Summative and Formative Evaluation

Formative Evaluation

The goal of formative Evaluation is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative Evaluations:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative Evaluations are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative Evaluations include asking students to:  draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic

• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture  turn in a research proposal for early feedback

This process is used to measure and monitor the learning of students during the period of instruction.

Objective: Its main objective is to provide continuous feedback to both teacher and student concerning learning success and failures while instruction is in process. Feedback to students provides reinforcement of successful learning and identifies the specific learning errors that need correction.

Feedback to teachers provides information for modifying instruction and for prescribing group and individual remedial work. Formative evolution depends on tests, quizzes, homework, classwork, and oral questions prepared for each segment of instruction. These are usually mastery tests that provide direct measures of all the intended learning outcomes of the segment.

Methodology The tests used for formative evaluation are mostly teacher-made. Observational techniques are also useful in monitoring student progress and identifying learning errors. Since formative evaluation is used for assessing student learning progress during instruction, the results are not used for assigning course grades.

Summative Evaluation 

It is used to find out the extent to which the instructional objectives have been achieved particularly at the end of a terminal period. The goal of summative evaluation is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative Evaluations are often high stakes, which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative Evaluations include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a paper
• a senior recital

Objective/Purpose: It is used primarily for assigning course grades or for certifying student mastery of the intended learning outcomes at the end of a particular course program. Although the main purpose of summative evaluation is assigning grades, It also provides information judgment on the appropriateness of the course objectives and the effectiveness of instruction.

Methodology/Technique: The techniques used for summative evaluation are determined by the instructional objectives. For this evaluation, there are external examinations as well as teacher-made tests, ratings, etc. 

Difference between Summative and Formative Evaluation

Summative evaluation refers to the assessment of the worth and wholeness of the instructional program which has already been completed, while formative evaluation refers to the assessment or worth of the instructional program which is still going on and can still be modified. 

A formative evaluator is a partisan of the instructional sequence and does everything to make teaching-learning better. A summative evaluator is an uncommitted non-partisan person who is to pass judgment on an instructional endeavor.

A summative evaluator gathers information and judges the merit of the overall instructional sequence to adapt that sequence. The audience of summative evaluation is the consumer of the instructional program in contrast to the formative evaluator whose audience is the designer and the developer of the program.

Summative evaluation, judgmental in nature. Its purpose is to appraise the teaching-learning process and to distinguish it from-formative evaluation. It is an end-of-the-course activity concerned with the assessment of the larger instructional objectives of a course or a substantial chunk of the course.

Formative evaluation is developmental, not judgmental in nature. Its purpose is to improve students learning and instruction. Therefore, its major function is feedback to the teacher and student to locate strengths and weaknesses in the teaching-learning process in order to improve it. 

Summative evaluation is thus a judgmental activity focused on certification of students’ achievement But formative evaluation is a means of determining what the pupils have mastered and what is still to be mastered, thereby indicating the basis for improvement of students learning.