What Is Formative Assessment In Online Learning?

Many students are engaged in distance learning this fall due to COVID-xix. This is specially concerning for students with disabilities, who are likely one of the student populations to have regressed the most during COVID-related interruptions this past spring and require high-quality instruction to brand meaningful progress. Nevertheless, experts say that many of the virtually effective features of instruction, like assessment, can still be used in a distance learning setting.

Formative cess is considered an effective method to support learning and self-regulation, but it may be especially important for distance learning, when students receive less straight instruction and feedback from teachers. During altitude learning, a lesson'southward learning objective tin be lost if a instructor is not carefully presenting educational activity in which the purpose is explicitly stated. In addition, the educatee may non receive ongoing feedback on their learning, which makes it more difficult for students to monitor their own learning. As a result, students view their listing of assignments every bit a "to do" list—completing them every bit best they can and checking off the list every bit they become.

Recently, the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) released an educator brief focused on this very topic. In it, they offering five formative assessment strategies that educators can readily utilize during in-person or distance learning to assistance students self-regulate, or monitor, their learning. Self-regulation may be particularly benign in distance learning contexts because students may not receive timely feedback from teachers. Formative cess may help address this need.

What is Formative Assessment?

According to the Quango of Principal State Schoolhouse Officers' Determinative Cess for Students and Teachers (FAST) collaborative:

"Formative cess is a planned, ongoing process used by all students and teachers during learning and teaching to elicit and utilize evidence of pupil learning to improve student understanding of intended disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become self-directed learners."

In short, formative assessment "is the procedure of gathering, interpreting, and using information about student learning while the learning is happening." Formative assessments are very dissimilar from summative assessments, which are used regularly by all teachers to evaluate student learning afterwards teaching. Hither are a few examples.

Examples of Formative Assessment	Examples of Summative Assessment
Get out ticket, in which the pupil answers a question related to the lesson goal before leaving course and the teacher checks it	Test given at the end of a unit on the Constitution to evaluate a student's knowledge of the unit of measurement
A daily quiz (nongraded, but examined past the teacher and student) that will be used to inform education	An end of semester final project
A writing rubric used by students to evaluate their writing and inform their next draft	High stakes testing mandated by a land

The Formative Learning Cycle

Since formative assessment is a process, it is helpful to conceptualize information technology as a cycle surrounding educatee learning. The authors of the NCEO brief break this cycle downward into three important questions:

Where am I going? (What am I learning and what volition it look like when I do?)
Where am I now? (My teacher provides feedback and then I know how close I am to mastering this lesson or learning objective.)
Where to side by side? (My teacher's feedback as well helps me know what to focus on in subsequent lessons and how these lessons connect together.)

Formative assessment allows didactics and learning to exist intentional. It allows teachers to provide feedback that guides learning, moving communication across a list of instructions that students follow to complete assignments.

Formative Assessment Strategies

NCEO recommends v strategies that facilitate the determinative learning cycle and help students with disabilities cocky-regulate their learning. The authors notation that these strategies represent a starting point and are non an exhaustive list of appropriate formative learning strategies.

Strategy 1: Establish and communicate articulate learning targets. It is important that teachers conspicuously state, in student-friendly language, what students should exist learning in each lesson. Learning targets help students know "Where am I going?" and should exist mentioned more than once per lesson so that it remains "top-of-listen." A few ways to communicate clear learning targets include writing it on the students' assignment folio, including information technology in parent communication so parents can assist students, including the learning target in the actual title of the consignment (e.g., learning the short u sound), and explicitly stating the target in video lessons and on presentation slides.

Strategy 2: Found and communicate clear criteria for success. The learning target has two essential components: a pupil performance (what the student does, creates, says, etc.) and "success criteria." Success criteria provide students with a fix of qualities or characteristics they tin can look for in their own work to determine how well they are learning; they are not grades. For case, success criteria should not exist written as "I will utilize four adjectives in every paragraph." Instead, success criteria help students know what an adjective is and if they are using them correctly in a sentence (due east.g., "My adjective describes how something looks, feels, smells, tastes, or sounds like"). These types of criteria assist students evaluate their work and monitor their own learning. (Demand more than examples? Spotter the video "Targeting Learning With Success Criteria.")

Strategy 3: Build in opportunities for students to self-assess or ask questions, based on criteria. Providing students opportunities to inquire questions almost their learning in an online environment may seem challenging, merely the authors of the NCEO brief offer some viable suggestions. For example, educators can format their success criteria into a tool (eastward.g., rubric, checklist) students employ every bit they consummate assignments. Success criteria could also be written equally a self-checking quiz (non a graded, summative exam) so students tin decide "Where am I now?". It is important to build in directions for using these types of tools into the assignment so that students don't skip this important pace. Overall, anytime students can exist prompted to pause, reflect on their learning, and communicate with their teacher it volition help guide instruction and make learning intentional. (Additional examples of success criteria checklists include this checklist by Westminster Public Schools and the video "How Tin can Students Use Success Criteria Checklists and Seesaw?".)

Strategy 4: Give brief, articulate, actionable feedback based on the criteria. I of the most of import and effective things educators tin practice is provide feedback. In altitude learning contexts in which feedback may be less frequent and immediate, teachers should pay special attention to their feedback. The feedback does not have to be complicated or long, but it should be precise. (Consider "great job" vs. "I really like how you used adjectives to make your sentences so descriptive and vivid.") The second feedback example is tied to success criteria and helpful for students in knowing "where they are" and "where they go next" in the formative learning bicycle.

Strategy 5: Give students opportunities to revise assignments or redo similar assignments. Students must use feedback in social club for it to be effective, and teachers should consider embedding opportunities for students to use and answer to feedback in their lessons and units. I suggestion is using a feedback-and-revision loop on a regular ground. This sets up the expectation that students should utilize teachers' feedback to revise an assignment (east.1000., a written response) or correct an assignment (e.g., math problems). In addition, educators should consider calculation a reflection component that allows students to tell the teacher what they did differently in their revisions or corrections.

Acquire More than Almost Formative Assessment

As the authors point out, "the most important reason to utilize formative assessment is that it helps students larn." This is specially important for students with disabilities, whose learning may suffer the nearly as a result of little to no in-person instruction. Below are a few useful resource that may help educators implement formative cess practices in a remote learning environment and with students with disabilities.

Formative Cess for Students With Disabilities (Council of Chief School State Officers)

Formative Assessment Made Easy: Templates for Collecting Daily Data in Inclusive Classrooms (Teaching Infrequent Children)

Make Formative Assessment More Pupil-Centered (Common Sense Didactics)

Determinative Cess in Altitude Learning (Edutopia)