S4E3 - Formative Assessment

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 10 min

Questions

• What is formative assessment?

Slides

Learning outcomes

• Describe what formative assessment is and how to do it.

Pre-course assessment - Diagnostic questionnaires

• Anonymous questionnaires allow us to have an idea of the level of knowledge of the whole group of learners.

• Non-anonymous and personal questionnaires allow us to find out if the learner has a necessary pre-required knowledge, and in the negative case indicate an appropriate teaching choice to palliate this lack.

Challenge 1 - Who would feel comfortable with giving a definition of “formative assessment”? (5 min)

Fill out his form

The purpose of formative assessment

Formative assessment can be used to collect information about learners’

• goals and objectives
  • Are learners’ goals and objectives aligned with the course’s goals and outcomes?
• Frequent mistakes
  • Which types of mistakes need special attention?

How to carry out formative assessment

The best teachers…

• Constantly monitor what is happening to students as they set about learning, as well as pay attention and investigate whether things are proceeding according to plan and as expected.
• They also question their own methods so they might get better at ensuring that their students learn successfully.

It can be done in many different ways

• Asking questions to learners and getting responses orally.
• Asking them to describe the strategy they would adopt to solve a problem.
• Asking them to solve a problem in groups, or individually but in front of the class.
• Using brainstorming and discussions.
• Providing diagnostic questionnaire.
• Providing MCQs with distractors.

Tools

Socrative

Mentimeter

Key Points

• Diagnostic, formative and summative assessment.