One of the ways to ensure that learning is more effective is to use formative assessment tools during the teaching process.
Remote learning keeps growing in leaps and bounds. This is in part a result of its effectiveness for imparting knowledge and encouraging collaboration.
Formative feedback is a form of assessment in which tutors provide feedback to their students during the learning process. This enables them – the tutors – to identify problem areas: where the students are finding it hard to assimilate what they are being taught. Based on this, they can then make modifications to the study material and method and guide the students toward the correct answer. In other words, formative feedback enables students to close the gap between actual performance (what they know) and desired performance (what they ought to know).
Formative Feedback Tools
Formative feedback holds an important position in the learning curve as it helps ensure that students have the utmost achievable knowledge, skills, and understanding.
Formative learning is applied in both remote and physical learning. For remote learning, the following are the formative learning tools you should consider making use of to help your students attain their ultimate learning potential.
Yacapaca
Yacapaca is one of the top formative assessment tools available today. It is versatile and as such can be used for a variety of teaching/learning purposes including classwork, exams, tests, and homework.
This particular formative feedback assessment tool has several thousand tests on different topics, from which teachers can choose for their students. The answers provided are then auto-marked with artificial intelligence. Also, it provides expansive analysis for teachers to use in tracking their students’ progress, so they can make adjustments as needed.
Learning by Questions
Learning by Questions is an amazing formative feedback tool that tutors use in teaching their students. On the one hand, it helps tutors save time as they have pre-set curriculum question sets to choose from for their students. It then automatically marks the students’ answers, provide automatic feedback, and also provides the tutor with insight into the students’ strength so that they can know which part of their teaching schedule to shore up.
Nearpod
Nearpod is a one-of-a-kind formative assessment tool that is utilized by tutors and students alike to achieve a more effective transfer of knowledge. It employs the use of interactive slideshows to impart knowledge to the student. Apart from being exceptionally informative, Nearpod is highly engaging. In short, it comes highly recommended.
Spiral
Spiral is an all-encompassing formative feedback tool that empowers teachers to impart valuable knowledge to their students with features like Quickfire (for carrying out a formative assessment to get a direction of the students thoughts), Discuss (used to create interactive presentations), Team-Up (for ensuring that students collaborate on projects outside of the classroom), and Clip (which is a live chat option for students to use in discussing questions and quizzes given to them).
The application is really useful for helping students improve. It also features a student portfolio with which students can follow their activities on it.
Classflow
Classflow is an EdTech (education technology) application that has been used by more than 4.5 million educators in over 150 countries of the world. The reason for its popularity can be traced to the fact that it greatly simplifies the learning and teaching process.
Not exactly the feedback formative tool but more of a collaborative guardian.
For instance, teachers and students alike can choose from several curriculum-based interactive lessons, resources, and activities developed by seasoned educators from all over the world. There is a reward system, which allows teachers to send digital badges to outstanding students and their parents/guardians, thus encouraging their dedication to their studies. Also, it helps teachers ensure that their students collaborate on projects outside of the classroom.
Seesaw
Seesaw is a formative assessment application that can be used by not just teachers and students, but also by third parties such as students’ family members. Being a formative assessment tool, Seesaw gives tutors insights into their students’ understanding of topics they are being taught; this will enable them to determine where the students’ strengths and weaknesses are. As such, they – the teacher – will be able to modify their teaching routine to ensure the student closes the gap between actual performance and desired performance.
Socrative
Just like the other apps on this list, Socrative comes with pre-set questions for when you, the tutor wants to set a test, a poll, or a quiz for your students. It has activities, which allow you to engage your students. As such, you can receive exit tickets from them, assign quizzes (personalized and otherwise), and also receive feedback from them. Also, it allows you to poll how many students are in class at any moment in time, among other things.
With all these, Socrative enables you to take complete charge of your students’ education and, as such, ensure that they’re improving in their studies.
Plickers
Plickers is a formative feedback tool that uses interactive paper answer cards as a means to help ensure that students learn effectively. One of the more endearing features of Plickers is that it can be used by people with limited access to technology.
This particular app is very interactive. And it is chock full of features that greatly ease the teaching process. With it, teachers can: conduct pretests to gain insight into the students’ understanding, task students to create questions for reviewing information, and test students’ reception to quiz and exam questions, among other things.
Conclusively, it is an effective formative assessment tool, especially for people with limited technology access.
Piazza
Piazza is a learning application that encourages discussion and engagement of students outside of the classroom. With over 50,000 professors in over 90 countries, it is a great place to gain answers to questions that puzzle students.
This particular application favors a forum-type format for students to ask questions. When answers are provided, instructors can then endorse those which are the most accurate.
One of the advantages of using Piazza is the fact that it can be used with other major learning management systems. Also, it enables the use of highly customizable online polls to gather opinions from users. Finally, it allows users to post anonymously.
Formative
Formative is used by millions all over the world, including teachers, students, and entire schools. Whether you have questions of yours you want to use, looking to create your questions, or use pre-set questions, rest assured that this app is up to the task.
There is a live response feature that enables you, the teacher, to give feedback and intervene in what your students are doing. With this, you can identify the area(s) where your students are struggling, and make concessions for that in your lessons. You can also track a student’s progress over time to know if your efforts are pointed in the right direction, or if you need to make amends.
In all, this application helps ensure that your students receive a quality education and that they truly and fully understand what you aim to teach them.
Conclusion
Formative assessment is crucial for students to gain a true understanding of what they are being taught. And there is no better way to ensure you are going about it the right way than to use tools, such as those mentioned in this article, to gather feedback. There are several others, but we are certain you’ll find something that works for you in those we’ve listed. Endeavor to visit the website of each to gain further insight before you settle on one.
