Assessing by design: Unpacking the role of formative assessment in student learning

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This project is a carefully designed empirical study of the relationship between formative assessment, instructor-generated feedback, and student learning. It is widely believed on the basis of theory and prior local studies that formative assessment is one of the most effective instructional interventions to impact student learning, but the supporting empirical evidence is still thin in some respects. With the full cooperation of participating faculty, this study will generate a robust stream of empirical data from both face-to-face and online courses in biology and psychology in order to:1. Characterize the formative assessment prompts,2. Describe the nature of instructor-generated feedback to students,3. Describe how students use instructor-generated feedback, including identifying the types of feedback students use, and how frequently and consistently they use it. 4. Ultimately describe the relationship between formative assessment and student learning. This is a design-based research project. Classroom modules will be randomly assigned to either experimental class sessions (that provide formative assessment and feedback opportunities) or control class sessions (that do not provide formative assessment and feedback opportunities). In this manner, all students will participate in both control and experimental groups at some point during their course. Student learning will be measured through gains in learning using items drawn from validated concept inventories (where appropriate) or instructor-generated assessment items, and the self-report instrument Students Assessment of their Learning Gains (available at SALGsite.org). The maintained hypothesis is that students who regularly access and use feedback opportunities will show greater learning gains and have higher course grades. The study will collect demographic variables (e.g., gender, GPA, ACT scores) and administer the Revised Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs et al. 2001) and the 12-item GRIT scale (Duckworth et al. 2007) to support the creation of an empirically-driven model to describe the contexts in which formative assessment and feedback are most useful to learners. The project seeks to predict for whom and in what classroom situations formative assessment and feedback are most useful.