Formative Summative Assessment

Educational assessment is the method of measuring the knowledge, skills, understanding and attitude of a learner. There are various categories of assessment. Formative and summative is one of them.

Formative assessment is an assessment for learning in which feedback from learners is used to make the teaching, meet the learners’ need. This type of assessment is carried out throughout a learning session and is not necessarily used for grading purpose. Through formative assessment, a teacher can measure students’ current knowledge and skills, so that pedagogy can be adapted to students’ needs.

Summative assessment is an assessment of learning in which learners are evaluated for there knowledge and understanding of a course. This type of assessment is carried out at the end of a learning session or set of learning sessions and is used for grading purpose. Through summative assessment, a teacher can determine up to which extent students are able to learn, what they were supposed to learn.

Educators can do formative and summative assessment of students with modern ICT assessment tool – student response systems (also known as interactive voting system, interactive response system, classroom response system, and audience response system).The innovative response systems removes the barriers of learning by doing formative and summative assessment in a fun and interactive manner. The response system increases engagement of student in the lessons and aids in personalised learning. Response systems are generally used in the following mode. First, a teacher asked questions from his handset in different formats such as yes or no, multiple choice question, numeric, text, alphanumeric etc to the students. The students read the question and give their responses to the questions using wireless handsets. The response systems have a radio frequency receiver integrated to the educator’s computer that receives the responses of the students, send by their handsets. The response systems software installed on educator computer produces reports in the form of graphic charts such as bar chart and pie chart showing the number of student participated in the test and their answers. Teacher can track individual responses, gather data for reporting and analysis of student using Interactive response systems. The results can be exported to various file formats like excel, PDF, HTML etc. Teachers then use these reports to do formative and summative assessment of the student and enhance their learning skills.


Source:- Formative and Summative Assessment Tool