7. Formative Assignments & Feedback
This section highlights a few simple ways to encourage formative assessment in an online environment. Formative assessment encourages students to build an understanding of expectations and standards across programmes in readiness for more high stakes assessment.
This section offers ways of using digital technologies to:
- Replace ‘hard-copy’ or in-class assignments with alternative (online) versions
- Set collaborative, formative digital tasks which benefit the whole cohort
- Deliver impactful online feedback on formative assignments
- Design assessments that define and develop digital capability
Tips and tools for using digital technologies to encourage formative assessment:
- You might assess ongoing digital contributions and artefacts that students produce during the module, e.g: light-touch assessment of discussion and chat postings, digital annotations, curated resources, (see sections 2, 3 and 4 for examples). Consider doing this instead of setting an ‘additional’ formative assignment.
- Explore diversity of Blackboard KLE assignments. Tests can deliver automatic feedback, whilst using Feedback Studio within Turnitin can return marks, text and audio feedback to the learner. Multiple members of staff can collaborate to provide layers of feedback.
- Microsoft Forms as a live polling tool can give you an instant insight into the thinking of large groups of students.
- Using OneNote Class Notebooks can provide a personal workspace for every student, a content library for handouts, and a collaboration space for lessons and creative activities.
- Consider setting Student Group Projects using Microsoft Teams:
10 Elements of Flexible Digital Education
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