Assessment Strategies: Formative Versus Summative Quizzes
Not all quizzes serve the same purpose. I spent a year confusing formative and summative assessment, and my users suffered for it. Here is the distinction that fixed everything. I spent a year building quizzes without understanding the difference between formative and summative assessment, and it showed in my results. My quizzes were trying to be both at once, which meant they were neither. They were too high-stakes to be good learning tools and too forgiving to be good measures of mastery. Once I understood the distinction and designed quizzes for one purpose or the other, outcomes improved dramatically. Here is about assessment strategies. Formative Assessment: Quizzes That Teach Formative assessment is assessment that happens during learning, designed to give both the learner and the instructor feedback on what is understood and what is not. The purpose is not to grade. The purpose is to identify gaps and guide further study. A formative quiz should be low-stakes, forgiving, and rich in feedback. The user should learn from taking it, not just be measured by it. I design formative quizzes with immediate feedback after each question. More guides are on the Quiz Hub Blog.