What are formative and summative assessment?
“Formative” and “summative” refer to the purposes of assessment activity and how assessment information is used. Formative assessment is a feedback process that provides information you can use to fine-tune or modify what you’ve been doing. For example, the written comments you make on a student’s essay are formative feedback to the student. Evaluating your students’ senior project reports to see if your program should include more training in professional writing provides formative feedback to your curriculum committee. Summative assessment is a judgement about how well you’re doing, usually made by comparing your performance to some standard or to the performance of others. The grade you give the student’s paper is a summative assessment. Asking your graduates’ employers how your students compare to graduates from other schools can be a summative assessment. Sometimes the same information serves both purposes, as when you use separate grades on different parts of a student’s work to
