Testing and supporting the use of digital formative assessment
The teacher’s role is shifting from a transmitter of knowledge to a learning coach, helping students understand and steer their own learning. Formative assessment enables the teacher to decide how best to help students develop their learning path. Assess@Learning (A@L) aims to facilitate and guide this change of role through digital formative assessment.
What is DFA?
Assessment only becomes formative when evidence of learning is actually used by teachers and learners to adapt next steps in the learning process. How can teachers deepen their formative assessment practices?
In the course of class activities, it can be challenging for teachers to collect “on the spot” feedback and keep the whole classroom engaged at the same time. Digital tools can provide the versatility and speed that teachers need for collecting and providing feedback. This is only one of the many benefits that digital formative assessment can offer.
Why this initiative?
Assess@Learning (A@L) is the largest European policy experimentation ever launched for digital formative assessment. It addresses the need of policy makers to support and rigorously test digital formative assessment. A@L develops an online toolkit that will guide teachers, school heads, students, parents and policy makers in adopting DFA practices and bring system-level impact.
News and updates
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Making formative assessment a reality: seven necessary shifts
25/04/2023Read full articleOver the last 25 years, we have accumulated considerable evidence that assessment can improve, as well as measure the results of, education. However, we have also learned that using assessment to improve learning is much more than adding a few “quick fixes” to what teachers do. Rather, harnessing the power of assessment to improve learning involves a number of major shifts in how we think about education and policy, and, without these shifts, the potential of assessment to improve learning is likely to remain unrealized. The shifts that seem to be most relevant to the current policy environment in Europe are summarized below.
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Empower students with digital formative assessment - Newsletter Issue 6
24/03/2023Read full articleAlthough formative assessment can empower both teachers and students, it is still not
widely adopted by schools and when it is adopted, more support can be provided for its
effective use. Furthermore, the potential of digital tools to support formative assessment
has not been fully realised.How can teachers effectively implement digital formative assessment (DFA) in their classroom?
How can we support teachers in this process? These are some of the questions which the Assess@Learning policy experimentation considered since its launch in 2019. -
Formative assessment in 2050: Possibilities and challenges
12/01/2023Read full articleWhen I advocate for increased use of formative assessment in classrooms, there are three
questions I am regularly asked. The first is how do I know that formative assessment is not just another passing fad in education; one that in a year or two will be replaced by something else that catches people’s attention?