formative versus summative assessment ( follow the guided)

  Guided Response: Review several of your peers’ posts and respond to at least two discussing their answers. Respectfully, agree or disagree with your peers thoughts on the advantages or disadvantages to formative and summative assessment. 

I prefer a formative assessment. It gives me feedback while I’m still working through a paper or assignment. I like to know what I have done well and what areas I can improve on. A formative assessment is feedback given to students so that they can revise before making the final submission on an assignment. A summative assessment can be a test in order to see how much of the information had been retained in order to make changes for future assessments. 

There are advantages to both assessments because the use of each has a specific target. They both are assessing the material learned. Whether it be a test or during the learning process you are provided feedback in order to understand the things you did not see at first. I think that formative assessment is easier for both the teacher and the students because of the feedback during the lesson. It allows growth and allows students to master the information before putting their knowledge to the test. Summative assessment does allow you to test the knowledge learned but is it all of the information or just the key information that the teacher has expressed as important? I personally love all types of feedback. I like to see if the information I feel weak about is shown in my work and my strengths are verified. 

Receiving feedback as a student—be it formative or summative—is an essential part of learning. We strive for information on how we are doing and what we can do to improve. Higher education courses generally come to an end and we receive a final grade. This is the sum of all of our work throughout the course. As a student, do you prefer formative assessment or summative assessment? What do you personally think are the advantages and disadvantages to each? Explain in depth your thoughts as well as the formal definitions of each form.

Assessment should be given to students to measure how well they comprehend and understand the content that is being presented. Assessments are also equipment tools to measure whether or not the goals of education are being met within a teacher’s classroom. There are advantages of both formative and summative assessment. However, as a student, the type of Assessment I would prefer differs. I would prefer Formative assessments to provide me with in-class support and practice what I am learning in the classroom. Formative assessments allow the teacher as well as the student to identifies their strengths and areas of improvement.  The teacher will be able to generate solutions with the student to help them comprehend the learning content and achieve academic achievement.

Summative assessments are used to evaluate student learning and academic achievement at the conclusion of a defined instructional course. As a student, I would prefer a summative assessment because I know more likely I would show me how much I have learned over the length of the course. It will be a culminating demonstration of learning and determined if I have met the learning standards. Also in most cases, the disadvantage of a summative assessment is that the teacher can attach it to your final grade. If a student does not perform well on the assessment the overall grade will be negatively impacted.

However, I think overall I would prefer formative assessments.