Formative Assessment: 6 Benefits To Assessing Learners’ Level Of Knowledge Acquisition

Formative assessment refers to a wide variety of strategies that teachers use to perform in-process evaluations of student cognizance, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course. Formative assessments assist teachers with recognizing concepts that students are attempting to comprehend, abilities they are experiencing issues with, or learning standards they have not yet accomplished, so changes can be made to lessons, instructional techniques, and academic support.

The overall objective of formative assessment is to gather detailed data that can be utilized to further develop guidance and student learning while it’s going on. What makes an assessment “formative” is not the design of a test, procedure, or self-evaluation, essentially, yet the manner in which it is utilized—i.e., to inform in-process teaching and learning changes.

Assessing learners’ level of knowledge acquisition has been a system designated for educational institutions, and it can never be ignored, evaded, or stopped by the institution or its agents. Instead, it is being promoted to have more standardized ways of evaluating the learning process, and the overall information received by the learners.

Summative and formative assessments are the major types of evaluation. Summative evaluation is the systematic or standardized assessment of the progress and achievement of students at the end of the learning process. This kind of assessment checks the overall knowledge of the student at the end of a particular learning term, year, session, or learning stage. On the other hand, formative assessment is an evaluation system used by teachers during lessons for checking comprehension, acquisition, accuracy, students’ difficulty, or lesson techniques or methods efficiency.

Formative assessment is an integral part of productive and efficient learning. With this, instructors have developed different means of evaluating their students during lessons. There should be a formative assessment technology that allows this.

Having formative evaluation done online using software and/or the internet has numerous benefits for both the instructor and students.

• Digitizing students. The world is becoming more digital. This makes it easier for learners and teachers in any situation and condition. It helps the learners to be more familiar with taking assessments online before summative evaluation. Most summative evaluations are being conducted online. It will not be disadvantageous for students because all are accustomed to using online formative assessment.
• Eradicating instructor and learner stress. Having formative assessment done online reduces learning and teaching stress, especially the ones connected to evaluating during the lesson. A large class will have difficulty checking the comprehension level of all students at that particular lesson, but with online formative assessment, the instructor will be able to assess each student without straining his or her voice during the lesson or focusing on some learners.

• Flexible in time and place. Another benefit of having a formative assessment done online is the dynamic nature. Students can take the evaluation at their convenience. Online Proctoring makes it accessible anywhere and anytime.

• Quick and easy to mark. Online assessment marking is computerized. The instructor does not need to sit with notebooks, marking, and scoring. As the student submitted the answer, grading is done easily as programmed online. Within a short time, the auto-answer questions are ready to give feedback to the learners.

• standardized feedback system. An online assessment gives quick and accurate results. It easily gives an immediate report of the in-lesson performance of the students, making it known the areas needed for development. Cost-effectiveness.

• Online formative assessment reduces the cost of administering questions. Time management, few or no invigilators, no printing of the paper, etc. reduce the cost of administering it.

Gleaning from these and many others, online formative assessment should be encouraged and implemented for efficient and effective feedback from formative evaluation.