Formative and Summative Assessments
In education, there are two types of assessments that each serve a vital purpose for a student’s learning. But first before we can assess our learners, we need to define the goal or purpose of these two types of assessments:
According to Carnegie Mellon University, the difference between formative and summative assessment Links to an external site. is ultimately the goal. Formative assessment’s goal is to monitor student learning and provide ongoing feedback. Summative assessment’s goal is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.
Formative Assessments
Reviews the material for the purpose of reinforcing a lesson, such as in training. These are informal assessments that are used for practice and/or reflection, but essentially to be used as a check for understanding. These assessments generally pull from the lower-level of Bloom's Taxonomy. These types of assessments can show up as practice quizzes, ungraded discussion prompts, ungraded peer-feedback, etc. They keep the learner engaged, either during a lecture or even after as a series of lessons to reinforce the learning of a set of concepts or ideas.
Summative Assessments
Gauges comprehension for the purpose of evaluation or grading. These are formal, graded learning assessments. Unlike, formative assessments, the goal of summative assessments is for you to be able to evaluate and assess a learner’s level of mastery of the concepts. Questions should pull from the higher-order thinking levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. These types of assessments can show up as graded quizzes or exams, final projects, graded discussion prompts, graded peer-feedback, group work, etc.