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Educational Measurement and Evaluation Dinesh Kumar, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 31 : Formative and Summative Evaluation

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
31.1 Formative Evaluation
31.2 Summative Evaluation
31.3 Summary
31.4 Keywords
31.5 Review Questions
31.6 Further Readings

Objectives

The objectives of this unit can be summarised as below :
• To discuss about the Formative Evaluation
• To describe about the Summative Evaluation

Introduction

Formative assessment is designed to assist the learning process by providing feedback to the
learner, which can be used to highlight areas for further study and hence improve future
performance. Self and diagnostic assessment are types of formative assessment with specific
purposes. Summative assessment is for progression and/or external purposes, given at the end of
a course and designed to judge the students’ overall performance.
Formative evaluation can serve an important developmental or capacity-building purpose, for
the organisation as a whole and for individual members, where it is seen as a form of
organisational learning.
Formative evaluation is time and labour intensive in comparison to most forms of summative
evaluation. It relies primarily on qualitative methods that are heavy in their use of time and
evaluation expertise, both at the data gathering stage as well as in analysis. Depending on the
audience for the formative evaluation findings, the reliance on qualitative methods may fail to
meet the expectations of some stakeholders for robust quantitative measures of progress.

31.1 Formative Evaluation

Formative evaluation seeks to strengthen or improve a programme or intervention by examining,
amongst other things, the delivery of the programmer, the quality of its implementation and the
organisational context, personnel, structures and procedures. As a change oriented evaluation
approach, it is especially attuned to assessing in an ongoing way, any discrepancies between the
expected direction and outputs of the programme and what is happening in reality, to analysing
strengths and weaknesses, to uncovering obstacles, barriers or unexpected opportunities, and to
generating understandings about how the programme could be implemented better. Formative
evaluation is responsive to the dynamic context of a programme.
Formative evaluation pays special attention to the delivery and intervention system, but not
exclusively. In formative evaluation, the evaluator also has to analyse the intervention logic, the
outcomes, the results and impacts.

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