the formative appraisal activities are not recorded by the teachers, except possibly in the lesson plan drawn up to identify the next steps implied.

For formative tasks, the main functions of assessment include the monitoring of student theoretical knowledge and offering ongoing feedback to students and staff. Productive appraisal activities are the ongoing check of knowledge and skills. If designed properly, an ongoing assessment helps learners identify their weaknesses and strengths, and it can help students improve their self-regulating skills so that they gain their education properly. Constructive checks of understanding also provide information to the teachers about the lesson planning and subject matter learners are struggling with so that enough support can be provided through individual lessons.

Checks of understanding can be teacher-led , self or peer-assessment. These are usually low stakes assessments and mostly carry no grade, which may discourage the learners from completing or getting each of the individual pupils fully engaged with the task.

What are Summative Assessments?

Summative exams can be used to assess pupil progress more formally , academic achievement and skill acquisition at the end of a specified instructional period —usually after completing a key stage, course, unit, project, program, semester or educational year.

External tests are usually used for summative purposes, to sum up what a student has learned at the end of a specific time, relative to the relevant national curriculum and learning objectives . The period of time allocated for exams or SATs will vary, depending upon what the education system wants to assess.

A summative task can be an observation , a cold written task, or a discussion . It can be recorded in a written format, in the form of photographs , through audio recording or any other visual media . Whichever way it is used, the insights can be used to indicate what has been learnt . Exams perform summative functions by providing a summary of what a student has attained at a specific point in time and may furnish cohort and individual data for informing stakeholders (such as parents or school leaders etc.) and tracking pupil progress against benchmark data or standardized tests.

These exams frequently have high stakes and learners tend to give priority to external tests over A4L activities . According to key figures in the world of education, feedback from both forms of appraisal should be used by the teachers and children to guide their activities and efforts in the upcoming courses.

Education experts claim that an over-dependence on testing  at the end of an element of study may help in achieving good grades, but offers very little response to students for improving performance before reaching the end of the programme/module. Thus maintaining a balance between summative and formative assessments is necessary.

What are the benefits of formative assessment?

Formative assessment offers numerous benefits by enhancing the learning experience for both students and teachers. By providing continuous feedback, formative assessment supports long-term retention and cumulative knowledge acquisition , ensuring students grasp essential concepts.

Additionally, formative assessment informs curriculum planning by identifying areas where students require further assistance, allowing teachers to tailor their instruction to better meet individual needs.

In essence, formative assessment plays a vital role in fostering a dynamic and responsive educational environment, which ultimately leads to improved student outcomes.

To really advance school attainment, we need to build upon what a child already knows. When school leaders are engaged in national curriculum planning we are attempting to sequence a form of knowledge acquisition and skills progression. If a child has gaps in their understanding, this may hinder their progression.

Using critical questions and other mixed-assessment approaches helps us build a picture of the classes current understanding . These types of activities help us inform curriculum planning and ensure that we have achieved maximum coverage of the curriculum. The following are some of the most significant benefits of formative assessments:

• Formative activities are carried out in a very positive and risk-free environment, where students can learn as well as experiment .
• Formative tasks also prepare students for summative evaluation , as long as the teacher provides insightful feedback.

What are the benefits of summative assessment?

Research-based evidence about student achievement shows that summative judgments play an important role in developing memory. Retrieval practice, a powerful learning strategy, aids in consolidating students' memory by actively recalling information from their minds.

This process strengthens neural connections, making it easier to access the information in the future. By frequently engaging in retrieval practice , students reinforce their memory and enhance long-term retention. Additionally, the process helps identify any gaps in understanding, allowing for targeted revision and improved comprehension.

In summary, retrieval practice supports the development of durable and efficient memory networks, promoting deeper learning and lasting knowledge acquisition .

• Refreshing the memories of what students have learned previously.
• Reinforcing the overall learning objectives of the class.
• Standardised tests also provide education authorities with the 'big-picture'.

Engaging students in a formative evaluation

It is possible to engage students in formative assessments by:

• Clearly explaining the rationale of the formative functions: Students show more engagement with the formative assessments when it is made clear to them that through formative tasks they can gain experience and they can build much stronger skills to achieve better attainment levels in the summative assessments.
• Creating a link between formative functions and summative judgements: Students seem to show more engagement with the formative evaluation when the formative assessments are designed to contribute to the summative tasks. This reduces the burden of learning on the students and offers students the necessary feedback to enhance their final performance. Some examples of formative assessments include generating a structure of a literature review, exit tickets, creating an essay plan , a part of the essay or a list of references.
• Increasing the number of formative evaluations and reducing the number of summative tests: Still, it is recommended not to allow a summative individual assessment to have too much weight in the last grade. Accountability measures that schools have to adhere to can often dilute the authentic learning experiences we all strive for.

The process of designing and developing classroom-based checks can be a creative endeavour: what must be assessed, using summative or/ and formative assessment? What are the appropriate measures and functions of the assessment? And, are the assessments aligned with the course outline and learning outcomes?

‍ Research-based evidence about student achievement shows that the assessment design and quality the quality of its outcomes, and ultimately, whether those outcomes are suited to make significant decisions. Classroom-based assessments serve as the key components of the national curriculum. At Structural Learning , we have seen many primary schools use the block building methodology to find out what children understand (build what you know). Using the toolkit creatively in interactive lessons allows educators to embed learning reviews into teaching methods .

Final points about student assessment

Any form of evaluation, carried out through formal or informal procedures, helps secondary and primary school students learn. Performing a classroom assessment provides an opportunity for students to see how they are performing in a class. Both formative and summative strategies are usually carried out at an individual level but there is no reason why group work cannot be used to monitor progress. Hearing a student articulating their ideas and demonstrating situation-specific skills can give us a lot of information.

A teacher can assess students attainment levels by performing a straightforward test and use the results to inform learning and teaching methods (thus also having formative advantages ). To summarise, many interactive lessons provide us with opportunities to gauge a pupils understanding. Whether you are asking critical questions or using a graphic organiser to help students communicate their understanding, you are figuring out the next steps a pupil has to take. It is also worth acknowledging how powerful feedback is as a classroom tool, the EEF toolkit which unpicks the best ways to advance school attainment consistently places this pedagogy high up the performance tables. 

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Embracing change: the evolution of primary school assessment in england.

Discover the transformative journey of primary school assessment in England, from traditional methods to dynamic frameworks. Explore how innovative tools like Sonar Tracker revolutionise teaching and learning, empowering educators with data-driven insights for personalised pupil success.

Introduction

Over the last decade, primary school assessment in England has undergone significant transformations, influenced by policy changes, educational technology advancements, and a shift towards more dynamic teaching methodologies. This evolution reflects a broader trend towards data-informed education to enhance student learning and school performance.

The shift from traditional methods

Historically, the Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) dominated primary education in England. These tests assessed literacy, numeracy, and science at Key Stages 1 and 2. These assessments provided a snapshot of school performance and influenced national league tables. However, criticism regarding their high-stakes nature and the pressure they placed on students and teachers spurred a need for change.

The introduction of the phonics screening check in 2012 and modifications to the curriculum and assessment framework aimed to address these concerns by diversifying evaluation methods and reducing the emphasis on end-of-key-stage testing and the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, where assessments were suspended, further highlighted the need for flexible and adaptive assessment tools.

The rise of formative assessments

The interruption caused by the pandemic revealed the effectiveness of ongoing, formative assessments over traditional summative methods. Formative assessments offer continuous insights into a student’s understanding, allowing for immediate interventions and personalised learning paths. This approach aligns with the shift towards nurturing a more holistic, well-rounded educational experience.

Innovative tools like Sonar Tracker

Enter Sonar Tracker , an advanced assessment tool developed by Juniper Education. This tool has been pivotal in redefining how primary schools assess, track, and analyse student progress. Tools like Sonar Tracker integrate formative and summative data, providing educators a comprehensive view of each student's academic journey.

At Warden Hill Junior School in Bedfordshire, the implementation of Sonar Tracker marked a significant shift from the previous system, Classroom Monitor. The school’s leadership, including assistant headteacher Mr Tim Hayden, noted that Sonar Tracker’s intuitive design and detailed reports were less labour-intensive and offered deeper insights into student progress, especially for disadvantaged and EAL (English as an Additional Language) pupils.

Features and benefits of modern assessment tools

Sonar Tracker exemplifies the capabilities of modern educational technology by offering features such as:

• Real-time data analysis: Immediate insights help teachers adjust their strategies to better meet their students' needs.
• Customisable reports: Detailed reports, such as Venn diagrams, allow for targeted interventions by identifying specific areas of need.
• Integration with existing systems: Seamless integration with other educational software ensures that data is comprehensive and accessible.

The impact on teaching and learning

The use of such sophisticated tools has a profound impact on teaching efficacy and student outcomes. Teachers can now rely on accurate data to inform instruction, personalise learning experiences, and make informed decisions quickly and effectively. For students, this means education attuning to their learning styles and needs, potentially leading to improved academic performance and a more engaging learning experience.

Looking ahead

As we look to the future, the role of technology in education continues to expand. With the government’s ongoing focus on digital infrastructure in schools, as outlined in recent educational policy updates, and the growing importance of data literacy among educators, tools like Sonar Tracker are set to become integral components of educational best practices.

Assessment in primary schools has evolved from rigid, summative models to dynamic, formative frameworks, marked by significant advancements in policy, practice, and technology. Sonar Tracker is at the forefront of this change, offering schools like Warden Hill Junior the tools they need to prepare students for the next stage of their education and lifelong learning. As assessment continues to evolve, the focus remains clear: to enhance educational outcomes and support the development of well-rounded, capable young learners.

Ready to make data-driven decisions?

Sonar goes beyond traditional progress tracking. The simple, intuitive, interactive pupil progress solution aids formative and summative assessments in school. Plus, records evidence of learning, links curriculum planning, and compares progress to national benchmarks.

Act on every learning opportunity and make classroom decisions based on data-driven insights.

Contact our team of data experts today and ensure every pupil reaches their full potential through the power of Sonar Tracker.

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AI and Assessment: Where We Are Now

• Because technology can capture how students create assignments, teachers can assess the learner’s process as well as the learning outcome.
• While autograding remains controversial, it also frees up time that professors can redirect to other activities that enhance student learning.
• Because technology can create limitless numbers of tests that cover the same material, professors can give each student a personalized exam, which mitigates the chances of cheating.

  How can business schools use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the assessment process in a way that boosts student learning? That question was at the heart of a March webinar conducted by AACSB’s Online Learning Affinity Group. “Ensuring Online Assessment Rigor and Integrity in the Age of AI Advancements” was moderated by Bora Ozkan, associate professor of instruction at Temple University’s Fox School of Business and Management in Philadelphia.

Panelists included Jeff Rients, associate director of teaching and learning innovation at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching; Tawnya Means, assistant dean for educational innovation and chief learning officer at Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and Gonzalo Tudela of Examind AI , a student assessment software company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

While AI offers impressive possibilities for student learning and assessment, the speakers noted that such applications are still in the nascent stage. “We’re in a Wild West feeling-out period,” said Rients. “Any conclusions we reach today are tentative.”

All groundbreaking technology follows a similar pattern, outlined in the Gartner Hype Cycle , where it skyrockets to inflated expectations, then falls to the “trough of disillusionment,” and—finally—achieves productive outcomes, said Tudela. “We’re currently at the peak of inflated expectations where everyone is expecting AI to completely change the world,” he said. “It might. It just might not happen tomorrow.”

Even so, the panelists all agreed that schools must begin exploring available AI edtech—not only because these technologies can enhance student learning, but because similar applications are in use in today’s workplaces. If schools don’t use AI in the classroom, warned Means, they open the door for students “to use the tools in ways that are detrimental to their learning. It’s important that they learn how to use these tools … in a way that maps to what they will need to do in the future.”

The Case for Collaboration

The current state of the market might best be described as experimental, as both schools and edtech companies try to determine what’s working. “The only successful path is to quadruple or 10X our number of experiments,” said Tudela—and to share each result regardless of the outcome.

“We should be talking about our failures,” Tudela said. “There’s just as much benefit for people who are working on discovery and innovation to know what doesn’t work as what does work.” If educators and instructional designers don’t share their failures, he says, “ten institutions might be running the same experiment and painfully learning the same lessons.”

Schools must begin exploring AI edtech—not only because these technologies can enhance student learning, but because similar applications are in use in today’s workplaces.

It’s also critical for companies and universities to collaborate and communicate so that, together, they can “iterate through to a better solution,” said Means. While she doesn’t expect vendors to produce the perfect products right out of the box, she looks for tools that are “broadly generalizable” and that can be adapted to the school’s specific needs.

Rients agreed, saying, “One of the silver linings of this development is going to be a more dialogic relationship between educators and vendors—having the discussion of ‘This doesn’t quite work for our particular environment. What changes can you make?’”

Experiments and Accessibility

Schools are already experimenting with ways to integrate AI into the classroom. For instance, in one course at Temple, students use free ChatGPT accounts when they brainstorm and write rough drafts, said Rients. As part of their assignments, students must submit transcripts of their conversations with ChatGPT as well as reflections on how the process worked and whether the tool was helpful.

In another class at Temple, Ozkan requires his MBA students to use ChatGPT to summarize a case. Then they add line-by-line comments about where they agree and disagree with the chatbot, before making a final analysis. As an additional step, student peers review each other’s work.

Gies is experimenting with a chatbot tool trained on videos from the school’s MOOC courses. Students can ask the chatbot for more information about a topic, and it will present them with a relevant video segment as well as related clips. The chatbot enables them to prepare for an exam or “just better understand the concepts in the course,” said Means.

But for an AI application to be useful—and fair—in the classroom, it must be equally accessible to all students, so no one is disadvantaged by having to use it, said Means. It’s also critical that the tool doesn’t create so much anxiety among students that it has a negative impact on the learning experience.

If schools don’t provide access to AI tools, Tudela warned, they’ve effectively ensured inequality in the classroom. Students who can afford it will pay for GPT-4; students who can’t will either use the free version or will make do without any AI assistance at all. He adds, “Equal access is one of the fundamentals for AI in education.”

Assessments and Improvements

While students are using chatbots to complete assignments, instructors are using AI tools to assess student work. What’s most exciting is that such tools make it possible for instructors to assess not just the final product, such as an article or a case analysis, but the process a student used to create it. This enables professors to make both ongoing formative assessments and end-of-process summative assessments, said Means.

For instance, a tool such as GPT-4 records the chat histories between students and the application, including when and how students imported or rewrote text. It tracks what prompts students used and how they uncovered and incorporated information—in other words, it provides proof of process. This allows teachers to see and explain to students where they might have gone wrong.

AI tools make it possible for instructors to assess not just the final product, such as an article or a case analysis, but the process a student used to create it.

“Instead of teaching to the end result, you can teach to the process of critical thinking,” said Tudela. In the future, he predicted, instructors will be able to use a range of AI products that reveal a student’s entire creation process. “Assessment will be a combination of autograding, some proof of effort, and some keystroke dynamics to determine transcription versus original thought,” he said.

Yet autograding remains a controversial aspect of AI, with some critics complaining that it isn’t fair. For instance, Tudela conceded that most educators would balk at an autograding tool that promises an accuracy rate of 90 percent. But he would encourage them to compare that to the consistency rate of five different TAs doing the grading for a large class. “If I can provide something that’s 10 percent more consistent than five TAs, that shifts the perspective. That’s actually an improvement to what you’re currently doing,” he said.

Another concern is that, when professors employ autograding tools, schools might not be reaching the U.S. Department of Education’s requirements for students to have “ regular and substantive interaction ” with professors and peers or equivalent standards in other nations. However, Means argued that if AI frees up more of a professor’s time, the teacher ultimately can provide faster, better, and more personalized feedback to students.

For instance, if she trains an AI application to grade papers according to her expectations, it can provide feedback to students repeatedly as they submit, revise, and resubmit assignments—a process she doesn’t have enough time to manage on her own. “They can get immediate feedback at 12:01 a.m., when they need it and I’m not available,” Means said. If students are still struggling, she can provide personalized tutoring.

Rients concurred, saying that if he saved time by having AI grade papers, he could spend those hours recording a video that provided global feedback about the results he saw and what students could be doing better. He also pointed out that teachers can choose which assignments to autograde and which ones to grade by hand. Instructors can provide in-depth personal feedback on critical assignments and use autograding on exercises that don’t need the same level of attention.

There might be evidence that AI assessments actually can encourage students to work harder to master the material. For instance, research shows that, with undifferentiated practice exams, students make 1.2 to 1.6 attempts at the practice test before taking the actual test.

However, Tudela described a University of Iowa experiment in which students had access to practice exams with unlimited variations—which meant the tests were different every time students took them. In this case, they averaged 4.3 attempts. Because questions were different each time, students had to approach them differently and were more likely to master the material.

But What About Cheating?

That exam experiment highlights one of the great, if counterintuitive, benefits of AI and online assessment: It can mitigate cheating.

When schools began using digital tests, the risk was that questions would be leaked online where students could memorize them before taking exams. But when AI can provide different, personalized tests to every learner, such security breaches become irrelevant.

AI can mitigate cheating because it can provide different, personalized tests to every learner.

“We’re well within the realm of possibility where an online test could be posted to every website everywhere and not matter, because these new tools allow us to create new tests based on the content of the course,” said Rients. “If the AI makes a new test for each learner, the fact that 14,000 versions exist in the wild [means] that they all just exist as study tools for students.”

Of course, AI allows students to cheat outside of test-taking, such as when they use chatbots to help them write papers and prepare assignments. Means responds by creating different types of assignments. For instance, instead of asking students simply to summarize information—which any chatbot can do—she has them analyze the summaries. “That moves them farther along on Bloom’s taxonomy ,” she said. “It moves the needle in what we’re asking students to do.”

Too often, said Tudela, schools that have introduced digital tools to the classroom have focused too closely on “how do we stop, limit, prevent, or detect when students are doing bad things?” He suggested a better question: How can schools use AI in assessments—and allow students to use AI in coursework—while removing “the value that is gained from cheating activities?”

Predictions and Hopes

Given how quickly AI tech is developing, panelists found it difficult to forecast where it might go next. “I’ve seen some things behind the hood that are quite incredible,” said Tudela. Today, he said, different AI applications are designed for different tasks, but he speculates that one day companies could create artificial general intelligence —“one model to rule them all.”

Rients is similarly uncertain about what’s ahead. “Some days I feel we’ve passed the event horizon of the technological singularity, and any attempt to predict the future is woefully inadequate.” Even so, educators must continually pay attention to how oranizations are using these tools so that schools can prepare students to take jobs at those companies. “Even if our students are only experimenting with these tools, we want to give them the edge,” he said.

Means hopes that improved AI learning tools allow schools to solve “ Bloom’s 2 sigma problem ,” which demonstrates that students who receive personalized tutoring outperform peers educated in the classroom by two standard deviations.

“If we can do scalable personalization in assessment, we can provide learners with opportunities to have individualized tutoring experiences,” she said. Through such an approach, students become more confident and more excited about learning, and “we’re able to address what we’ve struggled with in all of education.”

Continue the discussion by posting your ideas in the Online Learning Affinity Group community on the AACSB Exchange and tagging Tawnya Means and Jeff Rients in your comments.

• artificial intelligence
• assurance of learning
• future of business education