You cannot avoid assessment in life, assessments are like compass it need to be designed and delivered in such a way that it reflects our true capability. Instead of looking assessment as Boolean, lets understand different types of assessment and where we can use it for our own progress.

What is formative assessment?

Formative assessments are intent to designed for the purpose of verifying learners learning acquisition at the end of every module or chapter in a given competency.

Formative assessments are the best tool that will give clear indication where the learner is having strength and what area he needs improvement. Using this you can give a constructive feedback to learners so that they can move forward.

Pro

1. It will beat the forgetting curve and helps to retain the knowledge for longer period
2. Enables quick feedback on student learning
3. Enables teachers to see whether their learning resources and methodology working correctly

Con

1. Labor intensive and should be designed in advance
2. Might end up giving a perspective of too many assessment

Where it can be used?

Formative assessments can be interleaved with your programs and it can act as a learning sensor. If you want your organization to stay relevant using continuous learning, use this type of assessment to implement micro credentialing and aggregate learning quotient of your organization.

What is Summative assessment?

Summative assessments are designed to administer at the end of the program and assess how good the learner acquired what has been taught. It measures people skill and knowledge in a point in time, you can administer this assessment for group of people at scale.

Pro

1. Gives good view of where learners learning level stands in the end of the program.
2. Good way of measuring people skill and knowledge in specific time.
3. Highly scalable, you can combine high volume of test takers who met certain criteria.

Con

1. It comes in the end, its too late for giving a feedback on learning progress.

Where it can be used?

Definitely summative assessments provide a view of how good you are in a given competency when it is designed well. Based on the insight you can make decisions to hire employees to your organization or promote people to next grade.

There is different variant available to summative test, with the help of technology currently you can design an integrated (Multiple competency) case study-based assessment where the individual is asked to develop a piece of application using multiple competency. This way of assessing people for hiring purpose is highly recommended since you are assessing people in near production environment.

With the help of technology influence now its possible to question your brain using various questioning type. It’s important to understand various types of questioning techniques to design and develop a effective assessment.

We will see in our next blog Squeezing the BRAIN about different questioning type and when to use which type.