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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:

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

CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!

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Formative vs Summative Assessment - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University

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University of San Diego - Professional & Continuing Education

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

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

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

What is Formative Assessment?

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

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

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

14 Examples of Formative Assessment Tools & Strategies

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

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

Strategic Questioning

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

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

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

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

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

Exit/Admission Tickets

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

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

What was the main point?

What questions do you still have?

What was the most surprising thing you learned?

What was the most confusing aspect and why?

Creative Extension Projects

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

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

Quiz-Like Games and Polls

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

Interview-Based Assessments

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

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

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

List of Formative Assessment Resources

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

FAQs About Formative Assessment

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

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

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University of San Diego - Professional & Continuing Education

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14 Examples of Formative Assessment [+FAQs] - University of San Diego - Professional & Continuing Education

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

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Assessment Tools – Rubrics and Tables of Specifications

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A rubric is an assessment tool that maps the criteria for assignment completion against standards for success. Rubrics help to address the specific components of your marking scheme. There are two key benefits to developing, sharing, and using rubrics for your assignments – they enable both feed-for…

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Analytic Rubrics

An analytic rubric resembles a grid with the criteria for a student product listed in the leftmost column and with levels of performance listed across the top row often using numbers and/or descriptive tags. The cells within the center of the rubric may be left blank or may contain descriptions of what the specified criteria look like for each level of performance. When scoring with an analytic rubric each of the criteria is scored individually.

Example Analytic Rubric

Articulating Thoughts Through Written Communication-Final Paper

Advantages of Analytic Rubrics

Provide useful feedback on areas of strength and weakness.

Criterion can be weighted to reflect the relative importance of each dimension.

Disadvantages of Analytic Rubrics

Takes more time to create and use than a holistic rubric.

Unless each point for each criterion is well-defined raters may not arrive at the same score

Developmental Rubrics

Developmental rubrics are a subset of analytic trait rubrics.

The main distinction between developmental rubrics and other analytic trait rubrics is that the purpose of developmental rubrics is not to evaluate an end product or performance. Instead, developmental rubrics are designed to answer the question, "to what extent are students who engage in our programs/services developing this skill/ability/value/etc.?"

Generally, this type of rubric would be based on a theory of development.

Example Developmental Rubric

Intercultural Maturity

King, P.M. & Baxter Magolda, M.B. (2005). A developmental model of intercultural maturity, Journal of College Student Development, 46(2), 571-592.

Advantages of Developmental Rubrics

Useful when the goal of evaluation is to determine level of development rather than the quality of a final product.
Especially when there is no expectation that students should or could fully develop a skill or ability during the course of their education or potentially ever (such as in "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs," there is no expectation people can or will become "self-actualized").

Rubric can be based on relevant developmental theory.

Disadvantages of Developmental Rubrics

Conceptually, this type of rubric is more difficult to design.

Developing a developmental rubric requires a close tie between assessment criteria and the theory of development.

Holistic Rubrics

A holistic rubric consists of a single scale with all criteria to be included in the evaluation being considered together (e.g., clarity, organization, and mechanics). With a holistic rubric the rater assigns a single score (usually on a 1 to 4 or 1 to 6 point scale) based on an overall judgment of the student work. The rater matches an entire piece of student work to a single description on the scale.

Example Holistic Rubric

Articulating thoughts through written communication- final paper/project.

1. Above Average: The audience is able to easily identify the focus of the work and is engaged by its clear focus and relevant details. Information is presented logically and naturally. There are no more than two mechanical errors or misspelled words to distract the reader.

2. Sufficient: The audience is easily able to identify the focus of the student work which is supported by relevant ideas and supporting details. Information is presented in a logical manner that is easily followed. There is minimal interruption to the work due to misspellings and/or mechanical errors.

3. Developing: The audience can identify the central purpose of the student work without little difficulty and supporting ideas are present and clear. The information is presented in an orderly fashion that can be followed with little difficulty. There are some misspellings and/or mechanical errors, but they do not seriously distract from the work.

4. Needs Improvement: The audience cannot clearly or easily identify the central ideas or purpose of the student work. Information is presented in a disorganized fashion causing the audience to have difficulty following the author's ideas. There are many misspellings and/or mechanical errors that negatively affect the audience's ability to read the work.

Advantages of Holistic Rubrics

Emphasis on what the learner is able to demonstrate, rather than what s/he cannot do.

Saves time by minimizing the number of decisions raters make.

Can be applied consistently by trained raters increasing reliability.

Disadvantages of Holistic Rubrics

Does not provide specific feedback for improvement.

When student work is at varying levels spanning the criteria points it can be difficult to select the single best description.

Criteria cannot be weighted.

Checklists

Checklists are a distinct type of rubric - where there are only two performance levels possible. Checklists tend to be longer than other types of rubrics since each aspect of performance you are looking for in students' work/performances essentially becomes its own criterion. When you are using a checklist, every decision is binary (yes/no, present/absent, pass/fail, etc.). Most rubrics can be converted rather directly into a checklist. For example, here is a rubric for grading journal entries:

Here is the same rubric converted into a checklist:

Advantages of Checklists

Checklists are generally a simpler and faster way to grade than using a more traditional rubric since you are making discrete decisions for each individual performance criterion rather than trying to determine where students' work fall into performance criteria that generally encompass a range of difference performance expectations. This also makes the grading clearer to students. Using checklists may result in less arbitrary (and more consistent) grading decisions. For example, most instructors are clear on what the top performances look like and what the bottom performances look like, but the middle gets fuzzier. When students understand that their grades will be based on all or nothing decisions, checklists also have the potential to raise the rigor of and students' performances on our assignments.

Disadvantages of Checklists

Creating checklists for your assignments might be a slightly onerous process. This is both because checklists are longer than a traditional rubric and because identifying each of the discrete elements of "clearly written" or "well organized" might be difficult. You may find that cannot easily convert every performance element you are looking for into a checklist format. Performance criteria that are difficult to operationalize will also be difficult to convert into a checklist. It may also be difficult to decide on the exact level of granularity that might be appropriate for each assignment. For example, "uses good grammar" might be appropriate for most classes, but would be far too broad if you are teaching a course on grammar. Checklists also lose the middle so there is not a way to award credit to students who get most of the way toward achieving a criterion.

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An analytic rubric resembles a grid with the criteria for a student product listed in the leftmost column and with levels of performance listed across the top row often using numbers and/or descriptive tags. The cells within the center of the rubric may be left blank or may contain descriptions of what the specified criteria look like for each level of performance.

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INTRODUCTION

Introduction of new teaching strategies often expands the expectations for student learning, creating a parallel need to redefine how we collect the evidence that assures both us and our students that these expectations are in fact being met. The default assessment strategy of the typical large, introductory, college-level science course, the multiple- choice (fixed response) exam, when used to best advantage can provide feedback about what students know and recall about key concepts. Leaving aside the difficulty inherent in designing a multiple-choice exam that captures deeper understandings of course material, its limitations become particularly notable when learning objectives include what students are able to do as well as know as the result of time spent in a course. If we want students to build their skill at conducting guided laboratory investigations, developing reasoned arguments, or communicating their ideas, other means of assessment such as papers, demonstrations (the "practical exam"), other demonstrations of problem solving, model building, debates, or oral presentations, to name a few, must be enlisted to serve as benchmarks of progress and/or in the assignment of grades. What happens, however, when students are novices at responding to these performance prompts when they are used in the context of science learning, and faculty are novices at communicating to students what their expectations for a high-level performance are? The more familiar terrain of the multiple-choice exam can lull both students and instructors into a false sense of security about the clarity and objectivity of the evaluation criteria ( Wiggins, 1989) and make these other types of assessment strategies seem subjective and unreliable (and sometimes downright unfair) by comparison. In a worst-case scenario, the use of alternatives to the conventional exam to assess student learning can lead students to feel that there is an implicit or hidden curriculum-the private curriculum that seems to exist only in the mind's eye of a course instructor.

Use of rubrics provides one way to address these issues. Rubrics not only can be designed to formulate standards for levels of accomplishment and used to guide and improve performance but also they can be used to make these standards clear and explicit to students. Although the use of rubrics has become common practice in the K-12 setting ( Luft, 1999), the good news for those instructors who find the idea attractive is that more and more examples of the use of rubrics are being noted at the college and university level, with a variety of applications ( Ebert-May, undated; Ebert-May et al., 1997; Wright and Boggs, 2002; Moni et al., 2005; Porter, 2005; Lynd-Balta, 2006).

WHAT IS A RUBRIC?

Although definitions for the word "rubric" abound, for the purposes of this feature article we use the word to denote a type of matrix that provides scaled levels of achievement or understanding for a set of criteria or dimensions of quality for a given type of performance, for example, a paper, an oral presentation, or use of teamwork skills. In this type of rubric, the scaled levels of achievement (gradations of quality) are indexed to a desired or appropriate standard (e.g., to the performance of an expert or to the highest level of accomplishment evidenced by a particular cohort of students). The descriptions of the possible levels of attainment for each of the criteria or dimensions of performance are described fully enough to make them useful for judgment of, or reflection on, progress toward valued objectives ( Huba and Freed, 2000).

A good way to think about what distinguishes a rubric from an explanation of an assignment is to compare it with a more common practice. When communicating to students our expectations for writing a lab report, for example, we often start with a list of the qualities of an excellent report to guide their efforts toward successful completion; we may have drawn on our knowledge of how scientists report their findings in peer-reviewed journals to develop the list. This checklist of criteria is easily turned into a scoring sheet (to return with the evaluated assignment) by the addition of checkboxes for indicating either a "yes-no" decision about whether each criterion has been met or the extent to which it has been met. Such a checklist in fact has a number of fundamental features in common with a rubric ( Bresciani et al., 2004), and it is a good starting point for beginning to construct a rubric. Figure 1 gives an example of such a scoring checklist that could be used to judge a high school student poster competition.

However, what is referred to as a "full rubric" is distinguished from the scoring checklist by its more extensive definition and description of the criteria or dimensions of quality that characterize each level of accomplishment. Table 1 provides one example of a full rubric (of the analytical type, as defined in the paragraph below) that was developed from the checklist in Figure 1. This example uses the typical grid format in which the performance criteria or dimensions of quality are listed in the rows, and the successive cells across the three columns describe a specific level of performance for each criterion. The full rubric in Table 1, in contrast to the checklist that only indicates whether a criterion exists ( Figure 1), makes it far clearer to a student presenter what the instructor is looking for when evaluating student work.

DESIGNING A RUBRIC

A more challenging aspect of using a rubric can be finding a rubric to use that provides a close enough match to a particular assignment with a specific set of content and process objectives. This challenge is particularly true of so-called analytical rubrics. Analytical rubrics use discrete criteria to set forth more than one measure of the levels of an accomplishment for a particular task, as distinguished from holistic rubrics, which provide more general, uncategorized ("lumped together") descriptions of overall dimensions of quality for different levels of mastery. Many users of analytical rubrics often resort to developing their own rubric to have the best match between an assignment and its objectives for a particular course.

As an example, examine the two rubrics presented in Tables 2 and 3, in which Table 2 shows a holistic rubric and Table 3 shows an analytical rubric. These two versions of a rubric were developed to evaluate student essay responses to a particular assessment prompt. In this case the prompt is a challenge in which students are to respond to the statement, "Plants get their food from the soil. What about this statement do you agree with? What about this statement do you disagree with? Support your position with as much detail as possible." This assessment prompt can serve as both a preassessment, to establish what ideas students bring to the teaching unit, and as a postassessment in conjunction with the study of photosynthesis. As such, the rubric is designed to evaluate student understanding of the process of photosynthesis, the role of soil in plant growth, and the nature of food for plants. The maximum score using either the holistic or the analytical rubric would be 10, with 2 points possible for each of five criteria. The holistic rubric outlines five criteria by which student responses are evaluated, puts a 3-point scale on each of these criteria, and holistically describes what a 0-, 1-, or 2-point answer would contain. However, this holistic rubric stops short of defining in detail the specific concepts that would qualify an answer for 0, 1, or 2 points on each criteria scale. The analytical rubric shown in Table 3 does define these concepts for each criteria, and it is in fact a fuller development of the holistic rubric shown in Table 2. As mentioned, the development of an analytical rubric is challenging in that it pushes the instructor to define specifically the language and depth of knowledge that students need to demonstrate competency, and it is an attempt to make discrete what is fundamentally a fuzzy, continuous distribution of ways an individual could construct a response. As such, informal analysis of student responses can often play a large role in shaping and revising an analytical rubric, because student answers may hold conceptions and misconceptions that have not been anticipated by the instructor.

The various approaches to constructing rubrics in a sense also can be characterized to be holistic or analytical. Those who offer recommendations about how to build rubrics often approach the task from the perspective of describing the essential features of rubrics ( Huba and Freed, 2000; Arter and McTighe, 2001), or by outlining a discrete series of steps to follow one by one ( Moskal, 2000; Mettler, 2002; Bresciani et al., 2004; MacKenzie, 2004). Regardless of the recommended approach, there is general agreement that a rubric designer must approach the task with a clear idea of the desired student learning outcomes ( Luft, 1999) and, perhaps more importantly, with a clear picture of what meeting each outcome "looks like" ( Luft, 1999; Bresciani et al., 2004). If this picture remains fuzzy, perhaps the outcome is not observable or measurable and thus not "rubric-worthy."

Reflection on one's particular answer to two critical questions-"What do I want students to know and be able to do?" and "How will I know when they know it and can do it well?"-is not only essential to beginning construction of a rubric but also can help confirm the choice of a particular assessment task as being the best way to collect evidence about how the outcomes have been met. A first step in designing a rubric, the development of a list of qualities that the learner should demonstrate proficiency in by completing an assessment task, naturally flows from this prior rumination on outcomes and on ways of collecting evidence that students have met the outcome goal. A good way to get started with compiling this list is to view existing rubrics for a similar task, even if this rubric was designed for younger or older learners or for different subject areas. For example, if one sets out to develop a rubric for a class presentation, it is helpful to review the criteria used in a rubric for oral communication in a graduate program (organization, style, use of communication aids, depth and accuracy of content, use of language, personal appearance, responsiveness to audience; Huba and Freed, 2000) to stimulate reflection on and analysis of what criteria (dimensions of quality) align with one's own desired learning outcomes. There is technically no limit to the number of criteria that can be included in a rubric, other than presumptions about the learners' ability to digest and thus make use of the information that is provided. In the example in Table 1, only three criteria were used, as judged appropriate for the desired outcomes of the high school poster competition.

After this list of criteria is honed and pruned, the dimensions of quality and proficiency will need to be separately described (as in Table 1), and not just listed. The extent and nature of this commentary depends upon the type of rubric-analytical or holistic. This task of expanding the criteria is an inherently difficult task, because of the requirement for a thorough familiarity with both the elements comprising the highest standard of performance for the chosen task, and the range of capabilities of learners at a particular developmental level. A good way to get started is to think about how the attributes of a truly superb performance could be characterized in each of the important dimensions-the level of work that is desired for students to aspire to. Common advice ( Moskal, 2000) is to avoid use of words that connote value judgments in these commentaries, such as "creative" or "good" (as in "the use of scientific terminology language is 'good'"). These terms are essentially so general as to be valueless in terms of their ability to guide a learner to emulate specific standards for a task, and although it is admittedly difficult, they need to be defined in a rubric. Again, perusal of existing examples is a good way to get started with writing the full descriptions of criteria. Fortunately, there are a number of data banks that can be searched for rubric templates of virtually all types ( Chicago Public Schools, 2000; Arter and McTighe, 2001; Shrock, 2006; Advanced Learning Technologies, 2006; University of Wisconsin-Stout, 2006).

The final step toward filling in the grid of the rubric is to benchmark the remaining levels of mastery or gradations of quality. There are a number of descriptors that are conventionally used to denote the levels of mastery in addition to the conventional excellent-to-poor scale (with or without accompanying symbols for letter grades), and several examples from among the more common of these are listed below:

Scale 1: Exemplary, Proficient, Acceptable, Unacceptable

Scale 2: Substantially Developed, Mostly Developed, Developed, Underdeveloped

Scale 3: Distinguished, Proficient, Apprentice, Novice

Scale 4: Exemplary, Accomplished, Developing, Beginning

In this case, unlike the number of criteria, there might be a natural limit to how many levels of mastery need this expanded commentary. Although it is common to have multiple levels of mastery, as in the examples above, some educators ( Bresciani et al., 2004) feel strongly that it is not possible for individuals to make operational sense out of inclusion of more than three levels of mastery (in essence, a "there, somewhat there, not there yet" scale). As expected, the final steps in having a "usable" rubric are to ask both students and colleagues to provide feedback on the first draft, particularly with respect to the clarity and gradations of the descriptions of criteria for each level of accomplishment, and to try out the rubric using past examples of student work.
Huba and Freed (2000) offer the interesting recommendation that the descriptions for each level of performance provide a "real world" connection by stating the implications for accomplishment at that level. This description of the consequences could be included in a criterion called "professionalism." For example, in a rubric for writing a lab report, at the highest level of mastery the rubric could state, "this report of your study would persuade your peers of the validity of your findings and would be publishable in a peer-reviewed journal." Acknowledging this recommendation in the construction of a rubric might help to steer students toward the perception that the rubric represents the standards of a profession, and away from the perception that a rubric is just another way to give a particular teacher what he or she wants ( Andrade and Du, 2005).

As a further help aide for beginning instructors, a number of Web sites, both commercial and open access, have tools for online construction of rubrics from templates, for example, Rubistar ( Advanced Learning Technologies, 2006) and TeAch-nology ( TeAch-nology, undated). These tools allow the would-be "rubrician" to select from among the various types of rubrics, criteria, and rating scales (levels of mastery). Once these choices are made, editable descriptions fall into place in the proper cells in the rubric grid. The rubrics are stored in the site databases, but typically they can be downloaded using conventional word processing or spreadsheet software. Further editing can result in a rubric uniquely suitable for your teaching/learning goals.

ANALYZING AND REPORTING INFORMATION GATHERED FROM A RUBRIC

Whether used with students to set learning goals, as scoring devices for grading purposes, to give formative feedback to students about their progress toward important course outcomes, or for assessment of curricular and course innovations, rubrics allow for both quantitative and qualitative analysis of student performance. Qualitative analysis could yield narrative accounts of where students in general fell in the cells of the rubric, and they can provide interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations related to student learning and development. For quantitative analysis the various levels of mastery can be assigned different numerical scores to yield quantitative rankings, as has been done for the sample rubric in Table 1. If desired, the criteria can be given different scoring weightings (again, as in the poster presentation rubric in Table 1) if they are not considered to have equal priority as outcomes for a particular purpose. The total scores given to each example of student work on the basis of the rubric can be converted to a grading scale. Overall performance of the class could be analyzed for each of the criteria competencies.

Multiple-choice exams have the advantage that they can be computer or machine scored, allowing for analysis and storage of more specific information about different content understandings (particularly misconceptions) for each item, and for large numbers of students. The standard rubric-referenced assessment is not designed to easily provide this type of analysis about specific details of content understanding; for the types of tasks for which rubrics are designed, content understanding is typically displayed by some form of narrative, free-choice expression. To try to capture both the benefits of the free-choice narrative and generate an in-depth analysis of students' content understanding, particularly for large numbers of students, a special type of rubric, called the double-digit, is typically used. A large-scale example of use of this type of scoring rubric is given by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (1999). In this study, double-digit rubrics were used to code and analyze student responses to short essay prompts.

To better understand how and why these rubrics are constructed and used, refer to the example provided in Figure 2. This double-digit rubric was used to score and analyze student responses to an essay prompt about ecosystems that was accompanied by the standard "sun-tree-bird" diagram (a drawing of the sun, a tree, and other plants; various primary and secondary consumers; and some not well-identifiable decomposers, with interconnecting arrows that could be interpreted as energy flow or cycling of matter). A brief narrative, summarizing the "big ideas" that could be included in a complete response, along with a sample response that captures many of these big ideas accompanies the actual rubric. The rubric itself specifies major categories of student responses, from complete to various levels of incompleteness. Each level is assigned one of the first digits of the scoring code, which could actually correspond to a conventional point total awarded for a particular response. In the example in Figure 2, a complete response is awarded a maximum number of 4 points, and the levels of partially complete answers, successively lower points. Here, the "incomplete" and "no response" categories are assigned first digits of 7 and 9, respectively, rather than 0 for clarity in coding; they can be converted to zeroes for averaging and reporting of scores.

The second digit is assigned to types of student responses in each category, including the common approaches and misconceptions. For example, code 31 under the first partial- response category denotes a student response that "talks about energy flow and matter cycling, but does not mention loss of energy from the system in the form of heat." The sample double-digit rubric in Figure 2 shows the code numbers that were assigned after a "first pass" through a relatively small number of sample responses. Additional codes were later assigned as more responses were reviewed and the full variety of student responses revealed. In both cases, the second digit of 9 was reserved for a general description that could be assigned to a response that might be unique to one or only a few students but nevertheless belonged in a particular category. When refined by several assessments of student work by a number of reviewers, this type of rubric can provide a means for a very specific quantitative and qualitative understanding, analysis, and reporting of the trends in student understanding of important concepts. A high number of 31 scores, for example, could provide a major clue about deficiencies in past instruction and thus goals for future efforts. However, this type of analysis remains expensive, in that scores must be assigned and entered into a data base, rather than the simple collection of student responses possible with a multiple-choice test.

WHY USE RUBRICS?

When used as teaching tools, rubrics not only make the instructor's standards and resulting grading explicit, but they can give students a clear sense of what the expectations are for a high level of performance on a given assignment, and how they can be met. This use of rubrics can be most important when the students are novices with respect to a particular task or type of expression ( Bresciani et al., 2004).

From the instructor's perspective, although the time expended in developing a rubric can be considerable, once rubrics are in place they can streamline the grading process. The more specific the rubric, the less the requirement for spontaneous written feedback for each piece of student work-the type that is usually used to explain and justify the grade. Although provided with fewer written comments that are individualized for their work, students nevertheless receive informative feedback. When information from rubrics is analyzed, a detailed record of students' progress toward meeting desired outcomes can be monitored and then provided to students so that they may also chart their own progress and improvement. With team-taught courses or multiple sections of the same course, rubrics can be used to make faculty standards explicit to one another, and to calibrate subsequent expectations. Good rubrics can be critically important when student work in a large class is being graded by teaching assistants.

Finally, by their very nature, rubrics encourage reflective practice on the part of both students and teachers. In particular, the act of developing a rubric, whether or not it is subsequently used, instigates a powerful consideration of one's values and expectations for student learning, and the extent to which these expectations are reflected in actual classroom practices. If rubrics are used in the context of students' peer review of their own work or that of others, or if students are involved in the process of developing the rubric, these processes can spur the development of their ability to become self-directed and help them develop insight into how they and others learn ( Luft, 1999).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Richard Donham (Mathematics and Science Education Resource Center, University of Delaware) for development of the double-digit rubric in Figure 2.

REFERENCES

Andrade H., Du Y. (2005). Student perspectives on rubric-referenced assessment. 18 May 2006 10 http://pareonline.net/pdf/v10n3.pdf. Pract. Assess. Res. Eval Google Scholar

Arter J. A., McTighe J. (2001). Scoring Rubrics in the Classroom: Using Performance Criteria for Assessing and Improving Student Performance, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Google Scholar

Bresciani M. J., Zelna C. L., Anderson J. A. (2004). Criteria and rubrics In: Assessing Student Learning and Development: A Handbook for Practitioners, Washington, DC: National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, 29-37. Google Scholar

Ebert-May D., Brewer C., Allred S. (1997). Innovation in large lectures-teaching for active learning. 47, 601-607. Bioscience Google Scholar

Ebert-May D. Scoring Rubrics. Field-tested Learning Assessment Guide 18 May 2006 undated http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/cl1/flag/cat/catframe.htm. Google Scholar

Huba M. E., Freed J. E. (2000). Using rubrics to provide feedback to students In: Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 151-200. Google Scholar

MacKenzie W. (2004). Constructing a rubric In: NETS●S Curriculum Series: Social Studies Units for Grades 9-12, Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education, 24-30. Google Scholar

Mettler C. A. (2002, Ed. C. Boston, Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom In: Understanding Scoring Rubrics: A Guide for Teachers, University of Maryland, College Park, MD: ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation, 72-81. Google Scholar

TeAch-nology, Inc TeAch-nology 7 June 2006 undated http://teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics. Google Scholar

Wiggins G. (1989). A true test: toward more authentic and equitable assessment. 49, 703-713. Phi Delta Kappan Google Scholar

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Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners | CBE-Life Sciences Education

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Introduction of new teaching strategies often expands the expectations for student learning, creating a parallel need to redefine how we collect the evidence that assures both us and our students that these expectations are in fact being met.

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A rubric is a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment. Rubrics can be used for a variety of assignments: research papers, group projects, portfolios, and presentations.

Why use rubrics?

Rubrics help instructors:

Assess assignments consistently from student-to-student.

Save time in grading, both short-term and long-term.

Give timely, effective feedback and promote student learning in a sustainable way.

Clarify expectations and components of an assignment for both students and course teaching assistants (TAs).

Refine teaching methods by evaluating rubric results.

Rubrics help students:

Understand expectations and components of an assignment.

Become more aware of their learning process and progress.

Improve work through timely and detailed feedback.

Considerations for using rubrics

When developing rubrics consider the following:

Although it takes time to build a rubric, time will be saved in the long run as grading and providing feedback on student work will become more streamlined.

A rubric can be a fillable pdf that can easily be emailed to students.

Rubrics are most often used to grade written assignments, but they have many other uses:

They can be used for oral presentations.

They are a great tool to evaluate teamwork and individual contribution to group tasks.

Rubrics facilitate peer-review by setting evaluation standards. Have students use the rubric to provide peer assessment on various drafts.

Students can use them for self-assessment to improve personal performance and learning. Encourage students to use the rubrics to assess their own work.

Motivate students to improve their work by using rubric feedback to resubmit their work incorporating the feedback.

Getting Started with Rubrics

Start small by creating one rubric for one assignment in a semester.

Ask colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments or adapt rubrics that are available online. For example, the AACU has rubrics for topics such as written and oral communication, critical thinking, and creative thinking. RubiStar helps you to develop your rubric based on templates.

Examine an assignment for your course. Outline the elements or critical attributes to be evaluated (these attributes must be objectively measurable).

Create an evaluative range for performance quality under each element; for instance, "excellent," "good," "unsatisfactory."

Add descriptors that qualify each level of performance:

Avoid using subjective or vague criteria such as "interesting" or "creative." Instead, outline objective indicators that would fall under these categories.

The criteria must clearly differentiate one performance level from another.

Assign a numerical scale to each level.

Give a draft of the rubric to your colleagues and/or TAs for feedback.

Train students to use your rubric and solicit feedback. This will help you judge whether the rubric is clear to them and will identify any weaknesses.

Rework the rubric based on the feedback.

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A rubric is a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment. Rubrics can be used for a variety of assignments: research papers, group projects, portfolios, and presentations. Rubrics help instructors: Assess assignments consistently from student-to-student. Save time in grading, both short-term and long-term.

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.

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Explore reading basics as well as the key role of background knowledge and motivation in becoming a lifelong reader and learner. Watch our PBS Launching Young Readers series and try our self-paced Reading 101 course to deepen your understanding.

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World's most popular online marketplace for original educational resources with more than four million resources available for use today.

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Here's how nearly one million teachers use Prodigy in the classroom at no cost!

Help students master math standards with a fun and engaging gameplay experience

Adjust and align Prodigy's in-game math content with your lesson plans

Track student development to decide where to best spend your time

No trial period, no hidden costs for educators. Our optional parent memberships ensure Prodigy stays free for all teachers.

Prodigy for Teachers

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Here's how nearly one million teachers use Prodigy in the classroom at no cost! Help students master math standards with a fun and engaging gameplay experience Adjust and align Prodigy's in-game math content with your lesson plans Track student development to decide where to best spend your time No trial period, no hidden costs for educators.

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Kunnath - Creating meaningful grades.pdf

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Dueck - Grading smarter not harder- Ch 1 Grading.pdf

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Performance Assessments - Alberta Assessment Consortium

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AAC Performance Assessments: Engage students in their learning Develop critical thinking skills Encourage innovation and problem solving Provide quality assessment evidence Are based on Alberta curriculum Some Performance Assessments are for Members Only, while others are open to everyone. Create Your Own Performance Tasks Check out "Developing a Performance Assessment Task" to guide you through ...

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Dylan Wiliam - Formative Assessment list.docx

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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Formative and Summative Assessments

Assessment can serve many different purposes. Most instructors are familiar with the traditional way of assessing students, such as by mid-term and final exams (usually using multiple-choice questions). There is a reason that this type of assessment is so popular - it is cost efficient (as in the example of multiple choice exams), takes a relatively short amount of time to create and grade, and provides a numerical summary (grade) of how much a student has learned.

The downside of this method is that it does not provide the learner or instructor any feedback on the learning process that has taken place, only a summative result. This lack of opportunity to apply new learning and receive formative feedback hinders student ability to learn.

Another type of assessment, known as formative assessment, has a different purpose from summative assessment. Formative assessments capture learning-in-process in order to identify gaps, misunderstanding, and evolving understanding before summative assessments. Formative assessment may take a variety of forms, such as informal questions, practice quizzes, one-minute papers, and clearest/muddiest point exercises. Formative assessment allows students to practice skills or test knowledge without the pressures associated with grades.

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Assessment Types: Diagnostic, Formative and Summative

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Assessment can serve many different purposes. Most instructors are familiar with the traditional way of assessing students, such as by mid-term and final exams (usually using multiple-choice questions).

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Kunnath - Creating meaningful grades.pdf

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?
— Tyler Rablin (@Mr_Rablin) January 6, 2022

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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As far back as assessments have been used in education, there have been students who stated that the assessment was 'unfair'. What makes an assessment 'fair' or 'unfair'? As instructors, it is important to consider this question, and to make sure that we follow some basic principles to ensure that any assessments we administer are fair and equitable to students.

Here is a checklist of the different principles of fair assessments (adapted from Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education, 2006; Harlen, 2010). Check off each principle to see why it is important to consider when developing and administering your assessments.

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As far back as assessments have been used in education, there have been students who stated that the assessment was 'unfair'. What makes an assessment 'fair' or 'unfair'? As instructors, it is important to consider this question, and to make sure that we follow some basic principles to ensure that any assessments we administer are fair and equitable to students.

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Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments?

Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others?

Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades?

Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

If you checked "yes" for any (or all) of these questions, your current rubrics might be working against you rather than for you. Let's find out how to make rubrics more effective!

What are Rubrics?

A rubric, at its most basic, is a tool to define the expectations of a particular assignment with ways to indicate different levels of effectiveness in meeting those expectations. It is this last aspect, the gradations of quality, that differentiates a rubric from its simpler counterpart, the checklist. Even within the category of a rubric, there is lots of variety.

General rubrics describe expectations for a skill that can be generalized across assignments. Task-specific rubrics are, as their name suggests, geared toward a particular assignment.

The biggest distinction within rubrics, however, is between holistic and analytic rubrics. Holistic rubrics provide a single score to summarize a student's performance on a given task, whereas analytic rubrics provide several scores for the task, one for each different category being evaluated. See examples of each kind here.

Anatomy of the Rubric

There are four main components of a rubric:

To illustrate, for an assignment from a high school literature classroom:

It is with these components themselves that we already start to see how a rubric could be clear and helpful or murky and frustrating.

Sample Rubric

Benefits of Rubrics

What good can rubrics really do? A rubric, after all, is a sheet of paper that is all too easy for students to glance at once and then shove to the bottom of an overstuffed backpack. However, rubrics are more important than they seem.

Every time you make a rubric, you articulate your educational philosophy; you indicate where students are, where they can go, and how they will get there. As English Professor Emeritus Peter Elbow explains, by offering your students a rubric, you're telling them:

""You deserve to know more about my values as a particular reader: Here are the aspects of writing that I believe are most central to my idea of excellence.""

- Peter Elbow, Writing Assessment in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Edward M. White

How do Rubrics Help Students?

Rubrics have so much potential that even minimal engagement with them can yield great benefits.

As educator Heidi Goodrich Andrade explains, "If I were to simply circle boxes on a rubric and give it back with an assignment, I would still be providing more feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of the work than if I had just assigned a letter grade, and it would not have taken me any longer."

The importance of feedback for student learning can not be overstated. In a 2015 study, rubrics that included individual advice on how to improve led to students with "significantly better performance in planning scientific experiments"; these students "perceived themselves as being more competent and were also more accurate in their self-evaluative performance judgments." That's exactly what The Graide Network hopes to achieve by pairing rubric-based scores with personalized, qualitative feedback about each student's areas of strength and areas for growth.

As educator and author Carol Jago points out, "feedback cools quickly," so anything you can do to speed up the availability of feedback for students matters.

Metacognition Development

At their best, rubrics can encourage students to think critically about their own work and scores. It's a fairly common sentiment among students that teachers "give" certain grades rather than students "earning" them. These word choices reveal that students often don't feel involved in the assessing process; they feel as if it is being done to them rather than with them or by them. Having a clear rubric lets students in on the decision making process. Students better understand the criteria of each assignment, so they can begin to look at their assignments with the critical eye of a teacher, allowing them to understand their past mistakes and fix their current ones. One teacher found that students who assessed themselves with a rubric as they worked on a reading comprehension assignment scored higher on a content knowledge quiz afterward than students who did not use a rubric. The metacognition, or awareness of one's own learning strategies, that can result from familiarity with rubrics produces both more insightful learners in the long-term and less frustrated students when report cards come around.

Teachers Make Better Decisions

As Professor Timothy Brophy explains, rubrics are also helpful tools for teachers because they encourage "criterion-referenced rather than norm-referenced" scoring.

In essence, criterion-referenced scoring means that while grading, teachers ask themselves whether a paper meets the criteria of a certain score rather than consciously or unconsciously assigning grades based on the quality relative to the other papers in that class.

In a vacuum, norm-referenced scoring might not seem that bad, but it seriously hinders teachers' ability to meaningfully compare scores across their own classes and across classes taught by several teachers. In addition, consistently comparing each paper to a fixed set of standards decreases the chance that a teacher will grade papers differently based on student preference, number of coffees consumed, decision fatigue, or any other factor that shouldn't affect student grades.

Lastly, important nationwide tests like the AP English Language and Literature exams use criterion-referenced scoring systems, which should encourage teachers to grade similarly.

Students Are Treated More Fairly

Rubrics create a common language to speak about academic work, make the learning goal clear, and level the educational playing field. In this era of increasing diversity, this last point is an important one.

Researchers Kenneth Wolf and Ellen Stevens point out that first-generation students, as well as immigrant students and students from minority backgrounds, often don't come into school with the same academic assumptions as their peers. The clearer the learning target for these students, the more likely they are to meet it.

Since unconscious bias can also work against students most dissimilar to their teachers, comprehensive rubrics can also encourage fairness for all students.

Disadvantages of Rubrics

Although rubrics have many potential benefits for both students and teachers, a poorly constructed rubric can do more harm than good. Luckily, there are a number of predictable pitfalls that can be easily avoided if you know what to look out for.

Extreme Scales

Although the scale may seem like a fairly straightforward decision to make, there are many different options.

One teacher might use a scale of A-F, another might use the scale 1 through 5, and yet another might choose to use the words excellent, competent, and needs work as the scale. There is no right answer when it comes to using letters, numbers, or words for your scale, but there are a few choices that could lead to unproductive rubrics.

Scales quickly become ineffective when there are too many or too few options. For example, except for very basic assignments, using just a pass/fail scale will not provide you or your students with very much helpful information.

On the other hand, using a scale of 1 to 20 will make it harder to justify small differences, such as giving a student 13 rather than 14. Having three to five possible options on a scale is often effective and four is sometimes considered ideal.

That being said, one of the largest working scales in effect right now is the College Board AP English essay holistic grading scale from 1 to 9. Even so, this scale is still essentially a 5-point scale broken down into pairs: 9/8, 7/6, 5, 4/3, 2/1.

Inconsistent Language

There are a number of considerations as well when it comes to descriptions of each dimension; parallelism and consistency are your friends here. For instance, let's say that your current rubric breaks down the dimension of citation in the following way:

level 1 describes a paper with incorrect citations

level 2 is a paper with sometimes accurate citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with complete citations

These levels have obvious differences, but the language isn't as clear as it could be. Choosing to describe either amount, frequency, or intensity across all parts of your scale will help to keep the language consistent automatically.

A revised version of the same rubric might look like this:

level 1 is a paper with few correct citations

level 2 is a paper with some correct citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with all correct citations

The parallel language (using "correct") of each description shows how all the levels relate to each other, easing comprehension for anyone who encounters the rubric.

Negative Language

Another consideration when writing descriptions is valence. As researchers Tierney and Simon explain, using purely negative terms to describe lower levels on the scale can discourage students, particularly younger ones. Using words like "little," "slightly," or "seldom" will be less discouraging (and likely more accurate) than words like "none" and "never."

Vague Language

Lastly, the criteria for each level should be observable and measurable in some way.

If I claim that students are supposed to "know" something, it is important to indicate what precisely that knowledge will look like. For example, I could specify in the rubric description that a paper with an argument that falls under Level 4 (always strong) must have a thesis that is defendable, specific, and evidence-supported. A paper that falls under Level 3 for argument (usually strong) will have a thesis that is only defendable and evidence-supported.

Without this kind of specificity, it would be easy for a student to argue that their paper meets Level 4 requirements rather than Level 3 requirements since "always" and "usually" can be vague and subjective terms.

How to Write a Rubric

Good rubrics are hard to write. Here are two simple strategies to make sure your rubrics are working well:

1) Calibrate with colleagues

An effort to construct effective rubrics is clearly important, but it can be difficult to tell how effective a new rubric is without discussing and revising it with colleagues. As Professor Timothy Brophy suggests, these sessions can be used to establish minimum scores for passing and develop benchmark papers for the rubric's scale.

Selecting six pieces-two high scores, two medium scores, and two low scores-is often a helpful way to show the students what papers look like on each part of your scale. College Board provides three anchor pieces (high, medium, and low) for all previously released AP essays as an example of what this might look like.

If you pass out the benchmark pieces to your department without scores and have the other teachers score them blindly, this meeting can turn into a productive discussion about how to increase grading reliability across classes.

A similar brainstorming and revision session can be helpful if you are trying to adapt previously existing rubrics-whether from another teacher or from the The Graide Network's rubric creator - for a new project.

2) Review actual scores

Discussing rubrics after their implementation can also help teachers analyze grade breakdown.

If 75% of your students are receiving a two on a four-point scale for organization, that might be an indication that you are grading too harshly and/or the students need a review on how to arrange their thoughts. The Graide Network provides lots of this data automatically for teachers along with our qualitative feedback.

Having this quantitative data makes it significantly easier to see class-wide patterns; without a rubric, you might not realize that you are writing comments about organization on 75% of your student papers!

To learn more about getting high quality feedback for your students and high quality data for your teachers, we'd be happy to talk.

Conclusion

There are unlimited different ways to construct rubrics. However, not all rubrics are created equal. Rubrics with reasonable scales, consistent language, specific requirements, and positive descriptions are more helpful for students and teachers alike.

You can take an effective rubric to the next level by involving other people; refine rubrics with other teachers before their implementation, and take a day to talk your students through a new rubric. You can even go further and grade example essays using a rubric during class, an invaluable way to clarify learning goals.

By clarifying learning goals, we bring students closer to them, one rubric at a time.

Visit our rubric creator site to create easy-to-use rubrics for your classroom!

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Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments? Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others? Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades? Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

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Why the Label 'Exceeds Standard' Doesn't Work

Today's guest post is written by Thomas Guskey, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Kentucky.

Educators implementing standards-based approaches to grading and reporting often struggle with how to label different levels of students' performance. Four levels of performance is the most common number identified. Most educators in the U.S. and Canada consider three levels to be insufficient in discriminating important differences in students' performance. When the number of levels climbs to five or six, however, the consistency of teachers' rating diminishes rapidly.

In choosing labels for these levels, many begin by describing level 3 as "Proficient." This level of performance means the student has achieved the learning target and mastered the standard. Level 2 is typically considered "Progressing" or "Approaching" mastery of the standard, and level 1 is deemed "Struggling" or "Needs Improvement." The challenge comes in labeling the highest, level 4. 2

Some educators believe that level 4 should designate a truly exceptional level of achievement - the student whose performance "knocks your socks off." They use this level to recognize students who do something special related to the standard or demonstrate genuinely outstanding performance regarding the standard.

Others believe level 4 should describe performance at a more complex or more advanced level with regard to the standard. They use the label "Exceeds Standard" to indicate the student has gone beyond or above what was expected. In other words, these students have achieved at a higher and more sophisticated level. But while seeming reasonable, serious communication problems often arise when educators try to clarify the meaning of "Exceeds Standard" to students, parents, and fellow educators.

Evidence gathered from parents and families shows that many find the label "Exceeds Standard" to be vague and difficult to interpret. The message it implies to them from educators is: "More than we expect, but we cannot tell you precisely what that is until we see it!" Such imprecision troubles parents, especially those who encourage their child to strive for the highest grade possible in every subject.

From a practical perspective, "Exceeds Standard" presents additional difficulties. In most standards-based environments, mastering a standard means hitting the target. It signifies achieving the goal and learning what was expected. Olympic archers who place their arrows in the center of the bulls-eye from a distance of 70 meters, for example, have "hit the target." They have achieved the goal and accomplished precisely what was expected.

How then could an Olympic archer ever "exceed" the standard? How would the archer achieve at a more advanced or higher level? Maybe we could make the bulls-eye smaller or move the target further away from the archer, making it more difficult to hit the bulls-eye.

The problem with that, however, is it changes the standard. As soon as you make the task more difficult or move the learning expectation to a higher and more advanced level, you have changed the standard and altered the goal. Students who achieve at that level have not really "exceeded the standard." More accurately, they have mastered a different standard. If you want archers to hit smaller bulls-eyes from a greater distance, then that becomes the new standard for archers.

Some argue that "Proficient" can imply placing arrows near the bulls-eye while "Exceeds Standard" means actually hitting the bulls-eye directly. But does "Proficient" then mean "almost" hitting the target? Is "getting close" sufficient? And if it is, then how close is good enough? Who makes that decision?

This interpretation problem also affects educators' who want to equate these distinctions to percent correct on assessments. On an assessment designed to measure students' ability to solve single-digit addition problems, for example, they might designate students who get 80% correct to be "Proficient," while those students who answer correctly 90% or more are rated, "Exceeds Standard." But have students who get 90% correct truly "exceeded" the standard? 3

Others counter that the assessment for this standard should include double-digit addition problems as well. Students who answer the double-digit problems correctly can then accurately be rated as "Exceeds Standard." But again, this miscommunicates what is measured. With the inclusion of double-digit addition problems, the assessment clearly measures a different standard. The same holds true if "Proficient" requires students to "apply" what they have learned, while "Exceeds Standard" involves the higher level skills of "analyzing" or "synthesizing." The point is that you are now measuring a different standard.

The nature of specific standards makes things even more complicated. If the standard relates to students' ability to safely cross a busy street, for example, would anyone consider 80% to be "Proficient"? Or even 90%? What about being honest or telling the truth? And in these examples, how could students ever reach "Exceeds Standard"?

This does not imply that exceptional performance should go unrecognized. Not at all. A grade that denotes truly distinguished performance can be useful in many instances. But if such a grade is included in the grading system, then it must be associated with clear criteria that identify precisely how such a grade can be attained. Those criteria must be clearly communicated to students and parents alike, accompanied by illustrative examples of students' performance or samples of students' work, and agreed upon by fellow teachers.

With these criteria articulated and openly communicated to all stakeholders, labels such as "Distinguished," "Exceptional," or "Exemplary" generally serve intended communication purposes far better than "Exceeds Standard."

Connect with Tom Guskey on Twitter at @tguskey.

Check it out here:

Why the Label 'Exceeds Standard' Doesn't Work | Education Week

PostedOctober 17, 2014 7:30 A M by Peter DeWitt

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Why the label "Exceeds Standard" doesn't work | Thomas R. Guskey & Associates

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Educators implementing standards-based approaches to grading and reporting often struggle with how to label different levels of students' performance. Four levels of performance is the most common number identified. Most educators in the U.S. and Canada consider three levels to be insufficient in discriminating important differences in students' performance.

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Brookhart - What are Rubrics and why are they important.docx

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Brookhart - What are Rubrics and why are they important.docx

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Rubric Materials - Alberta Assessment Consortium

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Rubric Tools Rubric Templates Rubric Template (download Word document) Rubric Template (enlarged) (download Word document) Workshop Tools Rubriques Rubriques - Tools Rubriques - Templates Gabarit grilles d'évaluation (download Word document) Gabarit grilles d'évaluation (version agrandie) (download Word document)

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Why Do I Need to Build Alignment between Assessment and Learning Outcomes?

Understanding Purpose

To students, assessment is the main component of a course because it sends a message about what is important and where their time should be focused. Clearly defining your assessment and its relationship to your student learning outcomes is therefore very helpful in ensuring students understand not just how the assessment fits into their learning but how all the practices and content you engage with assists them in achieving success in the course.

Building clear alignment between your outcomes, assessment, and practice (as well as clearly communicating this alignment to students) can build mutual clarity on the learning journey and lessen students' anxiety and questions. The role of assessment is to measure student attainment of the necessary skills and learning, so being able to demonstrate this connection in class and through the syllabus is very helpful in situating why you have made the assessment choices you have.

Understanding Student Learning Progression

Building alignment between assessment and learning outcomes also allows you to develop and communicate the pathway for students' learning progression. It enables you to explain what knowledge and skills were expected on entry to the course and the knowledge and skills that will be developed throughout the course. As students move through a program, the sophistication and difficulty of the assessment choices you make should be increased as you deepen your expectation of student learning and engagement with the material.

Beginning your outcome planning at the program level when considering assessment is helpful in making this progression clearer and more seamless as students progress through the program. Courses do not exist in isolation and considering your course's outcomes and assessment from a programmatic perspective is very beneficial in ensuring that students progress appropriately through the program and achieve the skills and knowledge that are necessary in the appropriate sequence.

Being Able to Validate Attainment

Building alignment between assessment and outcomes is driven by strategically connecting the two components of course design and allows you to communicate and validate your assessment and its role in student learning attainment. Having this clarity of what you are trying to achieve with your students, and connecting this clearly with your mechanisms for measurement through assessment, allows you to be definitive in what constitutes attainment and how it is displayed and measured through assessment. Having this clarity allows you to be able to communicate this to your students and demonstrate to them what level of performance or knowledge acquisition is essential to be successful in the course and program.

Building Effective Assessment of Learning Processes

Lessons, course activities, assessment, and instruction should be planned in a way that allows students to successfully complete assessments and to make connections, gather, organize, interact with, and practice learning outcomes. In your course development process, take each of your assessments one at a time and consider the content knowledge as well as the skill development that each would require for successful completion.

For example, if you want students to analyze a case study, you will need to prepare them to successfully complete this assessment. Here's what your aligned instructional strategies and content may look like:

Learning Outcome: Analyze organizational decision making.

Assessment: Case Study Analysis.
Instructional Strategies:

Methodologies: Provide instruction and model how to:

Do a case study analysis including identifying main issues/key points.

Create case notes.

Apply principles/theories/models.

Develop solutions and provide support for them.

Activities:

Watch YouTube videos of real-life cases with directive questions.

Practice identifying main issues or key points in a case study through self-assessments such as m/c quizzes with instant feedback.

Practice creating case notes with activities such as checklists, instructor reveals to check their work against, and small formative assignments.

Practice with applying principles, theories or models through activities that have practice application with feedback.

Practice with critical thinking, supporting statements, and problem solving through discussion board activities.

Content and materials:

Reading support resources.

Textbook reading on principles, theories or models.

Videos of real-life cases.

Case studies from Library.

Template for case analysis format.

Exemplar of an excellent case analysis.

Writing support resource.

Grading rubric.

How Do I Build Alignment between Assessment and Learning Outcomes?

Considering Stage of Learning

As has been suggested earlier, the first thing that needs to be considered is where students are in their learning stage in the program and the context of the course.

Where are your students in their program?

What learning needs to take place in order for them to move on in the program?

What assessment is relevant to measure this learning?

This will enable you to start with a sense of where you can work in relation to your outcomes and the aligned assessment you choose.

Outline Your Goals

What are the goals that you have for your students and their learning? As when considering developing outcomes, this is your starting place. How do students need to progress in this course to meet course level skill and knowledge acquisition and continue on in the program?

Determine How Attainment can be Demonstrated

Once you have determined how students need to develop, you can begin considering what they need to do to demonstrate this development, which is where we should consider our assessment tools. What do students need to do to show me that they have achieved this outcome? When you are considering this, you should consider it from both formative and summative perspectives. What does attainment of the overall course outcomes look like and how can you develop meaningful formative assessment moments for students to understand their progression?

Define What Performance Looks Like

The next step is to consider what the necessary performance looks like and how to observe and measure it. This is where assessment choice becomes clearer, and you will begin having a sense of the nature of the assessment tools that fit with your outcomes and students' learning progression. At this stage, you could look at performance through different lenses. What would it look like to exceed expectations? Meet expectations? Or not meet expectations? Defining each of these is helpful to build clarity for your students.

The Role of Rubrics

Building rubrics that clearly show what attainment looks like and can be used to grade assignments are useful tools for building clarity and allowing students to measure their own progress. Making these available for students while they are engaging with assessment is important in offering this clarity and allowing students the ability to consider measurement when performing the assessment.

Scaffolding Assessments for Depth

To assist with student development through formative feedback, consider scaffolding a large piece of assessment across the course. In breaking a large piece of assessment down into a number of deliverables across the term, students build towards a final project with a clear learning pathway. Scaffolded assessment allows multiple points of connection for students to receive and reflect on feedback throughout their progression and learning in the course as they develop and refine the larger project. Scaffolded assessments have the added benefit of developing students' time management skills and promote academic integrity through refining and developing a multi-stage project.

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Aligning Assessment to Learning Outcomes

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To students, assessment is the main component of a course because it sends a message about what is important and where their time should be focused. Clearly defining your assessment and its relationship to your student learning outcomes is therefore very helpful in ensuring students understand not just how the assessment fits into their learning but how all the practices and content you engage with assists them in achieving success in the course.

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The definition of summative assessment is any method of evaluation performed at the end of a unit that allows a teacher to measure a student's understanding, typically against standardized criteria. The purpose of summative assessment is to gauge students' comprehension of the material presented at the end of a particular unit of work, and is often measured with a grade or percentage, depending on the subject.

In contrast to the informal nature of formative assessments, summative assessments require clear expectations and timelines to be set to give students the best opportunity to succeed. Teachers use rubrics, or assessment criteria, to ensure students understand what to expect in any such test. The results of summative assessments are usually significant, used to determine whether a student passes a unit or even a class.

Summative Assessment Examples

Examples of summative assessments may include:

Written Assessment: Students will be tasked with writing an original piece, such as a narrative or analytical essay.

Performance Assessment: With this type, students will be required to do an activity or task that will showcase their abilities.

Standardized Assessment: Students will take an exam created for a given curriculum and will be measured against existing rubric, shared with the students throughout the course.

Oral Assessment: Students will craft and deliver an oral piece, such as a speech or presentation.

Teachers can also utilize this summative assessment in the field of social work and apply it to students in their classroom. It illustrates how social workers can utilize summative assessments to determine if an intervention was successful for a client. The same concept can be applied to determining if a teacher's instructional method is successful for students.

For assessments in a learner-centered classroom, teachers are not solely responsible for students' learning and performance. Instead, students share in the process and take an active role in their education.

Formative vs. Summative Assessment

The primary difference between formative and summative assessments is the time period in which they are given. While summative assessment is given upon completion of a unit, formative assessment is ongoing.

The goal of formative assessment is to help teachers determine any gaps in student knowledge and areas where they can improve, allowing teachers to alter their lesson planning accordingly.

Another key difference is that summative assessments are often graded material, while formative assessments can range from student or peer assessment to teacher assessment or general observation.

In contrast to a learning-centered environment, a competency-based classroom is rooted in student understanding. It is more important for students to grasp a concept than to meet a grade by a certain time in the school year.

Learning how to design effective assessments for students is difficult and can require some creativity, especially when considering the wide range of learners and individual needs in a classroom. What is effective for one student may not work for another, and while the traditional exam format is the most common way to test students in an official capacity, it does not necessarily provide the best gauge of student knowledge and ability.

Applying a range of formative and summative assessments is an important aspect of modern teaching, giving students the opportunity to perform at their best and providing teachers with the knowledge and understanding to improve the learning experience for their students, and ultimately their own teaching practice.

Additional Summative Assessment Ideas

As well as the examples above, teachers can also incorporate more creative methods into their teaching. Here are some additional summative assessment ideas that go beyond the traditional quiz or written report:

Classroom or school-wide scavenger hunt on the material presented

Crossword puzzle incorporating math problems or vocabulary words

Classroom or school-wide science fair

Teachers select summative assessment strategies that best suit their students and the material covered in the curriculum. Assessment strategies chosen will have clearly defined parameters in order to effectively test students' knowledge and/or skills.

Selecting and using a range of student assessment methods helps to engage all types of learners and lets each student demonstrate their skills. For example, a few summative assessment ideas for music students include having them take a test, play together in a mini-performance, or even make a music video!

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What is Summative Assessment? | A Guide to Summative Assessment | Study.com

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The definition of summative assessment is any method of evaluation performed at the end of a unit that allows a teacher to measure a student's understanding, typically against standardized criteria. The purpose of summative assessment is to gauge students' comprehension of the material presented at the end of a particular unit of work, and is often measured with a grade or percentage, depending on the subject.

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No one wants to use an assessment tool with obvious stereotyping or offensive material, of course. But it's easy to assess in ways that inadvertently favor some students over others. Effective assessment processes yield evidence and conclusions that are meaningful, appropriate, and fair to all relevant subgroups of students (Lane, 2012; Linn, Baker, & Dunbar, 1991). The following tips minimize the possibility of inequities.

1. Don't rush.

Assessments that are thrown together at the last minute invariably include flaws that greatly affect the fairness, accuracy, and usefulness of the resulting evidence.

2. Plan your assessments carefully.

Aim not only to access your key learning goals but to do so in a balanced, representative way. If your key learning goals are that students should understand what happened during a certain historical period and evaluate the decisions made by key figures during that period, for example, your test should balance questions on basic conceptual understanding with questions assessing evaluation skills.

3. Aim for assignments and questions that are crystal clear.

If students find the question difficult to understand, they may answer what they think is the spirit of the question rather than the question itself, which may not match your intent.

4. Guard against unintended bias.

A fair and unbiased assessment uses contexts that are equally familiar to all and uses words that have common meanings to all. A test question on quantitative skills that asks students to analyze football statistics might not be fair to women, and using scenarios involving farming may be biased against students from urban areas, unless you are specifically assessing student learning in these contexts.

5. Ask a variety of people with diverse perspectives to review assessment tools.

This helps ensure that the tools are clear, that they appear to assess what you want them to, and that they don't favor students of a particular background.

6. Try out large-scale assessment tools.

If you are planning a large-scale assessment with potentially significant consequences, try out your assessment tool with a small group of students before launching the large-scale implementation. Consider asking some students to think out loud as they answer a test question; their thought processes should match up with the ones you intended. Read students' responses to assignments and open-ended survey questions to make sure their answers make sense, and ask students if anything is unclear or confusing.

Excerpted and adapted from Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide, 3rd Edition by Linda Suskie. Copyright © 2018, Wiley. All rights reserved.

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6 Ways to Ensure Your Assessment Practices are Fair and Unbiased

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No one wants to use an assessment tool with obvious stereotyping or offensive material, of course. But it's easy to assess in ways that inadvertently favor some students over others. Effective assessment processes yield evidence and conclusions that are meaningful, appropriate, and fair to all relevant subgroups of students (Lane, 2012; Linn, Baker, & Dunbar, 1991 ).

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Assessments should reveal how well students have learned what we want them to learn while instruction ensures that they learn it. For this to occur, assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies need to be closely aligned so that they reinforce one another.

To ensure that these three components of your course are aligned, ask yourself the following questions:

Learning objectives: What do I want students to know how to do when they leave this course?

Assessments: What kinds of tasks will reveal whether students have achieved the learning objectives I have identified?

Instructional strategies: What kinds of activities in and out of class will reinforce my learning objectives and prepare students for assessments?

What if the components of a course are misaligned?

If assessments are misaligned with learning objectives or instructional strategies, it can undermine both student motivation and learning. Consider these two scenarios:

Your objective is for students to learn to apply analytical skills, but your assessment measures only factual recall. Consequently, students hone their analytical skills and are frustrated that the exam does not measure what they learned.

Your assessment measures students' ability to compare and critique the arguments of different authors, but your instructional strategies focus entirely on summarizing the arguments of different authors. Consequently, students do not learn or practice the skills of comparison and evaluation that will be assessed.

What do well-aligned assessments look like?

This table presents examples of the kinds of activities that can be used to assess different types of learning objectives (adapted from the revised Bloom's Taxonomy).

Type of learning objective

Examples of appropriate assessments

Recall
Recognize
Identify

Objective test items such as fill-in-the-blank, matching, labeling, or multiple-choice questions that require students to:

recall or recognize terms, facts, and concepts

Interpret
Exemplify
Classify
Summarize
Infer
Compare
Explain

Activities such as papers, exams, problem sets, class discussions, or concept maps that require students to:

summarize readings, films, or speeches

compare and contrast two or more theories, events, or processes

classify or categorize cases, elements, or events using established criteria

paraphrase documents or speeches

find or identify examples or illustrations of a concept or principle

Apply
Execute
Implement

Activities such as problem sets, performances, labs, prototyping, or simulations that require students to:

use procedures to solve or complete familiar or unfamiliar tasks

determine which procedure(s) are most appropriate for a given task

Analyze
Differentiate
Organize
Attribute

Activities such as case studies, critiques, labs, papers, projects, debates, or concept maps that require students to:

discriminate or select relevant and irrelevant parts

determine how elements function together

determine bias, values, or underlying intent in presented material

Evaluate
Check
Critique
Assess

Activities such as journals, diaries, critiques, problem sets, product reviews, or studies that require students to:

test, monitor, judge, or critique readings, performances, or products against established criteria or standards

Create
Generate
Plan
Produce
Design

Activities such as research projects, musical compositions, performances, essays, business plans, website designs, or set designs that require students to:

make, build, design or generate something new

This table does not list all possible examples of appropriate assessments. You can develop and use other assessments - just make sure that they align with your learning objectives and instructional strategies!

CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!

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Align Assessments, Objectives, Instructional Strategies - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University

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Assessments should reveal how well students have learned what we want them to learn while instruction ensures that they learn it. For this to occur, assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies need to be closely aligned so that they reinforce one another.

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Assessing student knowledge and understanding is not a new phenomenon, but doing so can take on a variety of different forms. We are all familiar with homework, examinations, and quizzes as part and parcel of academic life, no matter if you happen to be a child in the early school years or a university student progressing through their undergraduate program.

What does Formative Assessment mean?

Many of us may be familiar with FA but not quite able to define what it is and what it is when put into practice. In essence formative assessment is a way to monitor student learning while it is happening and thus adjust teaching methods and lesson plans accordingly. FA is a continuous process that helps to uncover student learning with the goal of helping to improve their understanding of specific topics and subjects. Many define formative assessment as an 'assessment for learning'.

Formative vs Summative Assessment

Summative is what comes to mind when many of us think of assessments and evaluations. Examinations, finals, quizzes, and graded papers are examples of summative assessments that test student knowledge of a given topic or subject. These graded assessments and assignments are often high stakes and are geared towards testing students.

The key differences between these two methods of assessment are that summative assessment assesses what students know, what information they have retained, and how they are performing. FA helps educators understand if lessons, lectures, classes, and assignments are providing students with the necessary framework to comprehend and retain information.

FA is a continuous process that can be run on a day-to-day or even a lesson-by-lesson basis while summative assessments tend to take place at the end of chapters, semesters, or years. Both work to inform educators how students are progressing and work in tandem to paint a picture of classroom performance.

Examples of formative assessment

So with those definitions covered, it is time we look at some relevant activities and examples that educators of any institution or age can implement in their classrooms, lecture theaters, or seminar rooms. The beauty of these examples is that they can be run at a variety of points throughout a class or lecture. Some work best when included right at the beginning, while others can be used at a midway point.

As with all formative assessments these are not designed to be graded in any way and are constructed to be simple and offer a basic reading of students' comprehension.

1. Live multiple-choice poll

No matter if you are discussing World War II or the different past tenses in French, a live multiple choice that asks students about your current lesson is the most basic and useful form of FA. These quick hitter questions can be more informative than simply asking students, "Is that clear for everyone?". Using a tool that can both run this poll and visualize results means it can fit seamlessly into the lesson without taking an inordinate amount of time.

2. Pre-class open-ended question

Asking students to recall what they learned last week or even yesterday can help gauge what important information has been retained and what may have been overlooked. This type of question will require students to recall and reflect on what they have learned and to construct an answer in their own words.

Neither questions nor responses need to be overly complex or detailed, they can be something as simple as "What was the most interesting thing we discussed yesterday?". This will allow you to see what students found compelling and what topics come up the most and least frequently.

3. End-of-class feedback forms or questionnaires

Ok so you've gone through your hour-long lecture or seminar, but how can you be sure that your students retained anything, and that their eyes didn't glaze over twenty minutes in? A survey can help clear things up for you and can help you accurately evaluate how things went. Like with a live poll or open-ended question, a survey does not necessarily need to be 10 or fifteen questions long, it can be short, sweet, and to the point.

Here you can ask students if they found the lecture or class informative, whether it was engaging enough to make concentrating easy, or if it was an enjoyable way of learning.

4. Quick scales

Asking students to write down answers can potentially be time-consuming as they formulate ideas and consider how best to word their responses. Likewise, it can take some time for you to go through each answer and draw solid conclusions, identify patterns, and gather insights. Providing students with set responses in the form of scales questions can eliminate much of this additional time as they can respond almost immediately. Additionally, you can see swiftly and clearly from a graph of answers how the average responses look at whether there are notable outliers.

5. Short answer Word Cloud

If you are looking for some clear and concise responses then simply ask students to submit a one-word or short response to your question. This will require them to carefully consider before submitting their answers and this can help you quickly parse through answers in comparison to those containing full or multiple sentences. Word Clouds can be an easy way to gather these answers as they can provide a dynamic visual.

6. Emoji Survey

Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to spend time in the hospital is probably familiar with the Wong-Baker pain scale. Travelers may have also seen something similar in airports and train stations when asked about security services or how happy they were with the available services. So why not introduce something similar to your classroom or lecture theater? These are simple and effective scales that can be customized to ask any question you like while respondents are presented with uncomplicated answers that take little to no time to submit.

Additional benefits of formative assessment

By providing students with a platform to voice and express their thoughts and opinions on how things are going for them within the classroom you can quickly develop a culture of sharing that is free from anxiety or fear. Asking students to regularly contribute in this way may help them overcome fears of speaking out and voicing their own opinions, which can often be difficult for introverted or young students who lack the confidence to express an inability to understand something.

As well as this, FA can underline just how important participating in classroom activities and discussions is and how they are ultimately beneficial for every student. Thus, they can help improve student buy-in and avoid some frustrations that often come with difficulties to understand or retain information. Allowing students the chance to express this inability to comprehend you can help to clear roadblocks that ultimately lead to frustration and discouragement.

What to do with formative assessments?

So now that you have a series of examples that you can use, you may be wondering what you can do with the feedback and submission provided by your students. Well, hopefully, you have managed to gain a series of useful insights that you can use to improve lesson plans going forward, highlight ways your teaching method can be adapted for your student's benefit, or underline things that may not have caused confusion in the past.

A wonderful part of FA is that you can continuously monitor the situation and look at trends over time to not get just a clearer picture of the situation, but how students' responses have changed over time in reaction to changes you have implemented. You can see if some of the tweaks you have made have benefited everyone or the majority, whether your adjustments have been beneficial or they have created a new series of difficulties.

No matter if you want to run live polls and open-ended questions, or if you prefer the idea of using questionnaires and surveys, Mentimeter has a wide variety of interactive slides that make it straightforward for students to respond immediately and anonymously. Likewise, you can download results from each presentation and analyze trends over time to uncover actionable insights that will benefit both you and your students.

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Formative assessment is oftentimes the ideal way for educators of all age groups to get an accurate gauge of how students are retaining information, whether they are understanding what is going on, and whether or not their lessons are understandable and comprehensible.

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Examples of Formative and Summative Assessments

Both forms of assessment can vary across several dimensions (Trumbull and Lash, 2013):

Informal / formal

Immediate / delayed feedback

Embedded in lesson plan / stand-alone

Spontaneous / planned

Individual / group

Verbal / nonverbal

Oral / written

Graded / ungraded

Open-ended response / closed/constrained response

Teacher initiated/controlled / student initiated/controlled

Teacher and student(s) / peers

Process-oriented / product-oriented

Brief / extended

Scaffolded (teacher supported) / independently performed

Recommendations

Formative Assessment Ideally, formative assessment strategies improve teaching and learning simultaneously. Instructors can help students grow as learners by actively encouraging them to self-assess their own 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:

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 (this can be accomplished though 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 a term.

Encourage students' self-reflection - Instructors can ask students to utilize course criteria to evaluate their own or a peer's work, and to share what kinds of feedback they find most valuable. In addition, instructors can ask students to describe the qualities of their best work, either through writing or group discussion.

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.

Encourage teacher and peer dialogue around learning - Instructors can invite students to discuss the formative learning process together. This practice primarily revolves around mid-semester feedback and small group feedback sessions, where students reflect on the course and instructors respond to student concerns. Students can also identify examples of feedback comments they found useful and explain how they helped. A particularly useful strategy, instructors can invite students to discuss learning goals and assignment criteria, and weave student hopes into the syllabus.

Promote positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem - Students will be more motivated and engaged when they are assured that an instructor cares for their development. Instructors can allow for rewrites/resubmissions to signal that an assignment is designed to promote development of learning. These rewrites might utilize low-stakes assessments, or even automated online testing that is anonymous, and (if appropriate) allows for unlimited resubmissions.

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 in order to succeed.

Collect information which can be used to help shape teaching - Instructors can feel free to collect useful information from students in order 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 are asked to think about their own learning. Poorvu Center staff can also perform a classroom observation or conduct a small group feedback session that can provide instructors with potential student struggles.

Instructors can find a variety of other formative assessment techniques through Angelo and Cross (1993), Classroom Assessment Techniques (list of techniques available here).

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

Use a Rubric or Table of Specifications - Instructors can use a rubric to lay out 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 term, providing students with a trajectory and sense of completion.

Design Clear, Effective Questions - If designing essay questions, instructors can ensure that questions meet criteria while allowing students freedom to express their knowledge creatively and in ways that honor how they digested, constructed, or mastered meaning. Instructors can read about ways to design effective multiple choice questions.

Assess Comprehensiveness - Effective summative assessments provide an opportunity for students to consider the totality of a course's content, making broad connections, demonstrating synthesized skills, and exploring deeper concepts that drive or found a course's ideas and content.

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); knowledge assessed relates clearly to content covered in course; and students with disabilities are provided required space and support.

Consider Blind Grading - Instructors may wish to know whose work they grade, in order to provide feedback that speaks to a student's term-long trajectory. If instructors wish to provide truly unbiased summative assessment, they can also consider a variety of blind grading techniques.

Considerations for Online Assessments

Effectively implementing assessments in an online teaching environment can be particularly challenging. The Poorvu Center shares these recommendations.

References

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.

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Examples of Formative and Summative Assessments Examples of Formative and Summative Assessments Formative Summative In-class discussions Instructor-created exams Clicker questions Standardized tests Low-stakes group work Final projects