Formative and Summative Evaluation in Educatin - Assignment Example

Formative and Summative Evaluation in Educatin Evaluation in education is the utilization of a precise method to evaluate and investigate the efficiency of a certain program or individual (McDonalds, 2006). There are four groups in which evaluation can be separated: value, merit, result of the procedure or the technique used by a certain individual and of course worth. Formative and summative are the two types of evaluation. Formative evaluation is divided into two categories, one is implementation and the other is progress. Formative is carried out during the program or course while summative evaluation takes place after the program or course. In implementation evaluation, the question that will and should be answered includes: who the participants are, to what extent the participant be involved, activities to be taken before and after the evaluation (Lenze, 1995). On the other hand, progress evaluation focuses on answering questions such as: how will the participant progress in the direction of specific outlined goals, and what strategies can be of assistance to the participant in order to reach predetermine goals (Lenze, 1995). The other type of evaluation which is summative is intended to assess the program at its finale. It will attempt to determine whether the project is successful, if the goals were met, if the participants were satisfied ad benefited and if it is effective (Lenze, 1995). There are four basic steps to evaluation. It includes choosing the criteria of merit, setting standards of performance, gathering the necessary data, and lastly the integration of results in order to pass the concluding judgement of worth. Role of formative and summative evaluation in education. One of the most important role of these evaluation is to provide different audiences with feedback. The audience may include the school administrators, teachers, students, Secretary of Education and the parents of the students to some extent, etc (Anonymous, 2002). By strengthening or improving students, teachers, course or the program, formative evaluation performs its role. It helps them improve by examining the delivery of the program, the methods used, the competence of the instructor and the students and other individuals involved. On the other hand, summative evaluation focuses on the effects or outcomes of the program, course, student and teachers. This is done by summarizing through describing what takes place following the conclusion of a program. It will assess the correlation of the inputs to the outcomes. The role then of summative evaluation is the ability to examine whether outcomes are results of certain outputs (Anonymous, 2002). Summative Evaluation of Instructor. At the end of a semester, specifically, one to two weeks before the last day of classes, a summative evaluation of a course occurs (Walker, 1998). The current students of a certain class will perform the evaluation. This evaluation is completely confidential and anonymous, therefore giving the students the option of reflecting on the performance of the instructor with the absence of fear for punishment, for example the effect on their grades. There are two ways on how to perform evaluation; first, with the use of paper form and second, with online technology (Walker, 1998). In a paper based format, the paper form is typically distributed by an assigned student in the absence of the teacher being evaluated. The result will then be sealed in an envelope and will only be seen by the teacher not until the final grades for that class is submitted (Walker, 1998). The other version, which is an online one is usually more detailed than the paper form, branching question technology is incorporated to gather information from the student. Both versions, though using different methods, allows the student to supply useful and most importantly, honest feedback (Anonymous, 2002). This feedback is essential for the teachers for them to improve the quality of their instruction. Moreover, the feedback of the students is useful in evaluating the effectiveness of an instructor; in particular, it is used for tenure and promotion purposes. Formative evaluation of Instructor. This usually takes place when changes do occur for the duration of the present semester. Essentially, this kind of evaluation is performed by peer discussion. In this consultation, the other more or equally experienced teachers will re-examine one of their peer’s instructions. In this evaluation, the teacher will receive constructive criticism from colleagues which is the purpose in the first place. One common example of this is that peer teachers will sit in the class given by the teacher in some lessons and from there the peer teachers will then take notes on the teacher’s method. After that, the peer teacher’s team will then meet with the said teacher and discuss their feedback. They will then offer constructive suggestions for further improvement wherein the said teacher has the choice if to implement or not (Ippolito, 2001). Peer feedback is given to the mentor classically in the structure of an open session meeting. Ideally, the peers will reflect first on the good qualities of the instruction. Later, they will them move to the areas that need improvement. The teacher will then give suggestions for improvement and those ideas will receive further feedback (Ippolito, 2001). In formative evaluation, the students can also contribute. With the purpose of helping faculty members to progress and develop their teaching skills, students’ evaluations are considered formative. The teachers have the preference to require their students to write a complete written evaluation or participate in an ongoing consultation or focussed dialogues during the semester. Summative Evaluation of a Student. In New Mexico for example, a summative evaluation is a prerequisite in getting school and university accreditations (Ippolito, 2001). According to the accreditation standards, in order to assess whether the students have met the specific program objectives for the knowledge, skills and attitudes that is suitable for practice, a summative evaluation of each one of them should be done and documented before the program or course ends (McDonalds,2006). Summative Evaluation was defined in 2001 as an objective assessment of the student at the conclusion of the program to evaluate his final competence. It is intended to make sure that the learner has achieved the least level of standard of knowledge, skills and attitudes acceptable to a certain educational institution (Ippolito, 2001). Lately, the definition of summative evaluation for students was again revised being now a written objective evaluation by the program of the learner towards the conclusion of the semester (Ippolito, 2001). Different programs employ different techniques in evaluating the competency of the student. One example of the summative evaluation is a combination of cumulative written final examination plus oral examination for the students (Ippolito, 2001). Formative Evaluation of a Student. One example of formative evaluation for students is one which is intended to help the faculty members in improving the environment where the students learn. This kind of evaluation if used will provide useful feedback and information while classes are still in progress, in other words it takes place in between the start and end of the semester to improve the quality of student learning (McDonald, 2006). For an example, a formative evaluation questionnaire will include questions in interviews targeted towards students such as: What factors aided you in learning in the class? What are those which hindered your learning? What can you suggest to further improve the learning environment or the learning process in your class? (McDonalds, 2006). The pharmacy students who were the participants of the evaluation answered that some of the things that will help their learning in class were their own interest in the class/course, and the behaviour of instructors which includes their willingness in answering their questions, their encouragement for the students, and discouragement of the students’ rude behaviour, the instructor’s use of visuals and easy flow of class discussions, and feedbacks on home works and other class requirements (McDonalds, 2006). On the question that considers the hindrance to their learning, some of the students answered otherwise from the factors stated above. It encompassed the low voices of some of the instructors, noise coming from outside the classroom, too hard examinations or too easy in the case of some etc. These feedbacks will then be discussed among the faculty members to provide actions on how to improve basing on what the student’s feedbacks (Mcdonalds, 2006). Summative and Formative Evaluation of a Course. As discussed earlier a summative evaluation takes place in the end of each semester while formative evaluation takes place during the semester. This part then will discuss these two kinds of evaluation for course while looking at distance education as an example. Online distance education is now expanding, attached to this therefore is the increasing attention that is being given to evaluate online courses (Kim, 2002). Included in any distance education evaluation effort is a secure, user friendly web based course evaluation system. Therefore, a world-wide-based system was created to oversee the evaluations of students of distance education courses and also of on-campus courses which use Internet technology (Kim, 2002). The system was intended to offer for both summative evaluation and formative evaluation (Kim, 2002). What the inventors did was make a system which will incorporate the suggestions of many education courses critiques, online instructors into a survey form for the courses which they will then make available for distance education students during the semester through the internet. After that, the results will then be forwarded to the teachers who are teaching the same online course and later they will discuss it among themselves with fellow instructors ( Kim, 2002). For the summative evaluation, the survey form will be made available after the end of the semester. The summary of the survey will then be summarized and tabulated if necessary and the system will then forward it to the instructor (Kim, 2002). References Anonymous (2002), Introduction to Evaluation. Retrieved from www.socialresearchmethods.net Ippolito, J. (2001). Summing Up the Summative Evaluation. Retrieved from http://www.paeaonline.org Kim, J. (2002). EvalOnline: A Formative and Summative Evaluation System for Online and Technology-Enhanced Courses. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/index.cfm Lenze, L. (1995). Summative Evaluationand formative Feedback. Retrieved from http://www.paeaonline.org McDonald, K. (2006-07-05) .“Triple Jump” Summative Evaluation: A Strategy for Longitudinal Assessment of Student Academic Progress." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, San Diego, California, USA . 2008-09-13 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p126600_index.html Walker, J. (1998). Process Portfolios as a Means for Formative and Summary Evaluation of Student Work in the Visual Arts. Chicago: University Press. Read More