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What is formative assessment? 

In broad terms, the formative assessment process requires three key and sequential steps. The first is providing learners with an activity so that what they know, understand and/or can do at that moment in time can be established. This activity will then lead to the second step which is feedback. This feedback is sub-divided into two parts: first, feedback to us, as tutors, so we know whether learning is heading in the right direction or not; and second, we also provide constructive feedback to learners, whether this is oral, written or automated, so that they are clear on what it is they need to do next to improve. Finally, and most importantly in my view, the feedback by both the tutor and learners needs to be acted on. This process, or cycle as I see it, should occur every time a new learning activity is given to learners.

Unfortunately, on an international level, there are some confusions as to what formative assessment is and what it looks like in practice. For example, some people think that just by giving learners an activity, they’re automatically ‘doing formative assessment’. That's unlikely to be the case. An activity is just an activity. Learners could do the activity, but if nothing is done with the information it provides then it will not improve teaching and learning. Similarly, I also speak to people who say, ‘I've given learners feedback, therefore I'm doing formative assessment’. Again, not necessarily the case. For example, if learners do not act on the feedback they are given by their tutor, then their learning is unlikely to improve. Likewise, if a tutor establishes that, say, 50% of the class got a multiple-choice question wrong and does nothing to address this, then learning is unlikely to improve.

How important is giving feedback to learners?

Feedback is a really difficult thing to do right. In education, we often talk about a really interesting, pioneering and oft-cited study carried out by Ruth Butler in 1987 . In this research, approximately 200 learners were separated into three groups who received different kinds of feedback:

• only a grade;
• only constructive comments to improve; or
• both a grade and constructive comments to improve.

In order to determine which type of feedback had the greater impact on learning outcomes, learners did an initial pre-test, received their feedback, underwent some subsequent training, did a post-study test, and were told that they would receive the same type of feedback as before.

What Butler found was the group that was given the grade-only made no significant improvement in their post-test, while those learners who were given comment-only feedback made substantial gains in their learning between the pre-test and the post-test. Interestingly, the third group – who received both grades and constructive comments to improve – made no more improvement like those in the first group. This is a fascinating finding; what this tells us is that learners can be fixated on grades – as often we are as educators – so once the learner receives a grade, and depending on how good that grade is, they often don’t feel they need to take on board the constructive comments to improve their learning further.

To be clear, I don't think the idea of giving grades or scores is necessarily a bad thing. But when we're wanting to engage learners in the learning process, we've got to think very carefully about when it's appropriate to give them and when we want them to actually focus, and act upon, on the comments.

Added to this, a large-scale meta-analysis (which draws on and analyses lots of different research publications) carried out by Kluger and DiNisi in 1996 showed that whilst feedback can improve learning, it can also make no difference to it, and in some cases it can actually make learning worse!! So, it’s not as simple as providing a few notes on the bottom of an exam paper and hoping the learner will take notice.

So, what can we do to provide quality feedback to learners? According to Jeffry Nyquist , there are different levels of feedback which we need to be aware of – ranging from ‘weak’ feedback – i.e. literally a mark out of ten – to ‘moderate’ formative assessment, which includes demonstrating where the learner got something wrong and what they should have done instead, to ‘strong’ formative assessment that not only informs the learner what they did wrong and how it should be done, but also gives them a meaningful follow-up exercise or activity to put that constructive feedback into practice. Within the English examination system, this ‘strong’ formative assessment approach could lead to learners improving their national examination grades by the equivalent of a Grade 4 to a 7 in terms of, for example, a GCSE. Pretty remarkable! Quality feedback is, therefore, at the heart of the formative assessment process.

How is formative assessment being implemented in NEBOSH?

Here at NEBOSH, Learning Partners are asked to provide physical evidence of ‘formative assessment’. For example, they are asked to provide examples of learners’ work from activities with individual and constructive feedback for least three activities throughout the teaching of the International General Certificate qualification. It could be a mock examination, which is traditionally done towards the end of the course before the real exam; it could be a group discussion; it could be a pre-test and a post-test; it could be multiple-choice questions. It is all down to those who are teaching the syllabus to include formative assessment that suits their teaching and learning context.

Formative assessment plays a pivotal role in enhancing learning by providing learners with valuable feedback and guiding their path toward improvement. Effective implementation of formative assessment will ultimately foster a dynamic and constructive learning environment that focuses on continuous growth and understanding.

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References

 1. Butler, R. (1987) Task-involving and ego-involving properties of evaluation: Effects if different feedback conditions on motivational perceptions, interest and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(4), 474-482. Available from: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1988-21628-001