Reply To: Lesson 2: The True Purpose of Assessment – Discussion

[Daniel Whittaker]

I definitely have used the concept of formative assessments for grades. Often admin pressures us to put a certain number of grades in the book per week. I want to use things as formative assessments are intended, but often fall back on old practices. This is especially hard with shared courses that are supposed to follow the same practices regardless of the teacher so that a grade means the same thing regardless of the teacher.

Basically to me this sounds like most formative assessments may not even be written down. I do a lot of formative assessments by having all students working on the whiteboard to solve questions for the current topic, I’m able to watch 16 students working the same problem at the same time and then adjust the learning based on their progress, it is a beautiful thing, I just haven’t really thought of it as a formative assessment before.