When starting the pdp program I didn’t fully understand the difference between summative and formative assessment. Finally I understand formative assessment is monitoring student progress and small assignments to allow students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and recognize where they struggle and work on that. Summative assessment it more what I experience throughout my degree which are test, midterms, and final exams. Their to evaluate a students learning at the end of a unit/term and compare it against a standard. I really think chemistry needs to include more formative assessment so students can understand what their weaknesses and strengths are so they can focus on making their weaknesses stronger. As a student I didn’t know how to study until my last year of my degree. I understood that it needed to happen and I put in work but I didn’t know how to optimize it for myself which is something I think students need to learn.
Online learning has been an interesting experience. I believe it can be helpful but flipped learning or blended learning would be better but unfortunately there are circumstances preventing us from being able to do this. One thing I observed in my Wednesday observations is the chemistry teacher is he did a vodcast of each lesson so students had the opportunity to learn the lesson before coming to class and they also had the lesson in case they missed a class which I think is an amazing idea! I also think the idea of open-textbooks would be an amazing thing for high school students to have access to so they can have an understanding of how it works before going to university.
photo taken from unsplash by Chris Liverani
