Formative Assessment

Benefits of Formative Assessment

Formative assessments provide many benefits for students and educators and should be an essential part of student learning. Gikandi, et al (2011) define formative assessment as "an iterative process of establishing what, how much and how well students are learning in relation to the learning goals…” As such, formative assessment can provide an opportunity for educators to monitor learning and desired levels of knowledge and skills. Since formative assessments are not typically credit bearing, they are often introduced as a means of providing students with specific feedback for enhancing future performance.

Formative feedback can prepare students for summative or innovative assessments. They can provide the opportunity for students to practice and develop their assessment literacy and academic performance.

There are many different approaches to introducing formative assessment activities. For example, progress / knowledge checks using polls, online quizzes, reflective activities, group tasks, think-pair share activities or peer and self-assessment.

We would advise when introducing formative assessment that you consider our assessment design principles and the distribution of assessments fairly and evenly across the programme journey to avoid bunching and overwhelming students. Formal formative activities should be included in the Module Outline Form, which ensures module teaching teams can understand assessment commitments for students at a programme level.