Assessing a student’s performance and ability serve a vital factor in analyzing the improvements in teaching methods. The evaluations performed to judge the modifications required in academic sessions are collectively referred to as formative assessment. But the question arises as to how to conduct such an evaluation? The easy answer to it is, you need to be aware of and adopt formative assessment strategies.
The next obvious question that arises is what the strategies and types of assessment strategies are? In this article, we will discuss in detail about formative assessment, the example, and strategy that you need to adopt. But before that, let us understand what a formative assessment and its benefits are.
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Note: You must not consider formative assessment as an evaluation of a student’s merit after a session. This particular assessment guides in nourishing the innovations required in a curriculum or teaching strategies.
What is a formative assessment?
Formative assessment helps in creating a guideline for the teachers and academicians. They try to evaluate whether a particular curriculum or session is proving to be difficult for the students. Through this assessment, they engage in deep-dive research of student’s level of understanding. They list down the skills and competencies that students struggle to achieve or adopt.
The extensive analysis further drills down in improvising the design and techniques of teaching. Teaching can be classroom-based or online. The basic concept is to identify the underlying errors in the teaching methods and the introduction of the subjects to students. Formative assessment is embedded within the learning guides. It contributes significantly to the effective designing of academic sessions or stud curricula.
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Why do we need to leverage formative assessment strategies?
Formative assessment requires a significant amount of time and effort. The evaluation may last for months, depending on the course duration or training programs. But the benefits achieved from the assessment is enormous. Hence teachers and educationists are more prone to adopt formative assessment strategies to design a better study course. The more the courses are acceptable by the students, the more you gain learners. Eventually, it boosts your future growth in academics.
The key benefits of formative assessment are:
1. Achieving Learning Objectives
Designing a session, preparing, and executing the same are all parts of a learning objective or purpose. Unless you achieve the defined goals, the entire process falls apart. Formative assessment is a vital technique to fulfil your learning objectives and goals efficiently. Any deviation from the planned actions can be quickly tracked and aligned to the scope.
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2. Faster upgrading of Competency levels
The knowledge acquired by the students must be aligned with the learning objectives and goals. The difference between the two will defeat the purpose of introducing the sessions and the teaching methods —neither the students gain nor the teachers. Hence bridging the gap is mutually beneficial to both. Alignment helps the students to upgrade their knowledge levels. The teachers can also predict the success of a course or program. Any deficiency can be overcome by deploying prompt and corrective actions.
3. Increase in zeal and motivation
Inspiration, motivation and zeal are the three important soft skills that help in growing your professional career. But if your students are not satisfied with the conducted sessions or tutorials, then you tend to degrade on all of the mentioned three skills. To prevent such a situation, it is better to identify shortcomings as well as the plus points. Adopting formative assessment strategies guide you to the path of improvements. And once achieved, you will be inspired and motivated to invest more in innovations.
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4. Enhancing Student engagements
The more your students are satisfied with your learning sessions, the more they will show eagerness in attending your classes. Both classroom and online formative assessment help in increasing the engagement level of students. The students can connect themselves to the subject topics and feel the benefits. Students and learners attend teaching sessions with the sole objective of gaining knowledge and increasing the competency levels. If they are satisfied in achieving their learning goals, then as teachers, it’s a success.
5. Determine personal expertise
Formative assessment strategies act as a strong weapon to determine your expertise as a teacher. Judge and analyze your teaching strategies; any improvements can be worked and rectified. This leads to significant personal up-gradation. Eventually, it will increase the satisfaction level of your students and learners. The relation between students and teachers is uplifted, leading to a healthy level of trust and confidence.
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6. Strengthens the Feedback Mechanism
Formative assessment encourages honest feedback from the students. The feedback must be considered as constructive criticism for a study curriculum as well as the teaching methods. You can understand the expectations of students and bring in those changes. Either the design of the course can be modified or the teaching styles and techniques. The result is students and teachers both can meet their respective learning objectives and goals.
Tip: It is recommended to seek guidance from experts, scan through online courses and materials before working on the formative assessment outcome.
Formative Assessment Examples
Teachers can adapt the enlisted formative assessment examples in classrooms as well as in online sessions.
- Ask the students to present any of the topics or chapters that have been taught so far in the session. You can understand what percentage of knowledge or concept the students have been able to grasp.
- Conduct quizzes or short question-answer session to determine the eagerness and motivational level of students. It also helps in devising the percentage of learning up-gradation.
- Encourage students to use doodles or drawings to explain a topic. This helps in determining whether they were able to visualize the lessons.
- Assign projects by creating groups in the class. Let the groups present their work in the class. You can depict their level of understanding.
- Guide the students to curate props or crafts to explain what they have learned. This helps in judging whether they can understand the logic and concepts.
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- Organize a whiteboarding session, where you can ask questions and encourage the students to write down the answers on the board.
- Instead of you recapitulating the previous day’s topic and concepts covered, ask the students to do the same.
- Create a feedback form to find out what the students have learned and what they did not. The form can also seek for improvements in the sessions.
- Observe the expressions of students while conducting the class. You can understand whether you can communicate with them.
- Let the students say Yes or No, raise their hands, etc. to showcase their understanding on a particular topic.
- Conclude sessions by asking students to summarize the learnings. You must also encourage them to shoot their queries.
- Ensure every student is responsive. If the majority remains unresponsive, then you must realize that there exists a severe problem in the curriculum or the teaching method. But if few students remain silent, you can enquire about them separately to understand their problems.
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Formative assessment strategies for every classroom and online session
Exploring and adopting the best of breed formative assessment strategies turn out to be beneficial both for students and teachers. Students can evaluate their performances and look for upgrading their skills. Teachers can treat them as an effective mechanism to enhance their skills or devise a learning plan or session.
1. In-depth analysis of a student’s submitted assignments
You may conduct a quiz or a test to assess a student’s knowledge level. Once you have collected the requisite information, the real work starts thereafter. It’s like sorting out the assignments and checking on the knowledge obtained by the students. You can determine the learning levels of each student and the level of guidance required.
Tip: If the majority of the students demonstrate gaps in understanding, then you need to bring in significant improvements in the course or teaching methods. But if the gaps are less and limited within a few students, then the problem is less complicated. You can specifically focus on the few ones to check their shortcomings and introduce improvement methodologies.
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2. Conduct One on One Interview sessions with students
If you are focusing on collecting detailed feedback on a course or teaching technique, it is better to engage in a one on one session with the students. This has proved to one of the efficient formative assessment strategies. Prepare a list of questions to assess their learning levels. Seek feedback from them too. You can create a scoring sheet and use it to score the different parameters, based on the students’ responses. The comparison of the scores help in assessing the success of a learning session. 
3. Group Discussions and Presentations
Create a list of topics around the subject being taught in the session. Divide the students into groups or in pairs. Assign a topic to each group or pair. Give them certain time limits to complete their speech or write up on the topic provided. Present the same to the class through whiteboarding or lectures. This is one of the effective formative assessment strategies in understanding the student’s learning level.
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4. Questions provoking deep thoughts and intelligence
Teachers must ask questions in the middle of the ongoing session or at the end. While straightforward queries are easy to answer, thought-provoking and concept related questions are difficult to respond to. But those questions are vital in noting the extent of deep thinking abilities of the students. If your courses or programs and your teaching capabilities can nurture the intellectual brains, then it’s a huge success. You will eventually gain more students and learners, especially high careerist individuals.
5. Noting down students behaviour and their responses
You need to be watchful on the response, moods, facial reactions and body language of students. Observe them critically and note them for future reference. Go through them critically at the end of each session. Recapitulate the mistakes and focus on improvements and rectifications. You can also summarize and repeat in the next sessions to check for behavioural changes among the students. This strategy can be applied mainly during classroom sessions. For online formative assessment, one way is to switch on videos of students to guess the same.
6. Conduct quizzes, polls, surveys, and games
Most of the online teaching software grant the facility to conduct online surveys and polls in real time, while the sessions are in progress. You can visualize then and there, the feedback and response of the students. It is one of the smartest formative assessment strategies to gather input and introduce immediate corrective techniques. Conducting online or classroom-based games and quizzes serves to be a useful tool in gathering information on a student’s performance level. You can quickly and smartly handle the deficiencies and minimize them at the spot.
Tip: Curate the questions for polls, surveys, and quizzes in such a manner, that eventually guides you in assessing the student’s grasping power. Introduce a rating mechanism using a number scale to assess the student’s understanding level of a particular concept.
7. Leverage the essence of art and craft
Visual images prove to be an ideal representation of a person’s understanding of a particular subject or topic. You can encourage the students to express their thoughts and ideas in the form of some representative sketches or handcrafted items. It must be about the subject or topics discussed in the sessions. This is one of the innovative formative assessment strategies in judging the performance level of students. A big advantage is you can guide the students at the spot and correct them. The students gain confidence and interact more with the teachers.
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Tip: Students feel motivated to attend sessions if they are encouraged to interact and participate more. They start trusting the teachers, eventually enhancing their knowledge levels.
8. Sharing about the Subject or Topics discussed
Teachers can encourage students to speak about the positive and negative points on the subject or topics discussed in the learning sessions. You can check on the preciseness and guide them to the accurate concepts. It is one of the super-efficient formative assessment strategies to gain insights into the student’s analysis of power. You can provide your amendments for a sound understanding. Another way is to present facts in front of the students and ask them to judge whether it is wrong or right. They need to substantiate their answers with use cases and real-life examples.
9. Writing a short paper
Asking the students to write a 1-minute note on a paper or an online google document is considered very effective. It can be leveraged by teachers in their list of formative assessment strategies for every classroom or online session. The teachers can mention the sub-topic for the paper. Typical examples are overview, exciting fact, complicated and easy part, questions if any.
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Conclusion
In the article, we have discussed some of the key types of assessment strategies. It’s your discretion to select the correct one for your sessions and subject areas. Before applying the strategy, judge your students, duration of the sessions, and the topics to be discussed. Some strategies are time-consuming hence may not be suitable for short duration sessions. Therefore you need to cautious while applying the formative assessment strategies.
The assessment strategies are useful weapons that equip teachers and students with an extensive ability to usher in rectification in the education system. Both the students and teachers are benefitted, resulting in a healthy environment for learning and education. The learning methods and techniques undergo remediation and move to an error-free and flawless study mechanism.
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