I have learned so much! My first Formative Assessment Design was a simple task, with five questions answered and a lot to rewrite and rethink. For the second version of it, I added information, purpose, background… and here we are, with a final version, a polished one; with a lot of color in it (as a new color has been added every time I worked on it.

When we speak of formative vs summative assessment, a lot of traditional misconceptions arises. I strongly believe in both of them, a formative assessment, which gives the teachers the opportunity to adjust their teaching; and a summative assessment, which will provide the learner with the space to transfer knowledge. The road to summative assessment needs to be a corrective one. Only by redirecting students in the right way of learning, is that a summative assessment could be presented. To change the perceptions of summative assessment, a socio-cultural change needs to be done; and this, is extremely difficult (but no impossible), as Harrison, Konings and Schuwirth exposed in Changing the Culture of Assessment (2017).

Another new tendency is self and peer grading. I found this extremely interesting. As students engaged in self grading processes, their performance improved as a result of knowing what is expected of them versus a analysis of an internal perspective of their performance. ( Sanchez, Atkinson, Koenka, 2017) (Self-grading and peer-grading for formative and summative assessments in 3rd through 12th grade classrooms: A meta-analysis).

So, after internalizing the importance of corrective and continuous feedback, and understanding the necessity of design our assessment – UbD, and work from within the goal. And most of all, after comprehending that summative assessment is a road full of previous small formative assessments, I am ready to support my students and learn with them; because with every note sent, with every feedback given, and each step of the way I will be teaching to learn while learning to better teach.

Harrison, C. J., Könings, K. D., Schuwirth, L. W. T., Wass, V. & van Der Vleuten, C. P. M. (2017). Changing the culture of assessment: The dominance of the summative assessment paradigm. BMC Medical Education, 17(73). https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-017-0912-5

Sanchez, C. E., Atkinson, K. M., Koenka, A. C., Moshontz, H., & Cooper, H. (2017). Self-grading and peer-grading for formative and summative assessments in 3rd through 12th grade classrooms: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(8), 1049-1066. [Link to the article in the MSU Library]