Last week, I attended NASPA’s virtual Student Success in Higher Education (SSHE) conference. (It’s a great conference; you should think about attending). One of the sessions, Assessment Choices: Moving beyond the Either/Ors of Assessment Work, was presented by Sherry Woosley from Macmillan Learning and Jen Hodges from New Mexico State University. It really spoke to me about the false dichotomy that is sometimes set up in research and assessment—qualitative vs. quantitative, surveys vs. focus group, etc. I really think about this in terms of student learning and how and when we assess to know that learning has occurred. Assessment of student learning is not something that you only do once, and learning is also a developmental process over time.
One of the false choices that they posed was formative vs. summative assessment. In simple terms, formative assessment usually takes place during some sort of intervention or experience. The point is to provide frequent and/or continuous feedback, so that you can make changes during the intervention (Henning & Roberts, 2016). I tend to think of it as a smaller or more informal assessment. Summative assessment, on the other hand, occurs at the end of some intervention, giving a more comprehensive perspective and/or statement about outcomes accomplishment (Henning & Roberts, 2016). This type of assessment can be longer, more formal, and more detailed.
Although I don’t think it is meant this way, when we teach beginners about assessment, we tend to pose formative and summative as opposites or in contention with each other, as if you can only do one or the other. In reality, it is great if you can do both. (Remember though, you need to make assessment manageable.) They really compliment each other and have value for improving the intervention over time.
As an example, numerous years ago, we asked several student organization advisors to use rubrics to evaluate the leadership development of students leading several organizations. Both the advisors and the students used the same evaluation tool in September, December/January, and March. Advisors rated the students (observation) and the students rated themselves; the pair would meet to discuss similarities, differences, as well as discuss further development opportunities for the student. During the first iteration, it was interesting to see the dissonance between the advisors and the students. During the second iteration, the ratings began to converge as the students had a more accurate perception of their skills and areas for improvement. At the end of the year, the advisors and students were close in ratings, and students’ overall ratings also increased. If we just used the late spring rubric (summative), we probably would have seen students end on a positive note, but we would not have had the full picture to understand where students started and how the advisors could individualize feedback and support individualized leadership learning.
Formative assessment doesn’t have to be that structured. It could be as simple as a one-minute paper or other classroom assessment techniques (Angelo & Cross, 1993; Barkley & Major, 2016). There are online polling systems that you can use, or you can go old-school with paper and pen. The goal is to get a read on what students know, feel, or need along the way, so you can alter what you are doing to increase the chances of success at the end.
When the intervention or experience is over, you can also assess for overall learning or success, as well as get feedback about the program itself. This summative assessment could be evaluating some sort of project or presentation, a test of knowledge, a survey to get feedback, etc. This is typically where you would be doing any reporting or documentation about outcomes and the quality of the program to your stakeholders.
So, here’s my take: don’t get too caught up in the words. Don’t think that you have only do one type of assessment along the way, especially if you are working with the same group of people over a period of time. Think about how you can have smaller assessments along the way for you to make changes in the moment and how you can gather data to know what to continue and what to change. Student Life Studies is here to help.