Formative Feedback and Summative Assessment

Within the outcome based approach, there is a distinction between formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment is for feedback towards the improvement of learning, and summative assessment happens at the end of learning for the purpose of ranking and selection.

Formative Feedback
Formative assessment is the continuous ongoing process of providing feedback during learning. It is well supported using active learning interventions. It is diagnostic and provides feedback to both students and teachers on important information such as:

• What has been learned so far
• Difficulties and misconceptions
• Strengths and areas for improvement

It is also remedial as it offers opportunities for improvement. Formative feedback is best approached as constructive. More specifically, it can be.

• Specific and criterion referenced (i.e. give feedback with specific reference to the ILO)
• Informative and towards positive action; identifying strengths first, then any weaknesses, giving positive and constructive ways to improve and overcome difficulties.
• Timely, as soon as possible during or after the learning activity

Summative Grading

Summative grading is a description of how well something has been learned and is generally considered in terms of a final grade at the end of a course, or the end of a programme. It is for: Seeing how well the students have learned what they were supposed to have learned The ranking and selection of students

In the outcomes based approach, assessment is best considered as the judgment of the teacher on how well the ILOs have been achieved. In terms of student learning, the difference between formative feedback and summative grading is a matter of opportunity for risk, and error correction. A student will be able to take critical and creative risks and admit to mistakes when they see an activity as formative, and they will be unlikely to take learning risks or admit to failure when an activity involves summative grading. Formative feedback and summative grading are similar in that perfomance is matched as it is, in comparison with what it should be. Both formative feedback and summative grading offer opportunities for learning improvement, and course improvement. Students can be helped with learning improvement through formative feedback, and courses can be improved by looking carefully at how well each ILO has been achieved according to overall student grades.

Assessment Rubrics and Grading Schemes
An assessment rubric is a scale that can be used to assess student performance along a continuum of criteria. It can be useful as it explains to the student how they will be judged. The students can use the assessment criteria to develop, adjust, and judge their own work as they move closer to the final assessments.

Example of an assessment rubric for a business course (TLA: Change Management Essay)

Assessment Rubric (Business)	Marginal/Fail	Adequate	Good	Excellent
Rubric for mid term essay on change management (CM)	Conceptual understanding of the CM concepts is isolated and minimal. Poor coverage.	Basic understanding of the difference between the concepts, with only some understanding of the overview of the situation. Needs more application and integration	Good acknowledgment of each aspect of change, together with an account of how change is managed, with a clear view of how various parts of the course examples explain the concepts of CM	As in "Good", but more illustrative cases mentioned together and integrated and association with a personalized model of good practice in CM. Good integration with theory and evidence of reflection.

So assessment is carried out to find out to what extent the student's performance matches the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) of the course. This generally requires an holistic judgment to be made about the student's performance.

So the process tends to involve:

1. Designing assessment tasks that satisfy the actions required in the ILOs.
2. Using a grading scheme or a set of rubrics for determining how well a student can meet the performance criteria.
3. Using that scheme to determine how well each ILO has been met so that the course can be adapted and improved
4. Arriving at a holistic or "overall" final grade for the course on the basis of a student's performance on all the ILOs.

Grading schemes can be organisedby programme leaders in preparation for the course. It helps if teachers refer students to the student OBTL site at the beginning of a course, and whenever they are preparing for summative assessment, in order that they can gain an understanding of how they will be graded. The grading scheme should have specific information on what level of performance will achieve a particular grade (usually a term: Marginal, Adequate, Good, or Excellent). The description of the grade in the grading scheme will offer a good idea of what a student would need to do in order to attain a higher grade. This is in contrast to a simple ABCD, or a percentage, which offers no instructions on what criterion is required to reach a better performance. Grading in relation to criteria is key to giving the student the feedback they need to learn and improve in a subject.