Improving results with positive directed feedback in summative assessments

Formative assessments are fast becoming the most commonly used approach to computer aided assessments. Much better at giving feedback, students are able to take a formative test after studying new material, test their knowledge, review their answers and find out exactly where they are going wrong. Unfortunately despite being a strong approach for improving student learning, formative assessments do have several problems: - • The integrity of the questions is lost once students have had access to the answers. This means they cannot be re-used without the risk of students remembering the answer rather than the reason for the answers. • Observations have shown that some students do not try as hard when working with formative assessments as they are “not as serious” as summative exams. This kind of attitude is synonymous with answers in the back of textbooks, where students copy the answers to get the questions correct, rather than using the answers as a means of self-certification. • Students do not necessarily receive the feedback that they need. Without detailed feedback for all incorrect answers, it is difficult for a student to understand the full reason why their answers were incorrect. • Lecturers do not get the feedback that they require from the students. Without ‘more accurate’ summative results, lecturers are often not convinced as to how well the students are learning the materials. They will often dismiss poor results as being caused by the students not taking them serious enough