REFLECTIONS: formative assessment

This was a difficult exercise for me.  I think what went well was that we knew that we needed to get a sense of what the students already had knowledge of, and how they would assess their own students. We created a strategy to accomplish this which was the easiest part of this exercise.

We discussed goals and outcomes, and decided that these were the same without looking back or thinking about what we had previously read in Backward Design. I spent a lot of time on the readings for Tuesday, but did not make connections between those and Thursday’s readings.

When I first looked over the template, it made sense. I found that trying to use it is a lot more challenging than I thought. It was also a bit awkward trying to use the tool in a group before trying it on my own first, but the exercise has provided me with a way to approach the task. I think it is difficult to identify strategies to truly measure the students’ understanding and will take time and creativity. Using formative assessment allows you to create a structure for your unit but also allows the instructor to measure student learning based on evidence and adapt to the needs and misconceptions of the students.