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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of peer learning and formative assessment as two creative learning methods in engineering learning environments. The results show that both models have yielded promising results with regard to meeting the criteria for the expected learning outcomes of the curriculum. However, the integrated model has resulted in better results than the model of formative assessment. The paper discusses also some practical and theoretical aspects related to the learning models.

It is advanced two general learning models; in the first model, the formative assessment is integrated with peer learning and in the second one, the formative assessment is solely used to enhance the learning. A field case study is conducted to investigate the effect of using the learning models on the expected learning outcomes of the students in an engineering course.

The results show that both learning models have yielded promising results with regard to meeting the criteria for the expected learning outcomes of the curriculum. However, the integrated model has resulted in better results than the model of formative assessment.

The two models can be applied for the engineering course that has both practical and theoretical aspects. It is expected that areas of expertize in engineering education can be developed very well with the models.

The results show that the two learning models have yielded promising results with regard to meeting the criteria for the expected learning outcomes of the curriculum and that formative assessment link to good learning practice does indeed give improved learning.

Increase the effectiveness of learning in engineering education.

Case study based on observation and planning.

This study, a post hoc observational one, attempted to determine if career and technical education (CTE) students in the state of Mississippi would academically benefit from taking multiple formative assessments in an online format prior to completing their summative exams. Most CTE students in the state of Mississippi are required to take an end-of-course exam cataloged as the Mississippi Career and Planning Assessment System (MS-CPAS). Previously, MS-CPAS test score results did not impact school-wide accountability scores, but in recent years, some of the guidelines were changed so that these summative test scores now play a vital role in school accountability and rankings.

This study examines both formative and summative online exam scores for more than 13,000 students who have taken an MS-CPAS assessment in the 2018 and 2019 school years.

The results of this study revealed that there were significant differences in summative exam scores for students who took two online formative practice tests when compared to groups of students who did not take any formative practice tests. This study also illustrated a positive correlation between those students' final online practice test scores and their summative exam scores.

These results would prove very beneficial to both CTE teachers and directors in helping them understand the benefits of introducing formative practice tests into their programs to boost student understanding.

The focus of this research is to understand the role of the district superintendent, the building principal, and the school leadership team of classroom teachers as catalysts for innovation in instruction and classroom assessment. School characteristics and structures designed to specifically support professional learning communities are to be analyzed, and the responsibility teachers take for student learning using formative assessment is evaluated.

The setting for the study is a small, Midwestern high school in the USA. The high school has a staff of 38 teachers, 15 of whom are on the Formative Assessment Building Leadership Team. The high school principal and district superintendent also participated in the study. The study took the form of a qualitative case study. The data sources were transcripts and artifacts from eight months of interviews, and building‐wide teacher meetings. Professional development inservices were also analyzed.

The principal served as a catalyst for building teacher knowledge and implementation of formative assessment practices. The success of the change initiative hinged on relationships between teachers and school leaders. Teachers used assessment in the service of student learning.

Because this is a case study, the findings themselves are not designed to be generalizable to other contexts.

Understanding the role school leadership will play in the implementation of a new State‐wide policy initiative for curriculum improvement is critical to uncovering the capacity required for formative assessment to be successfully implemented on a large scale.

There has been research in the field of educational measurement in the past few years on the use of formative assessments to raise standards of achievement and to lead to higher quality learning. This is an analysis of the complex dynamic between school leaders and teachers in the service of implementing assessment for learning.

The implementation of formative assessment on a large scale is a concern not only in the State in this research study, but in schools around the country. An exploration of the leadership capacity needed to originate and sustain this school improvement initiative is novel to the field.

Purpose – To provide pre-service and in-service teachers with a framework for using formative assessments to inform their literacy instructional practices.

Design/methodology/approach – Assessment as inquiry is a cyclical problem-solving stance that can be applied to instructional decision making in the classroom.

Findings – Teachers are urged to keep six design features in mind when creating formative assessments and analyzing the data gathered from them.

Practical Implications – This chapter is a helpful resource for teachers when evaluating their uses and analysis of classroom literacy assessments.

Originality/value – Teachers who apply the information in the chapter will gain a deeper understanding of each student's developing levels of literacy knowledge, skills, strategies, and dispositions. This information will facilitate a teacher's ability to better meet the needs of all students in his or her classroom.

This paper aims to describe the use of a pre‐assessment exercise and in‐session assessment questions to determine graduate students' existing information literacy skills and to adjust the content of the instruction session accordingly. The paper seeks to propose that the use of assessments to inform instruction increases the practicality of research instruction. The use of formative assessment creates effective information literacy instruction by acknowledging variation in information literacy skills among students.

A librarian partnered with a faculty member to create instruction sessions for graduate level business courses. An open‐ended pre‐assessment exercise was administered prior to the session, and students' responses were used to determine the content of the instruction session. Assessment questions administered during the session provided the librarian with a measure of the effect of the pre‐assessment exercise on students' information literacy skills, and provided students with feedback regarding their individual information literacy and engaged students in the learning process.

The pre‐assessment exercise and the session assessment questions together created an instruction session that included content that was appropriate for the students in each session. Therefore, these information literacy instruction sessions were more practical and beneficial to the students than sessions based on pre‐determined content.

The paper presents a conceptual approach to the design of research instruction sessions rather than extensive empirical analysis of data. Therefore, the essay addresses the need for quantitative measures of the impact of formative assessment on students' information literacy skills.

The process of formative assessment has not been applied to one‐shot information literacy instruction sessions.

Assessment for learning (AfL) or formative assessment is an idea widely embraced by the education field; however, it is recognised as difficult to practice at classroom. This paper, with a case study, explores how an action research activity, learning study, helps a group of teachers in Hong Kong transcend some assessment boundaries and develop assessment tools that are more conducive for student’s learning. As guided by variation theory, a distinctive feature of learning study is its intensive use of formative assessment tools, including pre- and post-tests and interviews with students, to provide feedback to teaching and evidence of learning. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how teachers learn to use the formative assessment tools to overcome practical problems in teaching and improve their instruction.

A case study was conducted. Data collected included field notes on classroom observations, records of meetings, students’ interviews and students’ writings in both pre- and post-tests. The general framework for qualitative data analysis by Miles and Huberman (1994) guided the data analysis process with the foci on the change in teachers’ perceptions and improvement of their skills in adopting formative assessment tools.

Although the initial aim of conducting learning study was examination-driven, i.e., to improve the students’ performance in an external examination, it became evident over time that teachers participating in the inquiry process had gained a better understanding of making use of the assessment results as feedback to improve student learning and their instruction. This constituted an ideal case for studying the learning process of the teachers as they practiced AfL and transcend some conventional assessment boundaries in an authentic classroom situation.

This is one of the scarce studies, which demonstrates how the assessment elements of learning study, i.e. pre/post tests and student interviews, can be integrated into the working practice of teachers as a form of AfL and become an integral aspect of classroom practice.

Purpose: This chapter provides a working definition of formative assessment and explores methods and tools in the context of “What’s Hot in Literacy Instruction?” and what is new.

Design: Formative assessment is largely understood as assessment for learning, but it is not always clear what the relationship of assessment for learning is to instruction. A metaphor is provided to demonstrate how formative assessment, instruction, checking for understanding, and feedback are interrelated. Underutilized formative assessment tools are suggested.

Findings: The author discusses how the analysis of student work can help teachers refine their instruction. Tools and approaches including gamification, social media memes, and alternatives to traditional rubrics are explained and demonstrated.

Practical Implications: By expanding the definition of formative assessment to include new or untried approaches, teachers can more precisely guide students as they learn.

To meet the needs of the professional environment sector, environmental science graduates need to be suitably equipped in terms of their knowledge, understanding, and skills. At the University of Southampton, the first-year module Environmental Science: Concepts and Communication aids students in their journey into Environmental Science by preparing them to face the challenges of university study and beyond. This module thus engages students in independent learning and provides them with opportunities to develop and enhance the skills necessary to do so. Formative and student-led activities and tasks are considered important tools to achieve this aim. This review provides an overview of selected formative and student-led activities with focus on methods and approaches, values and benefits, and the practicalities of delivery. Three assessments are reviewed: a practice essay, a communication exercise, and a practice presentation. The intended benefits and value of these assessments are (1) engagement with environmental issues and topics and (2) development and enhancement of study skills. The value of such work is only realized, however, with student engagement. Delivering this module has demonstrated that formative elements are most effective when orientated to tutor group activities. Motivation for engagement appears most effective when the visibility – or absence – of students’ work is brought to the foreground through working in small groups. There is added value in that the collation and sharing of feedback within a small group permits students to learn not only from their own work but also from their peers.

The purpose of this paper is to build an assessment-centred blended learning (BL) framework to assess learners, to analyse and to evaluate the impact of the technology support in the form of formative assessment in students’ positive learning.

This research proposed an assessment-centred BL framework at the course level to support formative assessment in students by designing a variety of online learning activities combined with e-assessment tools of learning management system (LMS) to analyse and evaluate the impact of the technology application in the form of formative assessment student learning initiative. The author has tested this model in five years with more than 200 courses.

Experimental results have shown that formative assessment evaluation form is more efficient when supported by technology such as LMS.

This research proposed an assessment-centred BL framework at the course level by using LMS tools combined with traditional teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to present results from three years of a longitudinal “Assessment Attitudes and Practices” survey collected from a large school district in the Southern USA.

This paper focuses on both formative and summative “assessment practices” results from secondary (middle and high school) social studies teachers.

There was no statistically significant difference between secondary social studies teachers’ use of assessments and secondary teachers of other disciplines, nor was there a statistically significant difference in assessment use by year. Data results by assessment type were ranked in order of how often teachers claimed to use various assessment practices, and discussed in terms of assessment practices recommended by NCSS. Social studies teachers in this study were often more likely to report use of assessments of knowledge (including selected-response items) than performance-based assessment techniques (such as authentic assessments).

The lack of statistically significant differences in assessment practices along disciplinary lines indicates homogeneity in the use of assessments that does not do justice to social studies.

Using Common Core standards or not, having a 1:1 technological environment or not, teacher respondents essentially reported using the same assessments, perhaps because high-stakes assessments did not change.

There is a need for professional development that helps teachers see how performance-based assessments can be used to boost student performance on high-stakes assessments.

Studies of actual assessment practices (as opposed to ideas about how teachers should assess) are still quite rare, and provide a helpful window in understanding what is actually happening inside schools.