Formative practice and summative gates

What this lesson covers

1. 01

   Two different jobs

   Formative assessment gives feedback during learning: retries welcome, hints allowed, nothing written on a certificate. Summative assessment decides whether to issue a credential. When every quiz feels high-stakes, learners guess instead of thinking, avoid hints, and stop treating mistakes as information.

2. 02

   Practice screen and gate

   Question | Formative check | Module gate

   Stakes | None. Retry is the point. | Certificate of mastery at 80%.

   Feedback | Immediate, with the reason. | Score and threshold; item rationales after submission.

   How often | Throughout the lessons. | Once, after the actions have been practised.

   Items | Can repeat and vary. | Drawn from a separate pool.

3. 03

   Formative patterns in digital courses

   Try again with feedback: The wrong branch shows the consequence and the reason, then allows a retry.

   Hints before the answer: A first hint names what to look at, a second narrows it, the answer comes last.

   Confidence rating: Learners say how sure they are before seeing feedback. Confident errors get the most attention.

4. 04

   Feedback can make things worse

   Kluger and DeNisi's 1996 meta-analysis found that in roughly a third of the comparisons, feedback interventions lowered performance. Feedback that points attention to the self ("you are not good at this") or to comparison with others tends to harm; feedback about the task and how to improve tends to help. Shute's 2008 review adds practical rules: be specific, explain why, keep it short enough to read, and for novices give it immediately. Write feedback as carefully as the question.

5. 05

   Rewrite three feedback messages

   Find three feedback messages in a course your organisation uses. Rewrite each to name the consequence and the rule. Add them to your module artifact.