Identify Formative and Summative Assessment Points

Once you have identified your course learning outcomes, rubric(s), and performance indicators, you are ready to identify the specific moments in your course at which you will perform formative and summative assessment of student learning.

Formative assessment is aptly named, because its purpose is to provide the immediate and on-going feedback necessary to shape student learning and effective course pedagogy during the course. In this sense, it is distinct from common practices of “evaluation” and conclusive grading. Formative assessment is used to improve instruction, instructional materials, and learning ‘as-you-go’—i.e., to adjust the pace of a course to the specific group of students you are currently teaching, and, perhaps most importantly, to help individual students learn and achieve the stated course outcomes more effectively.

Summative assessment, on the other hand, is more akin to the evaluation process we commonly understand as “grading”—a final judgment, such as on student work, for which no revision or second chance to improve is possible. For example, final exams and term papers are summative assessments, as are end-of-semester course evaluations. Summative assessments can report end-of-course achievement of learning outcomes but provide no opportunity for individual improvement.

Both formative and summative assessments are necessary at the course level when planning for continuous improvement of student learning. Employing a mapping strategy will also be very helpful in creating a coherent and useful course-level plan.

Assessment Mapping at the Course-Level

The first step in mapping assessment at the course level is to create a visual map of the entire semester’s curriculum (see Example 1 below). Note the points at which major evaluations of student work will take place (for example, points at which students must turn in a major paper or draft, take an important test or quiz, submit a collaborative project for a major unit, and so on). Try to identify at least three points: one early in the semester, one midway through the semester, and one near the end of the semester. These will be the course assessment points—the points at which you pause to collect data so that you can “take the temperature” of the class. This allows you to answer important questions about the course and student learning, such as:

  • How much of the course content are students learning?
  • Which elements of the course content are students learning?
  • How well are students integrating the various elements of the course content?
  • What adjustments could I make in the course, course materials, learning activities etc., to improve student learning right now?

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Examples