The Ultimate Guide to Formative Assessment Tools

Finding the right formative assessment tool is no easy task. Where should you start looking? What questions should you be asking? And what impact should you be expecting from using formative assessment tools?

This first-of-a-kind buyers’ guide will provide a route map to analyse the different formative assessment solutions available, and provide a systematic process for identifying the right solution for your school’s context.

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What Is Formative Assessment?

Formative Assessment, also known as ‘Assessment for Learning’, is an ongoing evaluation of student learning and understanding through continuously employed formal and informal procedures. It allows educators to pinpoint specific knowledge gaps in course content and explore alternative teaching approaches that better support student attainment and development.

Fundamentally, formative assessment continuously approaches three vital questions:

1. Are students effectively learning the content?
2. Are students progressing in their learning journey?
3. Based on subjective, in-the-moment insights, how can teaching methods be adapted in order to improve both the student learning experience and outcomes specific to certain knowledge gaps?

In contrast, Summative Assessment, or ‘Assessment of Learning’, focuses on a final measurement of study mastery at the end of a specific period.

What is the Purpose of Formative Assessment?

A formative assessment strategy is an ongoing evaluation. It doesn’t intend to formulate an overall judgement of a student; it seeks to glean in the moment insights. This relates to spotting learning gaps and misconceptions that can sharpen student focus and inform teaching adjustments.

Meanwhile, a summative assessment strategy is a reflective evaluation. It seeks not to spot gaps and misconceptions, but to reflect on students’ mastery and information retention based on overall performance within a larger topic of study.

To suitably pinpoint the areas of an effective assessment strategy, we have broken down the process into 7 distinct stages:

1. Teaching and learning: Students are taught by the teacher
2. Assessment design: Questions are created to test the students
3. Administer assessment: Students are provided with questions and complete the assessment
4. Mark assessment: The students’ returned assessments are marked
5. Student feedback: Feedback is provided to the students, from simply providing a grade through to more contextual performance feedback
6. Data capture & storage: Students’ scores are stored in order to track progress over time
7. Performance analysed: Students’ scores are analysed to spot gaps in knowledge, predict future performance, and refine learning content

“Assessment solutions are transforming the way we teach and learn, shifting the focus from simply grading to understanding and improving how students learn.” – Haldor Homework

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What are Formative Assessment Tools

With EdTech, schools can augment and build upon their existing assessment strategy.

In the table below, we have contrasted the traditional, unassisted approach with an effectively embedded formative assessment strategy that employs an EdTech approach. Broken down into each stage of the process, you will see the exciting and innovative opportunities EdTech provides:

One of the most powerful opportunities presented by EdTech is its ability to automate repetitive, time-intensive tasks. The opportunity for teachers in this area is to have EdTech automate the admin and paperwork aspects of formative assessment, freeing up time that can be used to increase contact time or feedback frequency with students.

In terms of the range of help available to schools, there is enormous breadth among assessment EdTech solutions. Some use machine learning and AI to intelligently serve students with the right level of content next in their learning journey; other formative assessment tools focus primarily on reporting student progress. Some can be applied to all curriculum areas, while others have been built for a specific subject.

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Why Formative Assessment is Important

Benefits of Formative Assessment Tools

Student Performance Ownership

When goals and objectives are made appropriately clear to students, their ability to take ownership over their learning is significantly boosted. 

Formative assessments help deliver that. They are timely, facilitating the instant identification of strengths and weaknesses, and repeatable, supporting consistent targeted support of problem areas.

This feedback immediacy and repetition allows learning to become self-regulatory, where students manage their own education and become more proactive regarding personal outcomes.

Tailored Instruction and Testing

Through progress monitoring, formative assessment tools allow educators to identify knowledge gaps and areas of weakness as early as possible.

Based on these insights, teachers or technology systems can make continuous in-the-moment adjustments that are geared towards students’ specific needs.

This facilitates a personalised student learning experience, whereby schools are attuned to the content focus, method, and difficulty most appropriate for each individual student.

“Every teacher needs a detailed understanding of each student’s learning gaps to teach effectively, yet it’s impossible to retain all this information. A professional tracking solution, in a couple of clicks, will tell you exactly what the gaps are for any child, group, class, year, or subject, as well as how that compares to school expectations and peers.” – Learning Ladders

Risk-Free Environment

To be an effective ‘Assessment for Learning’, formative assessments ought to guide and improve students’ learning, not administer an overall judgement.

Therefore, as low stake methods of testing, formative assessment tools are perfect for cultivating a relaxed learning environment where progression, experimentation, and feedback assume precedence. 

These relaxed conditions allow students to refine their skills, grow in confidence, and reflect on their learning before participating in a high stakes summative assessment.

Learner Engagement

The flexibility in which formative assessment tools can test students makes them extremely useful in their own right. However, when paired with monitoring and reporting capabilities – either from the same platform or EdTech solution – they can be transformative. 

Unsure what your students’ interests are? The administrative insights from a Classroom Management system can help educators unearth extracurricular and co-curricular hobbies and activities that their learners like to take part in. This allows assessments to be specifically designed around students’ interests.

Find your students are better engaged and more effectively retain information when active learners? Designing interactive, game-based, or collaborative assessments may well be key, and many assessment platforms feature leaderboards and other gamification elements for inviting light-hearted competition among learners. 

If you feel like a more personal involvement is required, the use of formal tracking tools lays the foundation for employing reward systems. So, to provide a motivational base for learning, consider administering prizes to your most active, most improved, or highest scoring learners.

Ultimately, formative assessments can be built around student interest and needs. This encourages teachers to design their lessons with greater variety – a sure-fire way to induce genuine interest and engagement among students.

The Impact of Formative Assessment Tools

EdTech offers plenty of opportunities to improve traditional approaches to formative assessment in education – but what short and long-term impact should you expect? And what evidence is available to back up vendor’s ambitious claims?

EdTech Impact requires every EdTech vendor, upon registering, to select from a predefined list of education-driven ‘impact metrics’. Customers then ‘score’ each metric alongside written feedback that they submit through independent EdTech Impact surveys.

This gives you, the school buyer, a clearer understanding of what impact the vendor expects you to receive, alongside how they are actually performing in the real world based on qualitative and quantitative feedback from their customers.

There have been 569 reviews submitted across 27 school assessment platforms that are listed on EdTech Impact. This is what teachers had to say about them, based on the aggregated impact metrics:

“Research shows that students learn more and in a more effective way when they receive regular, formative feedback.” – Haldor Homework

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Looking beyond the numbers, here are some qualitative snippets that highlight the perceived impact of the formative assessment tools found on our marketplace:

“I feel for the first time in control of the data”

“Teachers get an instantaneous overview of students’ progress and attainment”

“Completely revolutionised our revision strategy, helping us gain above national average 3 years in a row”

It is important to note, however, that EdTech Impact’s reviews have been collected from active teachers around the world – each of which will have used the solution for varying lengths of time, and within wildly different contexts.

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If you have the time, we recommend you record your own observations and then compare with other schools like yours. The longer you can do this for, the better. An ideal time would be during an extended trial period (many vendors will allow this if you are willing to share your feedback with them). 

If you are really short on time, then make these 3 observations your priority:

1. Does the solution support and stretch pupils of all levels? 
2. Does the solution tell me more than I knew before about a particular group of students?
3. Does using the system improve my teaching?

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Comparing Formative Assessment Tools And Software Features

There are a lot of EdTech solutions already on the market, each with their own nuances. It’s often only when you start investing time into using them that you get to understand the exact feature list available.

To save you that time, here’s a handy list of formative assessment-specific questions to ask vendors directly:

• Does the platform allow me to define my own questions? Some systems, particularly those that aim to teach a particular area within a subject, will have predefined questions relating to their core area without an option to create any specific ones.
  
• Are the questions within the platform appropriate for my students? Where there are predefined questions, teachers need to judge their appropriateness for their particular students and think about the outlier students — the very low attaining or high attaining, and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).
  
  Teachers may also want to consider the vocabulary used, as well as the complexity of the questions.
  
• Does the platform support all the different types of questions you want to ask your students? Some systems only allow multiple choice questions with one correct answer, while others support a wider range of questions with more than one right answer or the ability to incorporate short free text questions or to include essay questions.
  
• Does the platform give feedback to my students in a way that is appropriate — and can they make use of that feedback? Does the feedback use words that my students will understand? If the feedback is in the form of a mark, does that match with the way my students are normally given feedback?
  
• Can I easily get an overview of individual students and groups of students’ attainment and progress from this platform? Is there a teacher dashboard that I can use to see my students’ progress and attainment? Can I share it with colleagues?
  
• Will this help me know what to teach next? Does the system provide me with enough information to determine what I should do next with my students?

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Choosing The Right Formative Assessment Solution

Moving beyond features and benefits, the final stage in your research is to double-check the solution fits within your school’s wider digital strategy. This can often be the achilles heel for many EdTech projects, so we want to avoid your solution joining the ever-growing “virtual cupboard of shame” that we so often hear about!

To maximise your chances of success first time around, here is a list of considerations that will help you build a robust business case for all stakeholders involved (and can be applied to almost any EdTech project):

• Setting a clear vision. What are the expectations for this project in terms of scale of rollout and expected impact? Are you going to undertake a pilot or phased rollout? How long before you expect to see impact from the new solution, and what impact do you expect to see?
• Stakeholder engagement. Are all teachers and/or departments onboard with going forward with the project? Have they had an ability to voice any concerns or offer alternatives (which may already be in use). Have you undertaken any curriculum ‘suitability’ review or similar?
• Implementation plan. How will the solution be implemented, how long will it take and who is responsible for each stage? How will teachers be trained? Do you have enough internal resources to easily roll the solution out, or will it fall on a senior leader who already has a full schedule?
• Interoperability. Does this system need to interface with other information systems in your school? Can you easily import data such as your class list, a set of parent emails, and your report-writing software? Does it integrate with Google or Microsoft?
• Data security. Does it allow for single sign-on? Is the data stored in the system safe? Does it comply with GDPR? Do you have any safeguarding concerns around the use of the system? Who is the data controller – you, the school, the vendor? If it’s the vendor, why is that?
• Accessibility. Is the system accessible to all students and staff? Can you change features in order to support students with additional educational needs?
• Skills gaps. Do colleagues have the IT skills needed to use this system? Do students have the IT skills needed to use this system? Do parents?
• Impact evidence. How robust is the evidence base behind the platform’s effectiveness? Does the vendor have evidence of their solution being used in a school like yours? Can I trial the platform with a small group before purchasing in order to collect my own evidence?
• End of contract process. Can they help you export your data if you want to change to a new solution at the end of the contract? Can you keep access to the system for 30 days after the end of the contract to give time to migrate your data? 

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The Best Formative Assessment Tools, according to EdTech Impact Users

	Socrative A library of easily creatable assessments that can be distributed on-the-fly to quickly engage learners and assess their topic understanding.
	Alps Simple, easy to use, and effective KS4 and KS5 performance analysis and tracking platform for reviewing student, departmental, school, and MAT performance.
	SAM Learning An online learning platform which harnesses AI to provide ready-made learning activities and weekly challenges that plug student learning gaps and reduce teacher workload.
	Educake An online assessment and revision platform that administers specification-matched tests and creates topic suggestions and revision questions tailored to students’ needs.
	GCSEPod A wide range of audio-visual content that is paired with a formative assessment products, making it easier for students to grasp complex ideas and improve their exam performance.
	Learning Ladders An all-in-one assessment tracking platform for performance monitoring and analysis, online learning journaling, and parent communication.
	Pupil Progress A subject, exam board, and qualification specific tracking system that does everything for you: individual pupil reports, subject lead summary reports, and live classroom data.
	MyET-MyCT-MyJT An online speaking training platform that delivers 70,000+ conversations containing 800,000+ practical phrases and sentences. Courses are designed for all learners.
	Mirodo Administers easy-to-use formative and summative assessments across KS2 and delivers feedback to the teacher and student with suggestions on where to go next with their learning.
	iPEP A fully interactive PE platform for early years, KS1, and KS2. Through a no-nonsense approach to assessing, reporting, lesson planning, and class management, schools can slash admin time.

Final Advice And Next Steps

There are many formative assessment tools on the market offering a wide range of features. This buyers’ guide, combined with EdTech Impact’s reviews and product data, will help save you time and money by effectively navigating the EdTech marketplace, and provide you with a list of laser questions to reveal the right tool for the job.

Remember, stay organised as you compare solutions by making notes and scoring each solution in a spreadsheet. Good luck!