Markus and I have been a fan of Kahoot (June 2016) and Kahoot Challenges (November 2017) for some time. While Kahoot is a fun way for students to learn and instructors to easily assess learning, there are times when a more robust assessment tool is desired. Formative is that tool. Formative is an easy to use, web-based, real-time student response and assessment tool that works well with any device and any type of delivery method (traditional lecture, flipped classroom, hybrid or online). It allows you to track student learning over a period of time, rather than a single activity. Formative offers closed and open-ended question options, plus provides immediate feedback, if desired, to support deeper learning.
Formative connects in-class and out-of-class activities together. It also gives students the opportunity to try, fail and try again. Markus and I both feel that providing students an opportunity to fail in a safe environment is essential to the learning process.
Formative is a multifaceted tool. You can use it for assessing student pre-work, supplement interactive lecturing, collect class exit ticket data, enhance reflection activities or simply reinforce class concepts outside of class. Formative gives students the chance to demonstrate their understanding of concepts through closed-ended questions (Multiple Choice or True False) or open-ended questions with written and/or show your work responses.
As an instructor or program assessment coordinator, you can use the data collected with Formative to improve course delivery immediately or over a period of time. Formative eliminates the guesswork involved in traditional methods of teaching. It provides real-time feedback to both the student and the instructor.
The basic version of Formative is free and works quite well for a single instructor. When upgrading to the premium version, you will receive several other features such as cheating detection, enhanced questions with audio, auto-grading, class lock, emoji feedback, randomized questions, and results, answer images, printing for non-tech environments, student to instructor feedback, unlimited progress tracking, unlimited PDF/Word Document uploads, unlimited report exports, default points, customized assignment options, batch scoring and feedback as well as the ability to add answers while grading.
Student access to Formative is also easy. Students can join your Formative class with a class code or URL. For schools that use Clever or Google Classroom, Formative integrates easily with these applications.
Formative has a few different ways to monitor student progress, including real-time formative feedback or a student growth tracker. If you want to add learning scaffolding to your course, Formative allows you to provide as many or as few resources as desired. For instance, when a concept is introduced, you may want to provide students with more supporting resources. However, as concepts and students evolve, you may decide to use fewer supporting resources and let students work and think more on their own. Formative is ideal for course or program assessment as it allows you to track by standards or learning outcomes.
To learn more about Formative, go to https://community.goformative.com/videos to view any of the free tutorial videos or you can go to https://goformative.com/ to set up your free account!
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