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Formative & Summative Assessments

A guide on assessment types that instructors can use

At a Glance

Some key takeaways on formative and summative assessments:

  • Formative assessments are employed while learning is ongoing to monitor student progress in course learning objectives, while summative assessments are used to evaluate student proficiency at the conclusion of a unit or course.
  • Instructors can use both assessment types in conjunction to promote student motivation, metacognition, and understanding of course content.
  • Instructors should use formative assessments and student feedback to inform future teaching practices.

What are Formative and Summative Assessments?

Benefits

Examples

Recommendations for Formative Assessments

Recommendations for Summative Assessments

References & Resources

What are Formative and Summative Assessments?

Assessments are evaluative assignments that allow instructors and students to monitor progress towards achieving course learning objectives. 

There are two main types of assessments. Formative assessments are employed while learning is ongoing to collect information on whether course objectives are being advanced and how teaching can be improved. Formative assessments often aim to identify strengths, challenges, and misconceptions and evaluate how to close those gaps. They may involve students assessing themselves, peers, or even the instructor through writing, quizzes, conversation, and more. By measuring student understanding throughout a course, formative assessments enable students to reflect on how they can improve their own learning.

In contrast, summative assessments are used by instructors to evaluate student learning, knowledge, proficiency, or success at the conclusion of an instructional period, such as a unit, course, or program. Summative assessments are almost always formally graded and often heavily weighted, though they do not need to be. They often take the form of exams, papers, presentations, or final projects. These assessments aim to “sum up” student learning through measurable outcomes (Maki, 2002).

Formative and summative assessments are very effective when used in conjunction, and instructors can consider a variety of ways to combine these approaches. 

Benefits

Formative and summative assessments can both be beneficial to advancing student learning. Formative assessments improve student learning by allowing teachers to better understand students’ misconceptions and areas of difficulty (Bakula, 2010). They can also bolster students’ motivation to learn, their metacognition, as well as their performance on summative assessments such as exams (Trumbull and Lash, 2013; McLaughlin & Yan, 2017; King, 2023).

Though final exam period is often stressful for students, summative assessments can be effective in promoting learning when designed carefully. Assessments that test students’ ability to apply skills and course material as opposed to rote memorization allow for a more holistic evaluation of understanding and performance (Ali, 2024).

Examples of Formative and Summative Assessments

Formative Assessments

Summative Assessments

In-class discussions

Instructor-created exams

Poll Everywhere questions

Standardized tests

Low-stakes group work

Final projects

Weekly quizzes

Final essays

1-minute reflection writing assignments

Final presentations

Homework assignments

Final reports

Surveys

Final grades
Alexander Ekserdjian is a man wearing a blue sports coat and white collared shirt.

“Constructing fair and meaningful assessments that allow for creativity is one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching. I’m always so pleased when a student tells me they actually enjoyed doing one of the assignments for a class. The community at Poorvu, both staff and other instructors, have really helped me think through how best to design assignments to aid student learning.”

—

Alexander Ekserdjian, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Classics and History of Art

Recommendations for Formative Assessments

Seven principles (adapted from Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2007 with additions) can guide instructor strategies.

Instructors can explain criteria for assessments and encourage student discussion and reflection about these criteria through office hours, post-grade peer review, or exam/assignment wrappers. Instructors may also hold class-wide conversations on performance criteria at strategic moments throughout a term.

Instructors can ask students to utilize course criteria to evaluate their own or a peer’s work, and to share what kinds of feedback they find most valuable. In addition, instructors can ask students to describe the strengths and weaknesses of their work, either through writing or group discussion.

Instructors should consistently provide specific feedback tied to predefined criteria, with opportunities to revise or apply feedback before final submission. Feedback may be corrective and forward-looking, rather than just evaluative. Examples include comments on multiple paper drafts, criterion discussions during 1-on-1 conferences, and regular online quizzes.

Instructors can invite students to discuss the formative learning process together through mid-semester feedback and small group feedback sessions, where students reflect on the course and instructors respond to student concerns. Students can also identify examples of feedback comments they found useful and explain how they helped. Another useful strategy involves discussing learning goals with students and weaving student feedback into the syllabus.

Students will be more motivated and engaged when they are assured that an instructor cares for their development. Instructors can allow for rewrites/resubmissions to signal that an assignment is designed to promote development of learning. These rewrites might utilize low-stakes assessments, or even automated online testing that is anonymous, and, if appropriate, allow for unlimited resubmissions.

Instructors can also improve student motivation and engagement by clearly presenting  opportunities to close gaps between current and desired performance. Examples include opportunities for resubmission, specific action points for writing or task-based assignments, and sharing study or process strategies that an instructor would use in order to succeed.

Instructors may collect information from students in order to provide targeted feedback and instruction. Students can identify where they are facing challenges in assignments, exams, and written submissions. This approach also promotes metacognition, as students are asked to think about their own learning. Poorvu Center staff can also perform a classroom observation or conduct a small group feedback session that can provide instructors with potential student struggles. Instructors should then incorporate this feedback to inform future pedagogy. 

Recommendations for Summative Assessments

Instructors should use a rubric to lay out expected performance criteria for a range of grades. Rubrics will describe what an ideal assignment looks like and “summarize” expected performance at the beginning of term, providing students with a sense of clarity and expectations. 

If designing essay questions, instructors should ensure that questions are clear and align with course materials and objectives, while allowing students freedom to express their knowledge creatively and in ways that honor how they digested, constructed, or mastered meaning. Instructors can also read about ways to design effective multiple choice questions.

Effective summative assessments provide an opportunity for students to consider the totality of a course’s content, making broad connections, demonstrating synthesized skills, and exploring deeper concepts that drive or found a course’s ideas and content. Instructors should select the type of assessment — whether it be an exam, a final paper, or a project — and design it such that students have the opportunity to demonstrate their learning and conceptual understanding.

When approaching a final assessment, instructors should ensure that parameters such as length of assessment, depth of response, time and date, and grading standards are well-defined. Instructors should also ensure that knowledge assessed relates clearly to content covered in course and that students with disabilities are provided required space and support.

Instructors may wish to know whose work they grade in order to provide feedback that speaks to a student’s term-long trajectory. However, if instructors wish to provide truly unbiased results for the summative assessment, they can also consider a variety of blind grading techniques.

References & Resources

Ali, Q. I. (2024). Towards more effective summative assessment in OBE: a new framework integrating direct measurements and technology. Discover Education, 3(1), 107.

Bakula, N. (2010). The benefits of formative assessments for teaching and learning. Science Scope, 34(1).

King, D. (2023). Assessing the benefits of online formative assessments on student performance. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (27).

Maki, P. L. (2002). Developing an assessment plan to learn about student learning. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28(1-2), 8-13.

McLaughlin, T., & Yan, Z. (2017). Diverse delivery methods and strong psychological benefits: A review of online formative assessment. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 33(6), 562-574.

Trumbull, E., & Lash, A. (2013). Understanding formative assessment: Insights from learning theory and measurement theory. San Francisco: WestEd.

  1. The Poorvu Center has a list of recommendations for online assessments.
  2. Indiana University Bloomington’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning has a guide on summative and formative assessment.
  3. Boston University’s Center for Teaching and Learning provides a guide on assessing student learning.
  4. Instructors can learn about a variety of formative assessment techniques through this resource from the Poorvu Center.