This week has flown by in a flurry of exploration - signing up for a new account, clicking frantically around menus, creating some sort of content, and starting all over again with another tool, while navigating interfaces of varying degrees of user-friendliness. Like some others have mentioned, there were so many tools on the list that I had never heard of, and I felt (again) like I am in over my head.
Since one of my goals this term is to become more familiar with different tools available for online assessment, I chose to stay in the assessment category, among the plethora of tools suggested. I currently use Microsoft Forms, OneNote, and have been experimenting with Crowdmark, but I had never heard of Formative! Have I been living under a rock? Thanks to Jocelyn's excellent post, I found the courage to create one more new free teacher account. Upon first inspection, Formative feels a bit like Microsoft Forms with a few additional features. The element that first drew me in was the option for "Show Your Work" questions. This is perfect for checking understanding in math, explaining reasoning, and gives a glimpse of students' thought processes, which allows for richer feedback. Here is a quick run through of what I was able to accomplish during my trial and error session on Formative:
Jocelyn has an extensive list of pros and cons of Formative, which I would mostly agree with. Make sure to read her post on how she used it in a non-classroom setting - very versatile!
A huge pro that I found with this tool is the content library of assessments created by other users. These can be utilized directly or copied and tailored to your needs. Having options to use as models or even just as inspiration can be time-savers. They might also come in handy in an emergency sub-planning situation. Another pro I found: In a math context, it is important that the notation in questions and answers is accurate and clear, as Curtis N mentioned in his blogpost reviewing Edpuzzle. Formative has a full mathematic notation keyboard available for question fields! Score! Downside - as far as I can see, it is not available in the answer fields. From the student view, I think these assessments look and feel more engaging and interesting than quizzes I have made using Microsoft. The whiteboard-style "Show Your Work" questions are seamlessly integrated into the assessment and don't require any additional steps. Like Jocelyn, I was also disappointed that the "Allow partial match" answer option for rapid feedback is only available in the premium version. For example, if a student misspells a word in their short answer, it is graded as incorrect. This could be discouraging for some students.
At this point, I am not sure I have made any true evaluation statement about this product. I have an idea of what it can do, I have created a few questions and played with options, but I'm still undecided about whether or not it would be the right fit for me. I truly appreciated Jennifer's post this week, which reminded me to establish criteria when evaluating and making a decision. These are my personal adaptated criteria to help me decide if Formative (or any other tool) is worth pursuing in my context:
I would like to test out the user-friendliness factor from my students' perspective, find out more about the scoring and grading options, and see what kind of data analysis can be done once students in a class have completed several assessments. For the short term, I do expect to seriously explore Formative more and perhaps use it to relpace some of my Microsoft quizzes in order to fully understand its uses and limitations.
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Heidi, I love how you incorporated Jennifer's ideas into your evaluation criteria. I think so often we pressure ourselves to always being evolving and implementing new things into our classrooms, and sometimes we forget about the different between actually using a tool to enhance learning rather than just throwing it in to say that we are using something different. I do think that time is very important, as well as students being able to use the tool effectively (especially during COVID times when our students can't freely move around the classroom to help each other in a face-to-face format).
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2/9/2021 10:20:03 am
Formative is a great tool. I used it when I grade 5/6. I love tools that have premade options to make planning easier, especially when it’s for a sub. Tough when there are so few things made for French education. I only ever used the free account. Since I use Seesaw so much now and Google or Microsoft forms I haven’t used formative for a while. I find that with Seesaw for schools and before that an Ambassador Seesaw along with Google or Microsoft Teams I have most of the same tools as Formative.
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A note from Heidi:I adore teaching and learning, irl. I'm up for the challenge of designing effective virtual learning spaces for my students! Please follow my uphill journey with educational technology here. Archives |