Question

How can assessments, both formative and summative, can be differentiated to meet the needs of various students?

Answer 1

The goal of the formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by teachers or instructors to improve their teaching methods and by students to improve their learning. In other words formative assessment helps students in identifying their strengths and weaknesses and focus on areas of improvement. It also helps faculty members to recognize where the students are facing problems or struggling to learn and immediately providing appropriate remedial steps.

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.Summative assessments are often high stakes which means that they have high point values. But formative assessments are low stakes which means they have low or no point values. Examples of summative assessments are mid term examination,a final project etc.