Formative Assessment Techniques

Several short assessment techniques listed below can be very well used as formative assessment (that is, to only check how your students understand the topics you taught). However they can also be used as short measurements that will have some weight attached and be part of student grade in a specific course. Of course you would have to modify them a bit so you are able to collect and give grades. A good idea is to randomly give grades. For example ask the entire class to complete the short assignment and then randomly collect/ask some responses and grade them. This makes all students in the class to fully participate in the activity. One owrd of caution: Please let your students know by listing tyhis rule in the syllabus, and always be fair in grading and collecting the results of this short assessment (e.g., you can use random sections if you have a very large course; use lists of student name by letetr of last name). Might give you more work than a regular test day of all students in class, but the advantage is that you will have students involved in classroom work.

- Associational brainstorming – very good method to start a class or introduce a new topic/concept. Invite students to brainstorm everything it comes to mind related to the concept or word that represents a new topic. Encourage students to list Cognitive and Affective relations that come to their mind. Make sure you record all ideas – everything is good without any judgmental comment, let them do free association. Use a slide or overhead to collect all ideas. Then try to group the recorded ideas and ask students to come up with further groupings and reasons for the groups, and ask them to name the categories. Ask students to analyze the collected responses and identify themes, categories, connections, and patterns.

- Evocative visuals or textual passages – Good method to start the course, or a new topic. Start out with a picture, painting, or a video clip, or choose a powerful text passage, a chart, a graph that represents a content that you will teach. Ask the students to brainstorm their analysis of the presented. Ask questions to start the discussion: “What do you see?” “What is going on?” “What does it mean to you?” “What do you think it this?” “Why do you think I showed this to you?” “How do you think this relates to what you are studying in this class?” Use pairs or small groups (students seated in proximity) to let students share their representations then regroup as an class and ask them to comment. Several different ideas will arise. Provide support and challenge, model your way of thinking about the presented. Easily direct the flow of though toward the concept/topic you will teach next.

- Debates – good method to exemplify different ways of solving/ thinking about a problem, as well as to demonstrate higher order thinking and problem solving skills. The way students are seated divide the class in several areas (possibly as many ways of seeing a problem can be). Ask the large groups to think from the different perspectives and come up with arguments to defend that way of thinking. Give students 5 minutes to discuss in pairs or proximity seating small groups then call the class to regroup and ask the different parts to volunteer with examples of their way of thinking. If you use this to debate pro –con topic then is good at least to have a third group who must not take any side and come up with reasons why they would abstain to be for or against.

- Role-playing – very good method for History, Literature, or Biochemistry classes. Divide the class into as many sections as you need to have for role playing. Ask them to prepare their arguments or plan their behavior representing the role they play (different characters of a play, different groups in history, different enzymes that could react and form new ones). Give examples of content and then ask student to discuss shortly in pairs or small groups how would their role react. Then ask as an entire class to have representative descriptions from each section. Draw attention to consequences of possibly unplanned behavior descriptions and compare with the reality of the lecture you teach.

- Mini-Cases – can be used as a start up for a lecture or spread in between to spice up the tempo of the longer lectures and help students better understand by using a specific example. Students can be asked to pair up or form small groups turning around to colleagues seated in proximity. One group presents the case to the entire class then pairs/ small groups work for several minutes to find responses by directly applying the content to the case example.

- Think-pair-share – Ask a question to interrupt the lecture after approx 15-20 minutes, ask student to write down the response to the question, then turn to the next neighbor and discuss the responses. No more than 5 minutes (depends on the complexity of the question); then ask several pairs to share their responses and conclude with a correct response and move to the next topic in the lecture

- Minute paper – is a very powerful way to assess the degree students understand the topics and concepts they studied in the respective class period. Can be used 20 minutes in the lecture or at the end of the class. The task should not take more than 5 minutes maximum of class time. If it is used in the middle of the lecture then some questions might be: “Explain shortly the main concept discussed in this part of the lecture,” “Give an example of this concept or principle,” “How could this concept apply to…” a possible next topic in the same lecture, “How does this idea relate to your experience with…?” used at the end of the class period the One minute paper questions are: “1. What are the most important things you learned in today’s lecture? 2. What is the question on today’s topic that remains in your mind after this lecture?” Collect the responses – this is also a good way to take attendance if you request names (however names might affect honest statements of questions from students). The collected can form a basis for next class starting 5 minutes. Possibly you need to revise a concept, give some examples, or clarify some topics. Also you can use it as a basis to give good examples.

- Pause procedure – ask student in pair or group with 2-3 other students seated in proximity to compare notes or results from a short exercise in class. Allow 2-3 minutes and ask what questions if any arose from their review.

- Formative quizzes – quizzes that are not graded, can be used to evaluate how students understood a certain topic. Use similar questions as they will be on the exam. Use a power point slide or overheads to post the question. Responses can be shown by raising of hands. Clickers can be handy for this type of activity, unless you have a group larger than 150 where the time to get in the results from clickers takes longer than solving the problem (clickers for very large classes are not efficient).