Back to: Measurement and Evaluation in Education B.ed Notes, M.A Notes, IGNOU Notes and Graduation Notes
What is The Concept of Formative Evaluation
A formative evaluation is one that is conducted before to or during the execution of a project with the goal of improving the project’s performance and design. A formative assessment is in many respects superior to a summative evaluation and aids in determining why a programme is ineffective.
The biggest obstacle to doing a formative evaluation is the lack of time and financial requirements, which makes it difficult to complete. It is equally crucial that people see it as a need that produces positive results.
Any type of classroom interaction that produces data on student learning is considered a sort of formative evaluation. Faculty and students utilise this data to improve their respective teaching and learning tactics throughout the teaching-learning process.
In order to assist students overcome these gaps before they take on high-stakes assessments and assignments, faculty employ formative evaluation to discover gaps between what students understand and/or skills they possess in relation to expected learning objectives for a course, unit of topic, and/or activity.
This data can also help the professor objectively assess any presumptions they may have about what and how students are learning. Students can benefit from regular, considerate feedback that encourages metacognition—the process of becoming aware of oneself—and self-regulation of the learning process.
Formative assessments provide a constant dialogue between teachers and students, which can help students develop the skills of expert self-review and perseverance in the classroom. Additionally, it can help people transition from risk-avoidance habits to mastery-oriented goals. Additionally, studies on formative assessment techniques show improvements in student engagement and performance in the classroom.
Benefits of formative evaluation are more likely when:
- Evaluation methods offer a suitable 1:1 measurement for explicitly specified learning objectives that are backed by precise success criteria.
- Evaluation is unrelated to grading procedures or other types of judgement and helps students to learn from their errors.
- Teachers advise students to prioritise mastery goals above performance goals in order to advance professionally.
- To assist students in making the connection between formative feedback and metacognitive practise, educators offer examples and lessons.
Student-faculty relationships and evaluation procedures are both influenced by a complicated web of variables. As a result, using formative evaluation procedures does not ensure quantifiable improvements in student motivation, learning, or self-awareness. Opportunities to record these results might be further complicated by choices and concessions made while doing classroom research.
For example:
- How can instructors help students transfer newly acquired learning behaviors to new situations?
- What effect size(s) should researchers use to reliably gauge benefits of formative evaluation on student learning outcomes?
Examples of formative assessments include:
- A brief written recap of a class or lecture Student-teacher conferences.
- A finished visual organiser, like a Venn diagram.
- A test that either the student or the teacher can grade.
Importance of Formative Evaluation
- When there is no formative evaluation, there are numerous possibilities that your project may start and not address the true demand. Otherwise, the project could also be limited by uncontrollable external variables.
- Both behaviour change and community-engaged programmes require and value formative evaluation.
- Due to their complexity and requirement for few monitoring procedures, this type of project requires formative evaluation. Formative assessment is necessary to deal with unexpected events and react to emergent features.
- A formative assessment might be used in the absence of successful input to improve the project’s execution. There are more opportunities to accomplish the project’s goal with this method.
- Formative evaluation aids in the understanding of the numerous process modifications. With the use of formative evaluation, the real reasons behind what functions, what doesn’t, and why such things occur are discovered. By obtaining the additional knowledge needed, the project may be made successful, which will improve the design and execution of future projects.
