Empowering Instructors | Supporting Excellence
Evaluating levels of student achievement.
Summative assessments gauge student achievement after the completion of learning activities. While many of these are common such as exams, projects and essays, there are a larger variety of ways to measure student learning. For example, activities like research presentations contain both the learning activity as well as the assessment. Regardless, summative assessments occur after the completion of learning activities, they assess student achievement, and they ultimately reflect the impact of course activities.
Direct methods allow students to demonstrate what they know and can do; indirect methods help us to infer what students know and can do. Try to use direct methods over indirect methods.
Direct methods
Indirect methods
For examples of authentic assessments and tasks, see the additional resources.
There are many types of summative assessment. The following are some ideas for ways to assess learning outcomes.
Adapted from Chicago Grass Roots.
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ePortfolios are purposeful collections of student work that can be used to showcase their efforts and ideas, and act as archives of learning, discovery, progress, achievement and self-reflection.
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When you are done choosing or creating summative assessments continue:
or move on to:
Examples of authentic assessments you can consider integrating into your course design.
Helps students apply their higher order thinking skills to show their understanding of concepts.
Sequencing larger summative assessments allow students to work in chunks and receive direct feedback from the instructor to develop ideas and make revisions.