what is summative essay

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How to Write a Summative Essay – Guide with Example

Published by Jamie Walker at March 18th, 2022 , Revised On October 9, 2023

Summative essays are formal assessments or tests developed to compare and evaluate students and assess their aptitude as compared to other students. Summative essays are used to test the results of learning and knowledge over time and are usually criterion-referenced.

A summative essay is a comprehensive piece of writing and will need quite a lot of class time to revise, complete, instruct, edit and draft. This is not a type of assignment that can be revised or improved by students after grading.

The complexity and length of the summative essay will vary depending upon the academic level of the students. Students must comprehend the style and purpose of the assignment to write an effective summative essay.

The summative essay is usually longer than 5 pages. One page comprises of introduction and the rest of the pages have arguments that support the topic. Like other essay types , it ends with a conclusion and a list of references.

Also read: How to write an academic essay

Types of Summative Writing

Different types of summative writing have unique requirements which must be carefully checked for comprehension before starting the summative assessment. Adequate time must be allocated for clearly comprehending the requirements of the summative writing, drafting, reading, editing, and revising before submitting it for checking or grading.

Here are the six key main types of summative essays

Information/Explanatory

This type of writing is a common choice in most social science curriculums. It is mainly the collection of the main points, key ideas, and domain-specific theocratic ideas taught inside of the unit plan.

Even though the opinions and persuasive arguments are sometimes used interchangeably, they are different from each other. An opinion simply requires you to state your thinking and back it up with facts and logic. Students in this type of writing are expected to show steady improvement throughout their degree programme, so their teachers could evaluate them for grading. Opinion writing is introduced to students in the 5th grade.

Argumentative

Argumentative type of writing needs the establishment and development of a claim made by the student in the introduction which is supported by the details containing resources and information in the main essay body . On the other hand, the opposing claim is used to present the exact opposite and contrasting point of view with supporting evidence.

Also read: How to write an argumentative essay

Compare & Contrast

This type of comparison writing attributes itself to the themes and backgrounds that have various aspects to them including individual personalities and specific geographic locations. The compare and contrast summative essays must be comprised of a set of attributes and qualities that the student can compare and contrast using text and research evidence. They do not ask the writer to prioritize one choice on the other, however, they do requires the writer to demonstrate comprehension of both and make a comparison.

The evaluative type of summative writing asks the writer to take a particular element, idea, or individual discussed during the unit and evaluate it using particular criteria. Students should take a stance on the theme and support it with text evidence and unit materials.

Theorising is a form of writing that gives answers to questions such as “What if?”. A theory is put forth on a particular theme that reflects reality or contrast to reality. The writer is expected to take an event, era or an individual.

Elements of a Good Summative Essay

If you want to write an effective summative essay, the following are the elements that you should consider:

Reliability: The writing delivers alike results throughout settings of classrooms, daily conditions and student groups.

Validity: The writing appropriately reflects what has been taught to students in the period of instruction.

Authenticity: The writing reflects a variety of skills related to the real world that are appropriate outside of the context of the classroom.

Variety: The essay reflects the usage of different words and views. Make sure to use different words and views to bring variety into the essay.

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Tips to Write an Effective Summative Essay

Here are some of the tips while writing a summative essay:

• Look for authentic academic material that is relevant to your essay topic
• Develop an outline before writing an essay.
• Make sure the essay is organised in the form of good paragraphs.
• Before starting the essay, make sure that you have some knowledge about the topic. Do some reading regarding the topic, before initiating the writing.
• Lastly, proofread the essay to avoid grammatical errors

Writing a good introduction: For a good start begin your essay with an introduction . It should briefly provide the general ideas presented in the original text. The introduction should involve the author’s name, some contextual information about the author and work title. While in the paragraphs of the main body write the ideas that you have chosen while reading.

Use the rubric: Rubrics aid in setting a certain standard for the performance of a class on an assignment or test. They outline the key requirements and criteria you will be evaluated against.

Relevant to real-world: When writing a summative essay make sure that you are making it relevant to the real world.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to write a summative essay.

To write a summative essay, start with a clear thesis statement, organize your points logically, support with evidence, and conclude by summarizing key ideas. Edit and proofread for clarity and coherence. Follow the required format and citation style for a polished final draft.

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How to Write a Summative Essay

Published by Boni on November 3, 2022 November 3, 2022

Have you ever been asked to write an essay about a book, movie, article, speech, or other reading material? Perhaps your teacher gave you a prompt and asked you to respond to it in an essay. If so, that was most likely a summative essay. A summative report is a short piece of writing about someone else’s work. It explains the main ideas of the reading material and evaluates them. Such essays are often assigned to test your ability to understand what you read and articulate your thoughts. This post will explore valuable tips for writing a successful summative essay.

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What is a Summative Essay?

A summative essay is an academic paper that requires students to evaluate and synthesize information learned over a unit or semester. It summarizes, describes and evaluates the main ideas of the reading material. A summative essay can be written about almost any topic. It can be based on a book, a speech, an article, or other reading material. To report a good summary essay, you must read the material carefully, take notes, and think about what the author is trying to say.

Then, you should organize your notes and use them to write a summary. A summative essay is not the same as a book review. While both summarize reading material, book reviews focus on quality. They give an evaluation of the book based on a set of criteria.

Types of Summative Writing

There are different types of summative writing a student can handle. Understand that every style is unique and has other requirements. That means you must understand the summative writing asked before handling it. Allocate adequate time to the essays since you have to read, draft, edit and revise the paper before submitting.

Below are the main types of summative writing:

Persuasive and opinions arguments may be used interchangeably. However, you should understand that they are pretty different. In an opinion essay, you have to state your ideology and then back up your side of the story with logic and facts. In this type of summative writing, students should show some improvement throughout their studies for evaluation from the teachers. This type of summative writing is given to students in 5th grade who must write a persuasive speech based on their opinion.

2. Explanatory

This summative essay is quite common in social science curriculums. Here the students focus on the unit plan’s key ideas, main points and domain-specific ideas such as a reaction paper .

3. Argumentative

The argumentative summative essay requires developing and establishing a claim the student makes during the introduction. The claim has to be supported by details such as information and resources in the essay’s body. There should also be an opposing claim where the student should state the contrasting point of view and add supporting evidence.

4. Evaluative

In this summative essay, the writer is supposed to take a given idea, element or individual in the curriculum and evaluate them in a specific criterion. Here students have to have their theme and stand by it using unit materials and text evidence. A good example is a cause and effects essay .

5. Compare & contrast

This essay has diverse attributes to the backgrounds and themes, such as specific geographic locations or individual personalities. These essays comprise a set of qualities and characteristics that students should compare and contrast using research evidence.

These summative essays do not require the student to pick a side. However, they are asked to cover both sides in comprehension and compare them thoroughly.

6. Theorizing

These essays will answer critical “what if” questions. The student is given a theory that contrasts or reflects the society today. The writer should take an individual, era or event to work on.

Elements of a Good Summative Essay

An effective summative essay ought to have the following crucial elements:

• Validity – the report should reflect what the students have learned during the term or semester.
• Reliability – the writing should deliver similar results throughout daily conditions, settings of classrooms and student groups.
• Authenticity – the summative essay should reflect the skills in the real world outside the classroom context.
• Variety – this essay should reflect the usage of different views and words to make the diverse.

Here is a summary essay with a response on how to tame a Wild Tongue that you might be interested in reading.

Format of Summative Essays

The summative essay formats are almost similar to any essay you have written. These essays will typically follow the standard format for writing an essay. An effective summative report must include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

• Introduction

The introduction should be clear, interesting, and engaging. It should also be written so that a reader who has never read the material can understand what it is about. A good introduction gives the reader a preview of what you will discuss in the rest of the essay. It hooks the reader and makes them want to read more.

The body is where you discuss the reading material and support your argument with evidence. The body should be well-organized. You can use various strategies to organize your essay, including a chronological order, a compare-and-contrast order, or a topical order.

The conclusion is the final part of the summative essay. The conclusion should restate your main point, summarize the paper, and bring the reader back to the introduction.

A standard essay is usually between five and ten double-spaced pages long. The introduction should be between one and three paragraphs long. The body of the paper should be between two and five paragraphs long. The conclusion should be one paragraph long.

Tips on How to Write a Good Summative Essay

Before writing a summative essay, you should read the reading material carefully. Remember to highlight or take notes while reading so you don’t forget important points. Here are some of the tips to keep in mind when writing this essay:

• Create an outline before you begin writing the essay
• Get authentic academic material and only use that for the essay
• Organize your paper in paragraphs
• Gather more information and knowledge on the topic of discussion
• Proofread the article before submitting it to ensure everything is okay, and there are no grammatical errors
• Curate a superb introduction – your introduction should be catchy and precise. It should invite your readers to keep reading.
• Relevant essay – as you create your summative report, ensure it is relevant and meaningful to the real world. A typical person should resonate with your paper.

A summative essay explains the main ideas of the reading material and evaluates them. To write an excellent summarizing essay, you must read the reading material carefully and take notes. You should also clearly understand the reading material and write your essay based on the material, not your opinion.

Need Help Writing Your Summative Essay?

Writing an summative essay is difficult, especially if you don’t have much experience writing such essays. Even if you read the material carefully and take notes while reading, summarizing it right in your own words may not be straightforward. Supporting your thesis statement with evidence from the reading material can be even more challenging. If you are having trouble writing a summative essay, you could seek professional speech writing help .

Most students do not have enough time to complete their essays, and that is where the speech writing help comes in. These services are efficient since they use professional writers and tools to produce high-quality papers. You could talk to us at Gudwriter, and we will help you with the summative report.

Explore the best tips on how to write an explication essay .

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Writing a Summative Essay - A Guide with Tips and Examples

Summative essays are among the most common ones academic tutors and lecturers use to assess their students' analytical and learning abilities. This type of essay is normally used to examine the students’ comprehension and knowledge of certain concepts or course material. And just like other essays, summative essays have three main sections: the introduction, body, and conclusion.

Summative assessments synthesize students’ understanding and learning of specific academic content and are often administered at the end of an academic year or term. These assessments usually establish the overall comprehension and proficiency of the evaluated topic.

This, however, leaves a lot of students uncertain of where to begin and what to do. But do not fuss! You do not need to panic; this comprehensive guide will break down everything you need about summative essays.  That said, keep on scrolling to find out more.

What is a Summative Essay?

Summative essays require students to assess and synthesize the information learned and knowledge gained over a semester or a particular unit.

A summative essay is often written at the conclusion of a semester or unit, permitting learners to display the knowledge gained over that duration.

To write an excellent summative essay, you should be able to identify the most important points from your coursework and arrange them into a rational argument.

Note that summative essays often assume the form of argumentative essays, whereby you should take a position on the issue being discussed and then support these claims using relevant proof.

Nonetheless, summative essays can also assume other forms like explanatory essays, personal narratives, and compare-and-contrast essays. No matter what form they assume, summative essays offer great opportunities for students to ponder on their learning and display their comprehension of the course material.

Remember that the length and complexity of a summative essay depend on the student’s academic level. The students must have a great understanding of the style and aim of the assessment to come up with an effective summative essay.

Types of Summative Essays

There are different types of summative essays. Below are the main types of summative essays.

Explanatory/ Information

This is the most common type in social science programs. It primarily collects key ideas, main arguments, and domain-specific hypothetical ideas taught within the unit plan.

Opinion essays require students to state their thinking and then support it with logic and facts.

The evaluative kind of summative writing usually requires you to take a specific idea or element discussed during the unit and evaluate or assess it using a particular criterion. For such essays, you should take a stance on the chosen theme and back it with unit materials and textual evidence.

Argumentative

This kind of writing requires establishing and developing a claim made in the introduction of the essay, and reputable resources should support this claim in the essay’s main body. Conversely, the opposing claim illustrates the opposing point of view with relevant supporting proof.

Theorizing is a type of writing that answers questions like “what if? “Here, a theory is presented on a certain theme that depicts or contrasts with reality.

Compare and Contrast

Compare and contrast summative essays comprise qualities and attributes the student could compare and contrast using text and research evidence. They do not require the student to prioritize one choice over another, and it, however, does require you to display an understanding of both and then make a comparison.

Structure of a Summative Essay

A summative essay takes shape and structure of the typical academic essay with an introduction, body paragraphs, and concluding paragraphs.

The Introduction

The introduction is among the most critical parts of the paper, given that it offers a brief overview of its topic and main argument. It should immediately grab the reader's attention and give them a general feel of the remainder of the paper. And if you struggle to develop a good introduction for your essay, try using an anecdote or hook to engage the reader from the word go. The thesis statement , where necessary, is also included here.

The Main Body Paragraphs

For this section, it is vital to concentrate on key points and provide proof to support your thesis. Every paragraph should focus on an individual point. In addition, each paragraph should conclude in a sentence that links it back to the thesis.

By concentrating on different key arguments and providing relevant proof to support your thesis, you can effectively convey your position to the reader. Also, concluding all your body paragraphs with a sentence that links back to your thesis will remind your reader of your essay’s overall argument.

Related Reading: Parts of a body paragraph .

The Conclusion

The conclusion of a summative essay briefly summarizes the main points and clarifies how they support the overall argument. Additionally, the conclusion should offer the reader a sense of closure by answering any pending queries or concerns that might have surfaced in the essay.

A brief and precise summary of your essay’s main points ensures your reader completely comprehends your standpoint. In addition, tackling lingering concerns or questions gives your essay a sense of conclusiveness. All in all, the aim of your essay conclusion should be to provide your readers with a proper understanding of your argument.

Steps for Writing a Summative Essay

Here is a simple step-by-step guide on how to write an excellent summative essay.

Step one: Know your essay topic

Though this appears to be the most straightforward process, many people often disregard it. Many writers look at different topics and then pick one because it seems to be the simplest or has found enough content.

Having some level of understanding for your lecturer’s or tutor’s opinion is vital here. What do they expect and want from you? This is an important step in producing relevant content for your summative essay. If you are somewhat confused about the topic, you can discuss it with your professor or colleagues.

Step two: Conduct research for the relevant content

Now that you clearly understand your summative essay’s topic, you can go through your lecture notes or any available academic sources. Skim over the most important points. You can even refresh your brain with your course syllabus or study material.

And if you are lucky enough to have attended a workshop, seminar, or training course on the chosen topic, you’ll have ample knowledge to put down.

Step three: Prepare an Outline

While going through relevant material, you can divide the literature into small paragraphs, giving you a quick overview of the literature. Most importantly, when skimming through the material, have the essay topic at the back of your head to note any valuable and relevant information.

Take note of any critical points that you feel may support your essay. Make sure you re-read all paragraphs and highlight all vital points. Mark those areas that you will want to refer to in your essay and those points you do not wish to include.

Step four: Come Up With A Thesis Statement for Your Essay

A thesis statement is simply a brief statement that recaps your essay’s main argument. Your thesis statement should be brief and precise. It should also be specific enough that it is easily supportable by evidence from your research.

Step five: Write the Introduction

Your essay’s introduction should quickly introduce the reader to your essay’s main points. Also, remember to keep the intro short, not more than seven sentences. The thesis statement should be the final remark of your introduction.

The best sentence starters for summative essays include present tense verbs that adopt an active voice. For instance, “the aim of this essay is to” or “this paper will argue that.” You develop an engaging and livelier writing style by opening your sentences using an active voice and in the present tense.

Moreover, good sentence openers for summative essays can also incorporate strong statements or rhetorical questions. For example, you can start your summative essay with a question like “What’s the real value of friendship?” or a sentence like “It is the little things in life that matter.” Opening your essay with such attention-capturing sentences ensures that the reader is hooked from the start.

Step six: Write the Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should highlight one main point that should be stated clearly in the first sentence. Use the rest of the paragraph to support the main point with proof from your previous research. Ensure all sources are referenced using the appropriate format (APA, MLA, Harvard).

End each body paragraph with a statement summarizing the main point and supporting your arguments.

Step Seven: Write the Conclusion

Your conclusion should briefly summarize the main points of your essay and have a strong conclusion sentence that leaves the reader with something to think about after reading your paper. Once again, this should not be too long; five to six sentences are enough.

The Outline Format for a Summative Essay

Below is what a five-paragraph summative essay outline looks like, together with the critical elements that it features:

Paragraph one: Introduction

• Hook sentence (attention grabber).
• Concise background information to give the reader a small preview of what is being discussed in the rest of the essay.
• Thesis statement.

Paragraph two: Body paragraph one

• Topic sentence: The first main idea of your essay clarifies the topic.
• Support proof.
• Analysis of the proof.
• Final remarks and then moving to the next point.

Paragraph three: Body paragraph two

• Topic sentence: It is the essay’s second main idea.
• Supporting proof.

Paragraph four: Body paragraph three

• Topic sentence: It is the essay’s third main point.
• Final remarks.

Paragraph five: Conclusion

• Restate your thesis statement.
• A summary of the entire essay.
• Address unanswered questions or lingering concerns.
• Call to action.

Example Outline for a Summative Essay

Below is an example of an explanatory summative essay outline that discusses how modern technological improvements have transformed human behavior and facilitated progress.

• Improvements in technology have transformed the universe into a global village.
• Background information on the low productivity levels before the improvements in technology.
• Thesis statement: Technological advancement enhanced human learning, thus paving the way for reformation.

Paragraph two: Situation before technological improvements

• Describe the low productivity levels before advancements in technology.
• Discuss how technology has impacted infrastructure, economies, education, and communication.
• Illustrate how this has promoted global change.

Paragraph three: Development and spread of technology

• Discuss the foundation of algebra and how this has helped to transform the technological world today.
• Demonstrate the consequences of this new technology on transport and production.
• Discuss the quick spread of technological advancements.
• Link this information to reformation.

Paragraph four: Impact of technology on reformation

• Discuss how ease of access to information globally has helped individuals.
• Discuss how technology has aided humans during the reformation period.
• Discuss the significant impacts these technological advancements have had on the planet.
• Restate the thesis statement: Technological advancement enhanced human learning, thus paving the way for reformation.
• Provide a summary of the main points in the paper.
• Highlight the value of technological improvements to the world today.

Sample Summative Essay

A compare and contrast summative essay comparing the economic system of Canada and that of the USA.

Both Canada and the USA are capitalist countries with a capitalist economic system. While these two North American countries use the same economic system, there are several differences in their approach to capitalism. Canada’s capitalist economic system is highly regulated compared to the American one. There is more state intervention in Canada to ensure the citizenry has access to crucial services like education and healthcare. In contrast, the USA’s capitalist economic system is more laissez-faire, and the government plays a relatively smaller role in the market.

Both capitalist economic systems have their advantages and disadvantages. Canada's highly regulated economic system ensures that most citizens get high-quality and affordable education and healthcare services from the public. However, the system also tends to lead to greater government bureaucracy. On the other hand, the laissez-faire approach employed by the USA ensures more innovation and private sector investments. Nevertheless, it also leads to increased inequality as it puts more money in the pockets of the rich.

While both economic systems have advantages and disadvantages, Canada's highly-regulated approach to capitalism is better than the American system. This is because it ensures the public enjoys high-quality and affordable essential services.

How to start a summative essay?

Summative essays are short. While they are short, an introduction is still necessary. And the introduction better contains everything you would expect in a typical introduction for it to be considered complete. A typical essay introduction starts with an attention-grabbing statement, followed by background information, and then a thesis statement. Ensure your summative essay introduction has all these things if you want it to be considered complete.

How to end a Summative Essay?

A summative essay ends with a conclusion. The perfect way to write a conclusion for a summative essay is to start with a restatement of the thesis and then provide a summary of the main points. If the essay is too short (less than 250 words), nobody will expect you to dwell on restating the thesis or summarizing the main points. A short concluding sentence will suffice. Nevertheless, you must restate the thesis and the main points for a proper conclusion. You also need to finish a powerful concluding statement that captures what you hope the impact of your research will be.

Tips for writing the best Summative Essay

Follow the tips below to become an expert summative essay writer.

• Brainstorm after reading instructions. After reading the instructions provided by your instructor for your summative essay, you should brainstorm; you should think about what the instructor wants for a couple of minutes. Doing this will help you to settle on a good topic. It will also help you to decide early what you want to do or to prove in your paper. Of course, this will make it easier for you to conduct research.
• Always use an outline. Before you start writing any essay, you should always create an outline. An outline is very important because it gives an essay structure and flow. Writing your summative essay without an outline may miss good structure and flow, resulting in a low or average grade.
• Credible sources only. It is absolutely crucial to use only credible sources in your research. Because if you don’t, you can easily be misled in your essay. Furthermore, you can get an average or low grade. Instructors do not like learners who use non-credible sources such as blogs, random websites, and social media, as they think it is lazy and non-professional. So ensure you strictly use credible sources if you want a high grade on your essay.
• Do not forget to proofread your work. You must proofread your work when you are done. Nobody writes a perfect essay in their first draft. Therefore, it is vital to proofread your work after you finish it. Proofread it to eliminate grammar errors, typos, sentence errors, and so on. Ensuring it is flawless will increase your chances of getting a high grade in your final exams.
• Cite your sources. An essay without cited sources is not a complete essay. You will not get top marks in an essay if you don’t provide in-text citations and reference page references. You are a learner, so when you are asked to write an essay, you are essentially being tested on your ability to find the correct information from experts and analyze it. Do not make the mistake of presenting a paper without references, and you will be penalized.

And with all that, what next?

Summative essays are fun to write, and you have everything you need to know to write a brilliant summative essay. The ball is in your court. If you have an assignment, it is now time to put what you have learned into practice.

If writing a summative essay is still confusing and you have an urgent summative essay, do not worry. Filling out the order form on our homepage signals that you want us to fulfill your “ write my essay ” order a summative essay on any topic. The moment you do so, we will quickly assign your paper to one of our expert writers, and they will produce an excellent quality paper ASAP.

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Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what is the difference between formative and summative assessment, formative assessment.

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative assessments are generally low stakes , which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

• draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
• turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative assessment

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative assessments are often high stakes , which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a senior recital

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

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Writing a Summative Essay in 6 Simple Steps

Published by Ellie Cross at March 21st, 2022 , Revised On January 31, 2024

Writing a summative essay is a common way used by academic tutors to assess students’ learning and analytical abilities. Summative essays are used to evaluate students’ knowledge and understanding of an extensive concept or course content. Like other essay types, it comprises an introduction , main body and a concluding section.

A summative assessment synthesizes students’ learning and understanding of a particular academic source and almost always takes place at the end of term or a complete academic year. Such assessments determine the overall understanding or proficiency of the assessed topic .

However, this leaves many students unsure of what to do or where to begin. But don’t worry! We assume that students do not need to panic as long as we guide them on how to write an excellent summary essay.

Here are six simple steps that can help you compose a first-class summative essay paper.

1۔ Know Your Exact Summative Essay Topic

Even though this seems to be the simplest part of the process, it is often disregarded. Most people look at specific topics and select one because it appears to be the easiest or they have found sufficient material to work on it.

Understanding your professor’s opinion is essential here. What exactly does he expect from you? It is a significant step to produce good content for your summative essay. If you are confused about the topic, discuss it with your professor, friends, or colleagues.

Or our experts can provide a unique topic for your summative essay for free.

2. Search for the Relevant Material

Now that you have a clear picture of the topic of your summative essay, the next thing to do is to start reading the lectures notes or the academic sources available on the topic. Skim over the important points. Refresh your mind with your study material or course syllabus.

If you have ever attended a training course, seminar, or workshop on the topic, you will have a good amount of knowledge to write down as it will help you get a handle on some of the more complicated issues on the topic.

3. Make an Outline

While reading the relevant materials, split the literature into small paragraphs. This way, you can quickly get an overview of the literature. When reading the material, remember the essay topic you are writing so you can extract and note down useful information.

Jot down notes on any argument that you think might support the title of your essay. Then re-read each paragraph , and highlight all crucial points. Mark the areas you want to refer to in your summative essay and the points you do not wish to include.

Read: How to write an essay outline

4. Writing an Introduction

The introduction of your summative essay should briefly explain the main idea of the original paper, and provide the name of the author, the title of the paper, and the basic background information. Try to keep everything precise. As a rule, 250-300 words are sufficient for the introduction. Also, add the thesis statement as you will have to conclude your essay with reference to the thesis statement.

5. Writing the Main Body

Divide the essay into 2-4 themes in the main body, which you can argue and support in detail—elaborate these themes with one or more examples from the original paper. Include only necessary information and avoid irrelevant things.

6. Conclusion

A concluding paragraph is only required if your professor asks for it. Otherwise, it is not necessary.

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Important Points to Consider

• One of the most important points to remember when writing a summative essay is to keep it related to the source.
• Remember that your interpretations of the source may mislead your readers, so the text should be clear enough to give the reader an idea about the original work.
• Proofread your essay and revise it when it is finished. Do not rush to submit the first draft as it is. There is always room for new additions. You may discover a useful quote to include. Read the essay thoroughly. Check for spelling mistakes. Pay special attention to the sentence structure.
• Delete every unnecessary information. Keep your content short and meaningful.
• Ask your friend or colleague to read to see if they can comprehend the main idea of the original source after reading your summative essay.
• Now that you have been introduced to the basic tips and rules for writing a summative essay, its time to give yourself a try to select any interesting topic and write your essay!!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a summative essay.

A summative essay is a type of assessment that evaluates a student’s understanding, knowledge, and skills at the end of a course or academic period. It typically requires students to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge and critical thinking through a formal written essay, which is assessed for its overall quality and achievement of learning outcomes.

What are the 6 steps involve in writing a summative essay?

• Know Your Exact Summative Essay Topic
• Search for the Relevant Material
• Make an Outline
• Writing an Introduction
• Writing the Main Body
• Writing Conclusion

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What is summative assessment? How to further learning with final exams

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Understanding the meaning and function of summative assessment helps clarify its role within education as a critical component of bridging teaching and learning. In this post, we take a closer look at summative assessment’s qualities with the end goal of ensuring that summative assessment supports learning and informs teaching.

Assessment is a term that describes tests, quizzes, exams, and assignments that measure student learning. Each of these methodologies can provide students and teachers with insights. Educators receive data on what students have and have not learned and gain observations into teaching efficacy and exam design. Students, in turn, recognize any learning gaps they might have, and when they receive feedback, understand next steps to further learning.

The most high-stakes type of assessment is called summative assessment. Summative assessment often comes at the endpoint of learning, whether at the end of a unit, course, or curriculum, serving largely as a pure evaluation of knowledge.

It’s easy to consider summative assessments as a final chapter to learning, but summative assessments can also act as a milestone and inform next steps for both educators and students. By examining the definition of summative assessment as well as its capabilities, educators can embrace its strengths, bolster its shortcomings, and foster learning.

Summative assessment is a specific type of assessment that evaluates learning and offers little opportunity for providing student feedback because of its positioning at the end of a learning unit. They are usually high-stakes, contributing to a large portion of a student’s course grade (e.g., final exams) or an exam that has a high impact on a student’s educational outcome. (e.g., standardized exams or entrance exams). Summative assessments include heavily weighted midterm exams, final exams, licensure tests, and standardized exams like A levels in the UK, SATs in the United States, Matriculation Exams in Finland, National Boards in India, or the CSAT in South Korea.

In such a high-stakes context, failing or struggling on summative assessments can negate student effort in other areas of study. On the other hand, summative assessment can be an effective tool to evaluate student knowledge and in the realm of licensure and certification exams, determine qualification for beginning a career.

While we aim to focus discussion on summative assessment, it’s important to describe another type of assessment to provide context; formative assessments not only evaluate learning but provide feedback to students and data to instructors. While formative assessments may or may not be given a grade, they most certainly further learning and occur throughout the course to support student learning needs, and often provide a safe space for failure . Formative assessments include assignments, tests, in-class activities, quizzes, and even midterm exams when they include feedback and opportunities for instructor intervention.

Best practices in formative assessment include providing timely and actionable feedback to students before the next assessment ( Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ).

While formative assessment is the measurement and support of learning as it takes place, summative assessments are evaluations of what a student has learned at the end of a given period (e.g., semester or training course). By assessing students at the end of a module, course, or curriculum, educators gain insight into how well their students have mastered the content and how effective their teaching methods were.

Even though summative assessments are situated at a point where students will find it hard to action results, data from summative assessments can still be used to inform curriculum planning and teaching, as well as any future exam adjustments.

That said, when possible, it’s important to balance formative and summative assessments within a term or curriculum. Fortifying summative assessments with prior formative assessments can support a student’s educational journey. Students who understand what they know and what they need to know in order to move forward are more likely to be prepared for final evaluation. Furthermore, preparing students for final evaluation with frequent opportunities to fail safely and receive feedback reduces stress, increases learning outcomes, and can mitigate academic misconduct .

While every type of assessment has its function to evaluate, every type of assessment, too, can be maximized for learning and teaching. Mid-course exams, for example, have the potential for both summative and formative qualities, serving to evaluate mastery (summative) and provide feedback to promote student learning (formative).

Without feedback, a midterm exam is purely summative. And while a summative component to a mid-course exam is reasonable, there is a lot more potential to them. It is important to provide feedback on mid-course exams so that students understand what they do and do not know and have the tools to bridge learning gaps for the next assessment and ultimately their final exam.

When assessments are provided with timely and actionable feedback, students have the information they need to facilitate their own learning; in this way, even high-stakes midterm exams can pivot towards formative learning opportunities for students. Additionally, summative assessments contain information critical for teacher and curriculum intervention as well as future exam design.

While formative assessments hinge on providing students with immediate feedback to help with the learning process, summative assessments happen after the student learning occurs. However, this doesn’t mean that communicating students’ performance is any less important.

For students to understand what content they have mastered and which topics might need additional study time, they need a detailed breakdown of their performance.

Categorizing summative assessment questions can give instructors the granular performance data they (and their students) need. By tagging exam items to course topics or learning objectives, faculty can provide the detailed feedback students need to be more focused in their study efforts.

Summative assessments are an important part of the assessment process and are incredibly valuable to both students and faculty. By ensuring high-stakes exams are secure, and providing students with performance feedback, educators can gain insight into how well students have learned the content and how well instructors have presented it.

Summative assessments evaluate content mastery. Generally, they are end-of-course or end-of-year exams; however, these are not the only applicable uses of summative assessments. Evaluating student learning could also come at the end of a chapter or learning module with mid-course exams.

Summative exams can also be multi-functional, as they, like all assessments, are rich with data. When item analysis and psychometrics accompany summative assessment, instruction is bolstered. When an assessment occurs at the end of a course or year or curriculum, data insights help educators make adjustments to teaching and curriculum so that future learning can be bolstered. When category-tagging is employed in tools like ExamSoft, educators can pinpoint student preparation for things like licensure exams. And conducting item analysis can inform effective exam design.

Summative assessments are by nature, high-stakes, and very stressful.

Who hasn’t woken from a nightmare in panic about missing or failing a final exam, even decades out from school? The reality that summative assessments can make or break academic success is deeply implanted in our psyche.

While there is little disagreement among educators about the need for or utility of summative assessments, debates and disagreements tend to center on issues of fairness and effectiveness, especially when summative-assessment results are used for high-stakes purposes.

Fair and inclusive assessments uphold accurate assessments. When exams are not fair nor inclusive, they become vulnerable to misconduct, resulting in missed learning opportunities. When exams do not cover what was taught, students may feel stressed and vulnerable. These missed opportunities can compound and widen learning gaps.

Assessments need to contain a variety of formats and question styles to measure different components of learning and include different learning styles. Summative assessments, when poorly designed, reward memorization rather than deep understanding of concepts. Encouraging competition between students, which can happen when grading on a curve, can also increase stress and decrease fairness.

Additionally, when test-takers are not sure how they will be evaluated, summative assessments can be unfair and inaccurate. Providing rubrics to students and graders ensures clarity of expectations and ensuing measurement of learning.

When summative assessments are stressful, do not accurately measure learning, aren’t preceded with learning opportunities beforehand, and/or don’t test what has been taught, they also become more vulnerable to academic misconduct and shortcut solutions like cheating, plagiarism, and AI Writing misuse.

Assessments are a checkpoint for student learning and teaching efficacy; consequently, accurate student responses are critical to increasing learning outcomes.

Most summative assessments are given with the understanding that the student’s score counts toward their final grade. As such, keeping these secure from academic dishonesty is paramount to providing a fair experience for all exam-takers. Though many educational institutions are moving to computer-based testing (CBT), taking exams on laptops or other devices brings a new list of potential security issues, such as access to the internet or other applications during an exam. An effective way to ensure exam integrity is testing software that does not allow use of the internet during an exam and prevents students from accessing other applications on their device.

Preventing academic dishonesty by blocking exam-takers’ information sources isn’t the only point to consider; ensuring students don’t share assessment items is also a concern. Once a test question is compromised, it’s no longer a valid measurement of student learning. Thus, keeping questions secure is vital.

Assessment security is a focus of Professor Phillip Dawson, an authority on assessment security from Deakin University in Australia, who defines assessment security as: “Measures taken to harden assessment against attempts to cheat. This includes approaches to detect and evidence attempts to cheat, as well as measures to make cheating more difficult.”

Dawson suggests a multilayered approach to assessment design, with seven standards for assessment security that institutions ought to consider:

• Coverage across a program - how much of a degree should be secured?
• Authentication - how do we ensure the student is who they say they are?
• Control of circumstances - how can we be sure the task was done in the intended circumstances?
• Difficulty to cheat metrics - we need to know how hard it may be to cheat a task.
• Detection accuracy metrics - we need to know if our detection methods work.
• Proof metrics - we need to be able to prove cases of cheating.
• Prevalence metrics - we need to know approximate rates of undetected, detected, and proven cheating ( Dawson, 2021 ).

According to Professor Roseanna Bourke, Director of Educational Psychology programme and Institute of Education at Massey University, there is a link between student cheating and student understanding and investment in the assigned tasks; when students don’t understand questions and lack confidence, learning itself becomes the barrier ( Bourke, Integrity Matters, n.d. ).

Providing support to students throughout a course or curriculum mitigates academic dishonesty in summative assessments. When students feel seen and supported with formative feedback in their educational journey, they are less likely to cheat. Additionally, rubrics can make clear the purpose of each question.

As stated, summative assessment is useful when the data exchange is maximized and accurate. Not only should it provide information about content mastery to instructors, it can also act as a reservoir of statistics about learning trends, item analysis, and exam effectiveness. Finally, and when possible, summative exams can take on formative qualities when feedback is provided. All of these data points directly benefit student learning.

Because it is a platform to demonstrate a culmination of knowledge, designing summative assessments is particularly critical to make the test accessible and inclusive for all different types of learners, and thus promote accurate measurement and data insights. Exam design principles include:

• Test what has been taught; aligning summative assessment with instruction models and promotes integrity for students.
• Design assessments that focus on measuring both breadth and depth of student knowledge and consider eliminating components that do not inform learning. Offer a variety of assessment formats. Multiple-choice questions can effectively breadth of knowledge in a limited time while short-answer and long-answer formats can evaluate higher-order thinking.
• Offering a variety of formats and questions styles within a summative assessment can also accommodate different learning styles. When diverse formats are offered, a larger spectrum of learning can be assessed. Additionally, diverse formats provide different ways for students to demonstrate their learning.
• And consider eliminating grading on a curve, which can increase competition between students, some of whom may be cheating ( UC Berkeley, 2020 ). Researchers Schinske and Tanner state, “Moving away from curving sets the expectation that all students have the opportunity to achieve the highest possible grade” ( Schinske & Tanner, 2014 ).
• A rubric, too, benefits students by clarifying expectations and acts as added assurance that tests align to previously-communicated learning goals.

Finally, the summative assessment itself is a living document, one that can be continuously optimized.

Analyze student responses to ensure assessments are fair, and to examine answer patterns to see if shortcut solutions have been utilized. Item analysis , or formally examining student responses and patterns, can show whether or not summative assessments are accurately assessing student knowledge. The data (Did every student get one particular question wrong? Did every student get one particular question correct? What kinds of answers are your test questions eliciting? Did you get the answers you expected?) can inform both exam design and teaching. Furthermore, item analysis supports exam robustness by highlighting questions on exams that may need adjustment.

Category tagging , a feature in ExamSoft assessment software, can offer more in-depth insights into future testing. A nursing program, for instance, can evaluate readiness for certification and the strength of curriculum to prepare students for standardized exams. Of course, category tagging can also fortify summative assessment within the curriculum.

In conclusion, summative assessments function largely as a way to evaluate learning at critical learning junctions, whether at the end of a term, end of a curriculum, or for advancement into the next level of schooling or licensure. The nature of summative assessments make them high-stakes, sometimes to the extent that they can negatively impact all prior learning. Moreover, they lack the opportunity for feedback, given their position in the educational journey.

That said, summative assessments are not wholly an endpoint. They are an intersection rich with data for educators to inform teaching, curriculum, and exam design. For students, too, there can be opportunities to learn, either by feedback or via data analysis, their own learning gaps and how to bridge them.

When educators maximize the potential of summative assessment, they can foster learning.

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College and high school students (as well as maybe some middle schoolers) will often face the task of summarizing a book, article, video, or anything they’ve seen/read. Sometimes, you will have to create summaries for yourself, so that you understand the material better. Other times though, you will have to write summary essays, the main purpose of which is to give others an overview of the original source. In both cases, summaries look somewhat the same: they are concise, contain only the most crucial points, and pass on the key idea or essence of the initial material, be it a movie or a book. To serve that purpose, summaries need to be well-written and we will show you exactly how to summarize an essay in the most effective format.

The Key Parts of a Summary: Structure

As a student, you know that most writing tasks have guidelines. You also most probably know that, if you are asked to write a certain type of writing, it has a specific structure and format. See, that’s why you can’t write summaries at random too. 

Thus, before starting the writing process, let’s first figure out what structure this type of writing has. This will allow you to create a summary essay outline that will make it easy for you to include all the essential information and will guide you throughout the writing process as well. 

Here’s what you absolutely have to include in your essay summary:

• Introduction + thesis, which will provide readers with all the necessary details about the work (title, author, etc) and its key idea
• Body paragraphs that support the main point of the essay and therefore include all the necessary details that show how the author justifies their claims
• Conclusion paragraph, which is usually one sentence that may rephrase the main idea and which is called to tie everything together.

You can use our checklist below to help you track down whether you included all the necessary components:

Writing a Summary Essay: Detailed Guide

Before jumping straight to writing, let’s see what we now know about these special summaries:

• What is a summary essay? – Check✅ It’s a concise overview of the essay you’ve read that communicates the key ideas of the material.
• What parts does a summary essay have? – Another check✅ Introduction, with details about the essay + thesis statement; body, with the summary of the main points; conclusion, which wraps up the key idea of the essay.
• How to write a Summary? – ⚠️This one we will break down further in this paragraph.

One would think that the guide to writing a summary couldn’t be that complex: just read the text, sit down, and write. However, if you scroll through the writing guide below, you will see that there are nuances.

Read & Study

First things first, get to know what the essay is about. Read through it carefully. If it helps you, take notes as you read, marking the most important arguments and ideas that need mentioning in your essay. A good thing is you can get a feeling for the author’s style, tone, and mood, and try to identify the main claims they made.

Divide & Outline

After you are done reading, break down the essay into several sections. Breaking the text into several parts will make the material easier to grasp. With their help, you can also create a rough outline of what your summary will look like.

Identify Key Ideas

Read each part you divided the essay into once more. This time, highlight some of the key points. Mark areas you want to refer to in your summary, as well as those that shouldn’t be included in your essay. During this stage, you should also be able to identify the general message and the essence of the essay.

Create an Introduction

You now have all the necessary details to be able to begin summarizing. Start with an introduction with an opening line that includes the name of the author and the title of their essay. Follow that information with a rather broad overview of the content of the work you will be summarizing. Sometimes, if it is important to understand the essay, you may present here the author’s background as well. And don’t forget the thesis statement that transmits the purpose/point of the work.

Move on to the Body

In the main body paragraphs, state the ideas you’ve chosen while reading the text. Expand on them by including one or more examples from the original text. Don’t forget to include citations if you do that. Our citation generator can give a hand with that.

Quick Citations for Your Convenience

Also, in this part, you can mention any supportive points given in the original text. These could be examples, or stories (but brief or rephrased) that the author originally mentioned.

Finish with a Conclusion & References

Phew, we are at the finish line now. All that is left is to write a concluding paragraph, which is usually around 2-3 sentences tops. Here you need to basically rewrite the thesis statement, once again emphasizing the main purpose or claim of the original source. After that, don’t forget to include a properly formatted reference of the original source to acknowledge the writer. It is not always a requirement but it is especially needed if you include quotes in the text of your summary.

Review & Proofread

Okay, the hardest part is left behind. You can now read through what you’ve written. Make sure everything sounds logical and clear. Pay attention to grammatical and punctuation mistakes. Try reading it aloud or giving it to somebody else to read it for you. This will help you pinpoint places that need improvement and maybe throughout 1 or 2 unnecessary details.

Dos and Don’ts of Summary Essay Writing

Look at you, knowing all this about writing an essay summary. Good for you! And what’s more, you can basically complete any type of summary now, just switching up its content. However, we are not done with teaching you yet. We got the basics settled, so now it’s time to get to the advanced stuff. These are the dos and don’ts that will serve as boosters for your writing. Keeping these tips in mind will help you craft your summaries more quickly and will largely reduce the proofreading time.

Essay Summary Example for Inspiration

Here’s a simple example of a summary of an essay that can serve as a sample and inspiration for your work:

How do you write a summary of an essay?

If you want to create a good summary, start by carefully reading. You need to understand its main ideas and arguments. Then, in your own words, write a brief overview that captures the essay’s central theme and key points. Don’t forget to include the author’s thesis statement and the evidence they use to support their argument. Keep your summary short and focused, avoiding any personal opinions or unnecessary details. 

How do I summarize my essay?

In case it’s your own essay you want to summarize, you should follow the same steps: identify your main argument, outline the supporting points, and then communicate this information in a short overview that gives a clear idea of your essay’s content.

What are the 5 parts of a summary?

Even though we mentioned only 3 major parts of the summary in our article, most summaries can be broken down into 5 aspects: introduction, thesis, body, conclusion, and references. Each of these is important for creating an all-inclusive summary.

What are the rules for summary essay?

Okay, let’s go over the basic summary rules once again. The summary should be short (around ¼ of the original) and concise (include only the most essential information without repetition). Additionally, this writing type should follow a logical structure, meaning you need to uncover the important facts in the same order as they are presented in the essay. Lastly, essay summaries should be independent. The readers chose to look through the summary because they didn’t want to read the whole text. Hence, they need to be able to learn everything important mentioned in the original.

What words should you start a summary essay with?

Usually, a summary of an essay starts with an introductory sentence that includes the name of the author, the title of the work, and the general idea of the text as you perceive it. Remember, you should describe everything in your own words, both to avoid plagiarism and to show your understanding of the material.

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• How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on November 23, 2020 by Shona McCombes . Revised on May 31, 2023.

Summarizing , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

• Read the text
• Break it down into sections
• Identify the key points in each section
• Write the summary
• Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or evaluating the source . You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about summarizing.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarize an article or other source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
• To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
• To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyze or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarizing is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

• Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
• Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
• Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

• Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
• Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
• Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organized into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction , methods , results , and discussion .

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

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Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarize this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Davis et al. (2015) set out to empirically test the popular saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Apples are often used to represent a healthy lifestyle, and research has shown their nutritional properties could be beneficial for various aspects of health. The authors’ unique approach is to take the saying literally and ask: do people who eat apples use healthcare services less frequently? If there is indeed such a relationship, they suggest, promoting apple consumption could help reduce healthcare costs.

The study used publicly available cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Participants were categorized as either apple eaters or non-apple eaters based on their self-reported apple consumption in an average 24-hour period. They were also categorized as either avoiding or not avoiding the use of healthcare services in the past year. The data was statistically analyzed to test whether there was an association between apple consumption and several dependent variables: physician visits, hospital stays, use of mental health services, and use of prescription medication.

Although apple eaters were slightly more likely to have avoided physician visits, this relationship was not statistically significant after adjusting for various relevant factors. No association was found between apple consumption and hospital stays or mental health service use. However, apple eaters were found to be slightly more likely to have avoided using prescription medication. Based on these results, the authors conclude that an apple a day does not keep the doctor away, but it may keep the pharmacist away. They suggest that this finding could have implications for reducing healthcare costs, considering the high annual costs of prescription medication and the inexpensiveness of apples.

However, the authors also note several limitations of the study: most importantly, that apple eaters are likely to differ from non-apple eaters in ways that may have confounded the results (for example, apple eaters may be more likely to be health-conscious). To establish any causal relationship between apple consumption and avoidance of medication, they recommend experimental research.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or meta analysis you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Using national survey data, Davis et al. (2015) tested the assertion that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and did not find statistically significant evidence to support this hypothesis. While people who consumed apples were slightly less likely to use prescription medications, the study was unable to demonstrate a causal relationship between these variables.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

• You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
• You haven’t missed any essential information
• The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarizing many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• ChatGPT vs human editor
• ChatGPT citations
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Using ChatGPT for your studies
• What is ChatGPT?
• Chicago style
• Paraphrasing

 Plagiarism

• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Consequences of plagiarism
• Common knowledge

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words. Want to make your life super easy? Try our free text summarizer today!

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarizing, and on the purpose of the summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
• For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
• To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
• In a paper , to summarize or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarizing an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Cite the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarize the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarize a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

All can be done within seconds with our free text summarizer .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 31). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 11, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/how-to-summarize/

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• Summative Assessment: Definition + [Examples & Types]

From end-of-term examinations to teacher-designed quizzes , summative assessment is one of the most effective ways to grade a student’s performance. It typically involves assessing students’ knowledge of the course material using specific criteria. 

Summative assessment requires a considerable investment of time, both from students and instructors. In this article, we will discuss the major characteristics of summative assessment and show you how to conduct a summative assessment with Formplus. 

What is a Summative Assessment?  

Summative assessment is a type of course evaluation that happens at the end of a training or program. It is the process of assessing the student’s knowledge, proficiency, and performance by comparing what they know with what they should have learned.

Unlike formative assessment which evaluates the student as he or she engages in the learning process, summative assessment is all about measuring outcomes using predefined standards or benchmarks. Summative evaluation only directly monitors the student’s ability but does not pay attention to how the student uses knowledge to solve practical problems. 

One of the most common examples of summative assessment is the end-of-semester college examinations. For these examinations, the college professors select questions that touch on different topics in the course curriculum. Students are asked to respond to these questions within a specific period of time. 

The structure of summative assessment makes it difficult for the instructor to provide one-on-one feedback on the student’s performance. Summative assessment methods are high stakes which means they have a high point value. The results are usually defining; for instance, it can determine whether a student passes the course, gets a promotion, or secures an admission. 

Characteristics of Summative Assessment  

Summative assessment measures a student’s competence in a specific subject matter in line with the learning goals and objectives of the course or training. For instance, a science course will use experiments and other practical tests to evaluate a student’s knowledge at the end of the course.

• Reliability

Summative evaluation is a standardized method of knowledge-based assessments. It has well-defined processes that reveal the student’s competence in a field. These processes produce accurate and consistent results when they are used in similar contexts.

• Practicality

Summative evaluation has a flexible process that is practical and scalable. It is well-aligned and this makes it easy for the instructor to implement it as part of training.

Summative assessment respects clear teaching and learning boundaries. Before the instructor implements any summative assessment methods in the classroom, he/she must obtain informed consent from the students.

• Easily reported

Since the key element of summative assessment is to evaluate what someone has learned up to that point in time, it always ends in having a concise summary of the outcomes of the assessment. This allows the teacher to compare the student’s current performance with past performances, external standards, and other learners.

Summative evaluation prompts students to exhibit skills and demonstrate knowledge in different ways.

Other things you should have in mind when it comes to summative assessment are: 

• It takes place at the end of a defined learning period such as a training or program.
• It is limited to the information that was shared during the course or training. Summative assessment does not test students on what they have not been taught.
• Summative assessment aligns with the learning goals and objectives of the course.
• Summative assessment certifies a student’s competence in a specific subject matter.
• It is used for one clearly identified purpose.

Examples of Summative Assessment  

• End-of-term Examination

A final examination or assessment is one of the most common methods of classroom evaluation. Examinations have a simple framework—the teacher curates relevant questions and the students respond to these questions within a timeframe.

Instructors conduct examinations as some sort of final knowledge review of the program. Examinations test the student’s knowledge of the subject matter and they produce quantitative results that help you to grade your students and know how well they have performed. 

To eliminate the workload that comes with paper assessment, you conduct the evaluation via an online test platform, examination software, or create a quiz on Formplus. The examination questions can be close-ended, open-ended, or a mixture of both; depending on the type of data you want to gather in the end. 

• In-class Chapter Tests

These are mini-examinations that happen at the end of a topic or section of a training. They are used to determine how well a student understands key chapter concepts and help them prepare for the final examination at the end of the course. Quizzes, midterm assessments, and practice tests are common examples of chapter tests.

• Standardized Admission Tests

These tests qualify candidates for a specific program; for instance, IELTS and TOEFL are standardized English proficiency exams that demonstrate a candidate’s competency in the use of the language. These tests are organized on a large scale and they make use of explicit scoring criteria for grading.

Create Computer Based Tests for free with Formplus. Get started now

• Creative Portfolio

Instead of an end-of-term examination, ask students to build a creative portfolio. A creative portfolio showcases the student’s creativity, knowledge of the coursework, and how they have uniquely applied that knowledge.

Depending on the learning areas, a student’s portfolio can include images, infographics, and small to medium-length texts like essays or one-pagers. As the learners build their portfolios, they also have the opportunity to reflect on how much they have learned. 

Add the file upload field to your Formplus form to receive portfolio submissions from your students. Students can submit files of any type and size including images, multiple document formats, and spreadsheets, in the file upload field. 

Oral summative assessments are used to get real-time and spontaneous responses from learners at the end of a course. The instructor can embrace structured, semi-structured, or unstructured interview methods to grade the students and evaluate their overall performance. Students may also partake in oral classroom presentations.

The type of interview method you choose determines the kinds of questions you will ask during the process. A structured interview follows a defined conversational sequence that dictates its questions and structure. 

Semi-structured and unstructured interviews embrace flexibility. In a semi-structured interview, the instructor can veer off the conversational sequence and ask spontaneous questions. Unstructured interviews do not follow a defined conversational sequence—the instructor can ask questions as they come, within the course’s context. 

• Hands-on Performance Tasks

These simple and creative tasks allow students to put their knowledge to work. Hands-on performance tasks are practical, and straightforward and help the instructor to assess the students’ abilities directly.

The instructor can ask students to solve a jigsaw puzzle and as they do this, she observes how they put a specific skill to work in the tasks. If you want to assess your students’ counting and pattern skills, you may observe how they play around with colored bricks or cotton balls. 

• Group Projects

Getting students to execute tasks within small groups is a great way to test their knowledge. After a training on teamwork and conflict resolution, for instance, you should group the students, assign a task and watch how they create frameworks and solve a specific problem.

• Book Reports

Book reports are creative summaries that demonstrate a student’s literary skills. These reports show how students highlight the main points of a book using the reading and analytical skills discussed in the training or program.

Students do not have to submit their summaries using paper forms. Create a Formplus online submission form and send out a prefilled link to everyone. This way, you can receive and organize submissions without worrying about too much paper. 

• Formal Essays

Formal essays allow students to demonstrate their level of knowledge about a subject matter. Essay writing is a useful skill that communicates one’s idea and understanding of a concept. Ask your students to write essays on the core topics and themes discussed in class.

Students can explain a concept, argue for or against a subject matter or simply narrate their learning experience as descriptive prose. 

If you want to reduce the clutter that comes with stacking lots of papers, use Formplus to collect the essays. Ask learners to turn in their essays as file uploads in your online submission form or they can write the essays right in the form’s long-text field. 

• Observation

This is a common method of summative assessment used in early childhood education. The instructor incorporates 1 or more standard activities into the students’ playtime and then observes how the learners engage in the activity.

Observing students’ behaviors during playtime gives you a birds-eye view of how well they have assimilated knowledge from a previous lesson or class session. As you observe them, you need to make notes on any changes you notice. Write your observations down on a piece of paper or list them in a spreadsheet. 

The complete observer method and participant-as-observer method are the common types of observation used for summative evaluation. In the complete observer method, the teacher observes the students from a distance; removing the instructor from the participants’ environment. 

The participant-by-observer method is what you’ll find in many classrooms and learning contexts. The teacher already has a relationship with the students and she interacts with them as they demonstrate their knowledge. 

How to Use Formplus to Conduct Summative Assessment  

To conduct a summative assessment with Formplus, you need to use the Formplus builder to create and customize an online form. This online form should serve your unique needs in terms of what you want to achieve and the type of summative assessment method you plan to execute. 

Follow this step-by-step guide to create your online summative assessment form with Formplus. 

• Visit www.formpl.us to log in to your Formplus account or to sign up for a free Formplus account. Once you sign up and confirm your email, you get automatic access to your Formplus dashboard.
• Click on the ‘create new form’ button on your Formplus dashboard. This button is at the top-left side of your dashboard and it takes you to the form builder.
• The Formplus builder has different sections including the customization and form sharing sections. On the far-left side of the builder, you will find the form fields section.

• Drag and drop preferred form fields from the form fields section into your form. There are more than 30 form fields you can add to your form including text fields and advanced fields like date-time validation.
• Edit each field by clicking on the small pencil icon beside each one. You can add questions, options and also make the fields read-only or required.

• Click on the “save” icon to save all the changes you have made to the form.

• By now, you will be in the builder’s customization section. This is where you can tweak the look and feel of your form based on your unique needs and preferences.

You can choose a new theme for your form or create a custom theme. You can also change the form’s background, add background images, modify the form font and font size or stylize the form using your custom CSS. 

• Use the form-sharing options to share the form with your students. You can copy the form link and share or send out prefilled links via email invitations.

Formplus has different features that make data collection seamless for you including unlimited file uploads, mobile-friendly forms, and prefilled forms. With the mobile-friendly feature, you can conduct summative assessments using your smartphone. You can also collect data the way you like using more than 30 available form fields. 

• Mobile-friendly Forms

With our mobile-responsive feature, you can create an online form for summative assessments using your smartphone or other internet-enabled devices. Students can also complete surveys, and quizzes and make file submissions using their smartphones, without pinching in or zooming out of their screens.

• File Uploads

Students can submit their creative portfolio in different file formats in your Formplus form and they do not have to bother about the file size. All file uploads are automatically saved to your preferred cloud storage including Google Drive, DropBox, and OneDrive.

• Prefilled Forms

Prefilled forms are easy to fill as your students do not need to repeat recurring information. Sending out prefilled forms allows you to retrieve existing data from your records and pre-populate form fields with these pieces of information.

• Form Templates

You do not have to build your form from scratch; simply choose any of our ready-to-use templates. Formplus has more than 200 existing form templates that can be tweaked to suit your unique needs and preferences in the form builder.

• Offline Data Collection

Students can fill out and submit the online assessment form; even when they have poor or no internet access. All form responses are automatically updated on our servers or your preferred cloud storage system when the internet connectivity is restored.

• Export Data

You can export form responses and reports in multiple file formats like PDF and CSV. Formplus also allows you to directly export form data to Google sheets to help you collate results and share them with your team.

Advantages of Summative Assessment  

• The summative assessment determines the effectiveness of a course and the teaching method. This is measured in terms of how well the student mirrors his knowledge in his or her responses to the questions.
• It is a standard method of tracking a student’s academic performance over a period of time.
• Summative assessment is an important part of the formal grading system. The results from summative assessments are often used to determine whether a student moves from one academic level to the next.
• It helps the instructor to identify and address learning gaps. Summative assessment reveals the student’s weakness and this gives the teacher enough context and information to review their methods.
• It boosts self-evaluation because the students reflect on their goals as they take part in summative assessments.
• Summative assessment improves the teaching and learning environment. It helps the students and instructions to align their goals and achieve desired outcomes.

Disadvantages of Summative Assessment  

• Measuring a student’s performance against a standard benchmark can trigger demotivation and low self-esteem. This happens when the student’s performance isn’t up to par with the benchmark.
• It does not provide an accurate reflection of the student’s knowledge or learning.
• Students can develop anxiety as they prepare for the single year that can make or mar their academic progress. Anxiety, fear, and nervousness affect the student’s performance.

In this article, we have looked at the characteristics of effective summative assessments plus common examples you can adopt for student evaluation in the classroom. Summative assessment is best described as a diagnostic evaluation method used at the end of an instructional unit. 

Summative assessment is a great way to ensure that students have a full grasp of the different ideas discussed in a course or program. When combined with other methods of course evaluation like formative assessment, it creates a balanced evaluation of both progress and performance. 

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Summative Assessment

Summative assessments are used to evaluate student learning, skill acquisition, and academic achievement at the conclusion of a defined instructional period—typically at the end of a project, unit, course, semester, program, or school year. Generally speaking, summative assessments are defined by three major criteria:

• The tests, assignments, or projects are used to determine whether students have learned what they were expected to learn. In other words, what makes an assessment “summative” is not the design of the test, assignment, or self-evaluation, per se, but the way it is used—i.e., to determine whether and to what degree students have learned the material they have been taught.
• Summative assessments are given at the conclusion of a specific instructional period, and therefore they are generally evaluative, rather than diagnostic—i.e., they are more appropriately used to determine learning progress and achievement, evaluate the effectiveness of educational programs, measure progress toward improvement goals, or make course-placement decisions, among other possible applications.
• Summative-assessment results are often recorded as scores or grades that are then factored into a student’s permanent academic record, whether they end up as letter grades on a report card or test scores used in the college-admissions process. While summative assessments are typically a major component of the grading process in most districts, schools, and courses, not all assessments considered to be summative are graded.

Summative assessments are commonly contrasted with formative assessments , which collect detailed information that educators can use to improve instruction and student learning while it’s happening. In other words, formative assessments are often said to be for learning, while summative assessments are of learning. Or as assessment expert Paul Black put it, “When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment. When the customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment.” It should be noted, however, that the distinction between formative and summative is often fuzzy in practice, and educators may have divergent interpretations and opinions on the subject.

Some of the most well-known and widely discussed examples of summative assessments are the standardized tests administered by states and testing organizations, usually in math, reading, writing, and science. Other examples of summative assessments include:

• End-of-unit or chapter tests.
• End-of-term or semester tests.
• Standardized tests that are used to for the purposes of school accountability, college admissions (e.g., the SAT or ACT), or end-of-course evaluation (e.g., Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams).
• Culminating demonstrations of learning or other forms of “performance assessment,” such as portfolios of student work that are collected over time and evaluated by teachers or capstone projects that students work on over extended periods of time and that they present and defend at the conclusion of a school year or their high school education.

While most summative assessments are given at the conclusion of an instructional period, some summative assessments can still be used diagnostically. For example, the growing availability of student data, made possible by online grading systems and databases, can give teachers access to assessment results from previous years or other courses. By reviewing this data, teachers may be able to identify students more likely to struggle academically in certain subject areas or with certain concepts. In addition, students may be allowed to take some summative tests multiple times, and teachers might use the results to help prepare students for future administrations of the test.

It should also be noted that districts and schools may use “interim” or “benchmark” tests to monitor the academic progress of students and determine whether they are on track to mastering the material that will be evaluated on end-of-course tests or standardized tests. Some educators consider interim tests to be formative, since they are often used diagnostically to inform instructional modifications, but others may consider them to be summative. There is ongoing debate in the education community about this distinction, and interim assessments may defined differently from place to place. See  formative assessment  for a more detailed discussion.

While educators have arguably been using “summative assessments” in various forms since the invention of schools and teaching, summative assessments have in recent decades become components of larger school-improvement efforts. As they always have, summative assessments can help teachers determine whether students are making adequate academic progress or meeting expected learning standards, and results may be used to inform modifications to instructional techniques, lesson designs, or teaching materials the next time a course, unit, or lesson is taught. Yet perhaps the biggest changes in the use of summative assessments have resulted from state and federal policies aimed at improving public education—specifically, standardized high-stakes tests used to make important decisions about schools, teachers, and students.

While there is little disagreement among educators about the need for or utility of summative assessments, debates and disagreements tend to center on issues of fairness and effectiveness, especially when summative-assessment results are used for high-stakes purposes. In these cases, educators, experts, reformers, policy makers, and others may debate whether assessments are being designed and used appropriately, or whether high-stakes tests are either beneficial or harmful to the educational process. For more detailed discussions of these issues, see high-stakes test , measurement error , test accommodations , test bias , score inflation , standardized test , and value-added measures .

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What Is Summative Assessment: A Practical Guide For Teachers On When And How To Use It

Zoe Benjamin

Are you looking to design a summative assessment that accurately measures your students’ learning progress? It may seem like creating a test is a straightforward task – just jot down some questions and select the answers. But if you aspire to create assessments that genuinely reflect your learners’ abilities and enhance their academic achievements, you need to adopt a considered approach embedding summative assessments into your teaching plans from the start 

In this article, we’ll delve into the benefits and limitations of summative assessments on student achievement and provide recommendations for teachers to improve the effectiveness of summative assessments for their learners.

What is summative assessment?

Examples of summative assessment, formative vs summative assessments, tracking student progress, accountability, motivating students , preparation for external exams, standardisation , how can summative assessment impact student achievement, provides a limited snapshot of student achievement.

• Closed-book exams may not accurately reflect students’ ability or potential

Comparing students based on summative grades might be unfair

Summative assessments can emphasise memorization, 1. design a summative assessment based on its purpose, 2. offer clear instructions throughout the assessment, 3. ensure consistency in summative assessments from year to year, 4. prepare students in advance.

Summative assessment is an evaluation of students’ current understanding and achievement. It allows teachers to track learners’ progress over a period of time. It is done at the end of teaching unit or several teaching units and can be benchmarked or standardised against other students’ work.

The findings of these assessments can be used to make informed decisions about how to support each student in succeeding and determine whether they have achieved the required learning objectives or content domains. 

Summative assessments can take many forms, including in class tests, exams, projects, or essays, and are often scored to provide a quantifiable measure of students’ performance.

It’s worth saying that in fact there’s nothing intrinsic to an assessment activity that makes it either summative or formative – it’s what you do with the information that you gain from the assessment that determines this.

That said, there are some assessement types that are more commonly used summatively. These include:

• Benchmark tests given at the start of the year or a unit of work with the intention of comparing the results with future assessment data.
• Online assessments designed to measure transferable skills and academic aptitude to make predictions and targets for future attainment.
• Portfolios of work , for subjects such as Art or Photography.
• A final project following a period of group work.
• Midterm exams or classroom assessments at the end of a unit of study.
• Performance assessments that showcase students’ development of new skills.
• Key stage assessments that form part of a national curriculum.
• Standardised tests that are sat by students of the same age throughout a country, such as GCSEs and SATs

The difference between formative and summative assessment is their purpose, design, frequency, and outcomes. While summative assessment is an assessment of learning, formative assessment is an assessment for learning .

Read more: Formative assessment examples

Formative and summative assessments are the two types of assessment that are most prevalent in education literature. The table below shows their main characteristics:

Benefits of summative assessment practices 

The benefits of summative assessment may not be as apparent as those of formative assessment, as they are often less immediate and direct than the advantages gained from ongoing assessment strategies that promote learning.

But summative assessments bring many benefits that enhance teaching and learning.

Summative assessments offer assessment data that is typically used to track student progress over time. This data indicates whether students are making the expected level of progress based on their age and abilities.

The results of summative assessments provide an objective measure of accountability for teachers and students. 

Teachers can use students’ end-of-year or external assessment results in their appraisal meetings to evaluate their teaching approaches. Additionally, students can be held accountable if their results indicate a decrease in effort or underperformance in one or more subjects.

Summative assessments provide high-stakes conditions for students to showcase their capabilities to themselves and others. These assessments motivate students to prepare and revise more thoroughly than they might for other types of evaluations. 

However, lower ability students and those with exam anxiety may be less motivated by summative assessments, which can lead to a decrease in their effort and motivation as the assessment date approaches.

GCSEs and A-Levels are external exams that act as summative assessments at the end of a course. High stakes classroom assessments, such as midterm exams, offer valuable exam practice for time management, meeting assessment objectives, and managing exam anxiety. 

Summative assessments will require students retrieving information from their long term memory which can help to further embed it and support improved performance during external exams.

Summative assessments can provide schools and education systems with objective data to create standardised scores for each learner. This enables individuals and small cohorts to be compared to other students and larger cohorts. 

Standardisation is often used to determine the grade boundaries in external exams.

The manner in which summative assessment is carried out can have a considerable impact on the academic progress of students.

Summative assessment helps:

• track student progress and identify underachievement, allowing for interventions to be put in place.
• reveal issues with exam technique.
• hold students and teachers accountable and increase motivation to improve results.
• prepare students for external exams, improving long-term memory retrieval and adjusting revision and exam strategies accordingly.

Read more: Adaptive teaching

In all cases above, increased achievement is defined as achieving a higher result in a future summative assessment. 

This may not be a reliable or valid measure of achievement, but until education institutions move away from standardised testing and entry requirements that depend on the results of summative assessments, it is an important measure to consider.

Limitations of summative assessment

Summative assessments are widely used in education to measure student achievement, but they also have limitations every teacher should be aware of:

Summative assessment is limited in that it provides a snapshot of student achievement at one point in time and uses a limited range of assessment strategies.

The validity and appropriateness of summative assessments, particularly external exams, has been scrutinised in the UK after ‘teacher assessed grades’ were used to replace external exams during periods of lockdown.

Closed-book exams may not accurately reflect students’ ability or potential

There is uncertainty about whether closed-book exams that are taken at the end of GCSE and A-Level courses provide an accurate reflection of students’ ability or academic potential.

Students can be coached to perform well on summative assessments, which takes time away from deepening students’ understanding or studying a broader curriculum.

Critics of summative assessment argue that ‘open-book’ assessments would be more appropriate so that students can be tested on their ability to apply and fact-check the material they have access to.

Using summative grades to compare students to each other or to gain entry into a school, college, or university, seems unfair when final grades are so dependent on factors outside of students’ control.

Summative assessments often require students to memorise material, which is becoming an increasingly redundant skill given how readily information is available online.

Time spent memorising material ahead of a summative assessment could be better spent deepening students’ understanding or improving their ability to critically interact with new material.

Summative assessment tips for teachers

As a teacher, designing and administering effective summative assessments can be challenging. Here are some tips to help you create successful summative assessments for your students.

The content of a summative assessment needs to be carefully selected – and this content may vary depending on the intended use of the assessment data.

Let’s consider short formal tests administered at the end of a unit of work or half-term which is based only on the work completed during that time period. Benefits of tests like these include:

• Increased motivation for students to revise and consolidate learned content
• An increase in student achievement due to the testing effect
• Support for process of identifying students who may benefit from intervention (note that summative test results should not be the only method for identifying these students, as discussed above)
• Provision of feedback on the effectiveness of curriculum design and implementation (the extent to which learning intentions match with learning accomplished)

However, while this type of short formal test has lots of benefits, it is not as useful for providing a longer-term picture of student progress and to measure attainment of more generalised learning goals.

For example, it is unlikely to be appropriate to convert the data collected from an isolated end of unit assessment to a GCSE grade to report to parents as part of a school’s wider monitoring processes. This is because it’s highly likely that different content domains are assessed with each separate unit test, and fluctuations in results may reflect the comparative difficulty of the material covered rather than any meaningful change in a student’s progress.

Ensure the instructions throughout the assessment clearly convey what is required from the student (e.g. show each step of your calculation).

Create a mark scheme or rubric before the assessment is set so that you are clear about what is required from each question and check that the exam instructions accurately explain this to the students. 

On the one hand it’s a good idea to use the same summative assessments each year so that each cohort of students can be compared to cohorts from previous years.

This allows departments to evaluate their own performance and to make adjustments if a cohort’s performance differs significantly from previous years. By including a mixture of recent and past topics on each summative assessment you will utilise the benefits of retrieval practice and spacing.

On the other hand, regular reviews of how you are assessing content throughout the year will help to make sure you meet the needs of each particular cohort of students.

Read more: Retrieval practice activities

Prepare students for summative assessments and reduce exam anxiety by producing practice papers that match the summative assessment in terms of style and content. 

Each spring, we teach booster maths lessons to approximately 10,000 Year 6 pupils across the UK every week as part of our Year 6 SATs revision programme . Each child receives targeted one-to-one maths tuition from a dedicated KS2 SATs tutor who is trained in teaching them how to answer SATs reasoning questions, while also plugging any gaps and misconceptions in maths. This builds their confidence in the style and content of their SATs exams.

Summative assessment is designed to produce a measure of achievement. It is important because it helps teachers to track their students’ progress and gives students an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge to external organisations such as employers or universities.

An assessment that has a clear purpose and allows comparisons to be made with the results or past or future assessments.

External exams like Year 6 SATs, GCSEs or A-Levels End of year or end of topic exams Benchmark or aptitude tests that measure transferable skills and academic potential

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• Summative Assessments: Types

Below are some types of assessments that are commonly used to gauge learning at the end of a unit or course. While the focus here is primarily on the use of these assessments for summative purposes, these can also be utilized as formative assessments , to track student learning during a course. For each, we make suggestions for ways to design these assessments to be equity-minded and recommend further readings and resources. 

Exams typically consist of a set of questions that are aimed at eliciting a specific response. They can include a range of question formats, such as multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, labeling diagrams, or providing short answer questions. When designing exam questions, it is important to consider the principles of equity-minded assessment. This involves making exam questions that are:

• Relevant : Test concepts are aligned with the course learning objectives. Additionally, questions involve applying course concepts to problems and situations that are relevant to students’ interests and skills. 
• Authentic: Require students to apply skills that may be utilized in their professional and personal lives (e.g., critical thinking and collaboration). Questions also test a range of learning outcomes from those requiring lower-order cognitive skills such as recollection or understanding to those requiring higher-order cognitive skills such as evaluation and application of concepts (e.g., case studies that allow application of concepts to real-world problems).
• Rigorous: Focus on application of skills or creation of new knowledge to novel or complex situations, rather than recollection of facts. Can involve multi-step problem solving or require students to justify a given answer through reasoning. 
• Transparent: Explicit about the knowledge and skills being tested in the exam. The scoring system for each question is known to students while taking the exam (e.g., each question specifies if answers are marked for both accuracy and process or if there is negative marking for writing the wrong answer). Providing students with practice questions that illustrate the types of questions they may encounter on the exam can especially help international and first-generation students who may be unfamiliar with predominant assessment strategies.  
• Inclusive: Describe scenarios, names, or contexts that reflect the lived experiences of diverse students, without assuming specific cultural knowledge. Questions do not rely on knowledge of concepts that are not already taught in the course. Characterized by use of clear, concise, and unambiguous language (e.g., avoid double negative statements, jargon, complex words). This is particularly important when instructors are unavailable to clarify what the particular question is testing, for example in online exams and in large classes. 

Open-book or group-based exams that require critical thinking, collaboration, and analytical skills to arrive at an answer may be one way to implement exams that follow the above principles (Johanns et al., 2016; Martin et al., 2014). Incorporating exam wrappers as a follow-up is known to promote good learning strategies by helping students self-assess and engage in metacognition (Lovett, 2013). Explore some additional resources on writing good multiple choice exam questions (Brame 2013), incorporating group-exams (Chen 2018) or exam wrappers (Carnegie Mellon University). Also consider our guidelines on best practices for designing summative assessments and effective online exam design and administration .

References:

Brame, C. (2013) Writing good multiple choice test questions . Vanderbilt University. 

Chen, Y. (2018). Collaborative learning through group testing . Center for Teaching and Learning, Kent State University.

Division of Learning and Teaching. (2022, March 30). Exams . Charles Sturt University.

Lovett, M. C. (2013). Make exams worth more than the grade: Using exam wrappers to promote metacognition . In Kaplan, M., Silver, N, Lavaque-Manty, D., & Meizlish, D. Using reflection and metacognition to improve student learning . Stylus Publishing: Sterling, VA., pp. 18-52.

Johanns, A., Dinkens, J., & Moore, J. (2017). A systematic review comparing open-book and closed-book examinations: Evaluating effects on development of critical thinking skills . Nursing Education in Practice , 27, 89-94.

Martin, D., Friesen, E., & De Pau, A. (2014). Three heads are better than one: A mixed methods study examining collaborative versus traditional test-taking with nursing students . Nurse Education Today , 34 (6), 971–977.

Projects are a powerful way to assess student learning in a relevant, authentic, rigorous, transparent, and inclusive manner. Projects typically involve a sequence of steps that must be completed within a defined timeline to create a novel product. Examples of common products include: 

1. Presentations: 

These usually involve a slide deck (e.g., PowerPoint) or poster designed to support an oral exposition describing the motivation and outcome of a project. Compared to written papers or portfolios, presentations can be efficient forms of assessment to test higher-order thinking, application, and communication skills since grading can take place in real-time. However, presentations can be time consuming to execute, particularly in classes with high student enrollment ( > 150 students). Presentations conducted in small groups and, when possible, during lab or recitation sections may be one of the ways to incorporate presentations in large classes. Group presentations are also good avenues to promote peer-based learning along with skills in collaboration, communication, and time management. Learn more about designing oral presentations (McCaroll, 2016), best practices to design group projects (Carnegie Mellon University) and evaluate group projects (Cornell University) 

2. Research Papers: 

Typically assigned in upper-level classes, research papers tend to involve a structured written report describing the motivation, methods, results, and conclusions of a project (research-based or literature syntheses) following the IMRaD format with a reference list. These assessments help students demonstrate their organizational, critical thinking, and writing skills in a manner relevant and authentic to research-based disciplines in which such papers are the dominant mode of communication.

For students, structuring and organizing thoughts in a research paper tends to be difficult without adequate practice and support. Additionally, for instructors,  research papers can be difficult to grade and provide feedback in a timely manner, given the volume of content produced by each student. Scaffolding student work and incorporating opportunities for peer feedback are some ways in which these problems can be mitigated. Scaffolding may involve providing adequate guidance to students on conducting literature searches and training them on the use of tools such as citation managers or AI search engines . Providing appropriate rubrics in advance for students to evaluate their own work or engage in peer-assessments are other ways in which students can receive timely feedback before submitting their work. Use Ohio State University’s guiding questions to effectively design research or inquiry-based assessments . 

3. Essays or Commentaries:

Essays are longer written papers that ask students to respond to a prompt by explaining a point of view in response to a prompt along with supporting evidence. Since essays are open-ended, they allow students to demonstrate their understanding and interpretation in a creative and individualistic style. Essays are helpful in assessing student understanding and skill across various dimensions, particularly their literary, creative or critical thinking skills. However, similar to research papers, essays can be difficult for students to write and can be difficult for instructors to grade in a timely manner. Scaffolding, providing a clear rubric, writing samples and incorporating peer feedback are few ways in which essays can be implemented in a rigorous, transparent and inclusive manner, without being burdensome for students and instructors. It is also important to consider and comply with norms set by FERPA , when sharing work of students from past classes. More examples can be found on WAC Clearinghouse’s resource on designing writing assignments (Kiefer, 2018).

With the increased accessibility and ease of AI writing tools, however, instructors must take care to be explicit about the appropriate use of AI in writing given the potential for plagiarism. This may include having a syllabus statement on the use of AI in grading policies and assessments, discussing the ethics of plagiarism, training students on using AI as a writing assistant (e.g., to provide structure, check for grammar or spelling), and being transparent about the benefit for students to fully engage in the writing process (Matthews, 2023). Learn more about teaching & learning in the age of AI on our website.

4. Digital Storyboards: 

With the ease and accessibility of digital media, some final projects can involve more creative depictions of a project from conception to outcome in the form of artwork, films, photographs or audio-based storyboards. Storyboards can be a powerful medium of communication since it helps an audience visualize the main message of a written text in an easy and digestible manner. Storyboards can involve a variety of elements, e,g., original artwork, curation of images, background music, a narrative script or dialogue, all of which are laid out in an intentional order that together tell a story. As such storyboards are rigorous and authentic forms of assessments, since they require students to employ multiple, higher order thinking skills and learn to collaborate with peers to present their point of view. Thus, storyboards can particularly benefit from scaffolding. 

One way to scaffold may be to provide prompts that draw student attention to varied elements of a sample storyboard, in a sequential manner and help students  evaluate how the elements support the narrative. Following this, instructors may have students complete parts of an existing sample storyboard to master each element. Finally, instructors should attempt to provide a clear rubric that is transparent about the skills being evaluated and the level of performance expected of students. In order to be inclusive and just, instructors should also consider student access to material needed to produce a high-quality storyboard since such material tends to be fairly expensive. This may include providing access to a repository of art material, videography equipment etc. through a library or local repository and/or arranging for funds that allow students to procure necessary equipment or software. Explore Macalaster University’s compilation of resources to design digital storyboard projects and evaluate storyboards . More examples can also be found on University of Houston’s repository of digital stories (Dogan, 2021).

Projects are equity-minded assessments if they are:

• Relevant: Include tasks such as application of knowledge, presentation skills, critical thinking or collaboration skills, each of which should correspond to learning goals of a course.
• Authentic: Engage students to apply knowledge and skills to address a novel problem. Ideally, the problem addressed is at the intersection of real-world application of knowledge or skills, needs of a discipline, and students' own interests.
• Rigorous: Require application of higher-order cognitive skills such as critical thinking, synthesis, and application of knowledge to a new context over multiple steps. For example, to produce a research paper, students need to identify a gap in the field, read primary literature, conduct analyses/experiments, verify findings using multiple sources, and write findings in a logical and cohesive manner. However, it is important for these projects to be well-structured and potentially be scaffolded wherein instructors provide more guidance on components of a project early on, and gradually have students independently complete the work as they gain more competency. Scaffolding provides students with adequate support to achieve the high standards set by rigorous assessments. 
• Transparent: Explicit about the learning objectives and the metrics by which performance will be assessed. Provide students with a detailed rubric listing the criteria for evaluation and standards of performance expected in advance. Providing samples of successful projects completed by students in the past can also help make projects more transparent. 
• Inclusive: Allows for diverse student interests, voices, and forms of creative expression in how the project is designed and presented.

Explore Champlain University’s guidelines on designing project assignments and Boston University’s suggestions for implementing project-based learning .

Center for Teaching and Learning. (2021, May 06). Project-Based Learning: Teaching Guide . Boston University

Division of Learning and Teaching (2022, March 30). Essay . Charles Sturt University.

Dogan, B. (2021). Example stories . The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling Website. University of Houston College of Education.

Matthews, D. (2023, March 14). If you’re not using CHATGPT for your writing, you’re probably making a mistake . Vox. 

Portfolios refer to a collection of work curated by students to provide evidence for the quality of work they have done and have the potential to do in the future (Vitale & Romance, 2005). Portfolios can include all or a selection of work done in a course and usually also include a component of reflective writing (Dibrell, n.d.). Although more common in performance-based disciplines such as humanities and art, portfolios can also be used in science and engineering to similarly evaluate demonstrated proficiency and potential (e.g., CV , research statements , ePortfolios/websites ). Alternately, portfolios may be composed of research papers, presentations, or concept maps . Portfolios align with equity-minded assessments when they are: 

• Relevant: Include a wide repertoire of student work that is related to the course content and objectives, as well as student interests and goals. 
• Authentic: Evaluate learning that simultaneously draws on multiple levels of cognitive demand, including synthesis, application and creation of new knowledge. Further, the work is typically aligned directly with future professional career paths that students will pursue.
• Rigorous: Consists of a sample of work drawn from a larger body of work that students complete throughout the course. The work typically requires students to employ a range of higher order thinking skills including analytical reasoning, collaboration, problem solving etc.
• Transparent: Co-creating rubrics with students in the class allows making expectations for the assessment explicit and inclusive of student voice. This is important because students and instructors may differ in their aesthetic sensibilities, making portfolios difficult to evaluate in a consistent manner. Utilizing a checklist or single-point rubric when grading student portfolios is recommended since such rubrics help provide a more uniform application of standards (meets/does not yet meet expectations), while leaving scope for subjective feedback on what students have done well and what they could improve on.
• Inclusive: Enables diverse student voice and expression since students curate their own collection. In some cases, allow students to include early pieces of work to evaluate the extent to which students have grown and expanded their skillset. Consider securing funds to reimburse students for materials, tools or other resources needed to complete the portfolio, making such assessments inclusive for students from marginalized backgrounds. 

Explore tools such as digication to learn more about systematic ways to evaluate and assign portfolios in a transparent manner. Click on the respective links to view examples of CU undergraduate student portfolios in art , engineering and English . You can also find more examples on ASSETT’s BuffsCreate , a service providing all CU learners access to a subdomain and support to create an ePortfolio.  

Dibrell, D. (n.d.). Designing reflective writing assignments . The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

Vitale, M. R. & Romance, N. R. (2005). Portfolios in science assessment: A knowledge-based model for classroom practice . In J. J. Mintzes, J. H. Wandersee, & J. D. Novak (Eds.), Assessing Science Understanding: A Human Constructivist View, Educational Psychology. Burlington: Academic Press. (pp. 167–196). Burlington, VT: Academic Press.

Further readings and resources:

You can find additional resources and references below to learn more about incorporating different types of summative assessments and feedback in your class. Particularly notable is the NILOA Assignment Library , which provides a detailed description of best practices in incorporating the above assessments in each discipline in an equity-minded manner. Charles Sturt University also has a substantive overview of assessment types and best practices in designing them . For individualized support, you may also schedule a consultation with our team .

Division of Learning and Teaching. (2022, March 30). Assessment types . Charles Sturt University.

Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2020, January). A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis (Occasional Paper No. 42). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).

Chan, J. C. K. & Ahn, D. (2023). Unproctored online exams provide meaningful assessment of student learning . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 120 (31): e230202012

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Center for Teaching

Beyond the essay, iii.

Print Version

Summative Assignments: Authentic Alternatives to the Essay

Metaphor Maps ||  Student Anthologies ||  Poster Presentations

The essay is often the go-to assignment in humanities courses, and rightfully so. Especially in the text-based disciplines, the craft of the essay is highly valued as part of practicing the work of the field. More broadly, developing effective writing skills is a universal learning objective in higher education and, to varying degrees, is often dependent on these humanities classes. There are, however, alternative assignments in which students can rigorously but creatively perform their understandings in summative projects to be rigorously assessed, while still practicing–and even calling attention to–the habits of mind of the discipline.

Metaphor Maps

Students synthesize and unify multiple themes or concepts through metaphors, and then explicate their own thinking

This assignment encourages students to practice and perform a variety of ways of thinking:

• think creatively about a text, concept, or unit (or several) by thinking metaphorically,
• synthesize varied pieces of a complex concept or text, and
• articulate their thinking in new and self-authored ways.

It involves two parts:  first, students draw an image of a single metaphor they use to make sense of a concept, text, or unit (or several), and then–more importantly–they explicate their drawing. Sample instructions are in the box to the right.

Ultimately, metaphor maps are less about the drawing and more about how students synthesize and unify complex, multidimensional thinking around a single metaphor–and how clearly and effectively they explain these ideas. This strategy stretches them beyond the typical modes of learning and challenges them to organize their thoughts in a new way.

Some suggested criteria for assessing metaphor maps include the following:

• Comprehensiveness
• Unity & Synthesis

Each is further developed in the box to the right.

• In “ Using ‘Frameworks’ To Enhance Teaching and Learning ” (2012), Patrice W. Hallock describes an assignment in which her students draw their thinking about how they make sense of course content. One student used the metaphor of a camera (right). Although her assignment doesn’t include an essay explication, this student-generated and -drawn metaphor for a concept is the beginning of a metaphor map.
• In a philosophy class, a sample metaphor for critical thinking is a ship at sea surrounded by ethical mountains (below, right; Pierce).

• In a multicultural literature class, a student drew a baseball field in the final inning. The teams represented two of the cultures he’d read about in the class, the baseball field represented the All-American setting where they were at conflict, and the final inning suggested a time of crisis.
• These “ Minimalist Fairy Tales ” drawings offer great examples of a slight alternative to metaphor maps. Students can be asked to draw a simple image from the text that captures the essential meaning of the whole text. Synecdoche Maps!

Student Anthologies

Students perform the work of editors or curators

A significant genre in the humanities is the anthology, collections of poems, stories, essays, artwork, etc, selected, researched, and annotated by an editor.  Students can take on this role of editor, acting as curator and commentator as they establish a sense of authority and ownership over the material (Chick, 2002). They make intentional decisions about which pieces to include, what contexts to provide in their editorial notes, and even what paper, binding, font, and illustrations to use. If the pieces are short enough, as in a poetry anthology, students can be required to write or type the pieces themselves “to engage with every letter, every punctuation mark, every capital or lower-case letter, and every line break, and to consider the meanings of these choices by the poet” (p. 420). They include a title page, table of contents, prologue, and epilogue framing their anthology.

Giving students guidance for their editorial responses to each selection is helpful.  Some possibilities include the following:

• Argue for its significance
• Interpret its meaning
• Describe its historical and cultural context
• Write a biographical headnote using details most relevant to the selection
• Explain how it illustrates an important disciplinary theory or concept

Ultimately, students are “defining their own aesthetics” and becoming “aware of the ramifications of making aesthetic choices” by creating their anthologies (p. 422). This analysis can then be connected to the formation of the canon, revealing the subjective nature of “what they may have thought were universal or unquestioned notions” of quality and significance in the field. Resource

• “ Anthologizing Transformation: Breaking Down Students’ ‘Private Theories’ about Poetry ” (2002) explains the rationale and process for student anthologies in greater detail.

Poster Presentations

Students visually showcase their learning and present it to wider audiences

Le e Shulman, President Emeritus of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has written of the importance of engaging with our teaching as we do our research–as “‘ community property ”: “We close the classroom doors and experience pedagogical solitude, whereas in our life as scholars, we are members of active communities: communities of conversation, communities of evaluation, communities in which we gather with others in our invisible colleges to exchange our findings, our methods, and our excuses” (2004, p. 140). What if we asked our students to do the same with their learning–as fellow citizens of the university, emerging scholars and researchers and producers of their own knowledge?  In this model of making learning community property, the audience for student learning extends beyond the instructor and often even classmates–reaching out to a larger community that remains authentic to disciplinary and learning goals.

The genre of the academic poster is a staple in the natural and social sciences, displayed at conferences and other meetings to share research findings with peers, and students in these fields begin practicing these ways of going public fairly early.  As Hess, Tosney, and Liegel demonstrate in “ Creating Effective Poster Presentations ” (2013), these visual representations of knowledge “operate on multiple levels”: “source of information, conversation starter, advertisement of your work, and summary of your work.” Poster sessions can be lively sites of conversations about new and interesting work in the field, but few (if any) disciplines in the humanities use this genre. In this way, assigning posters may feel inauthentic; however, the genre’s attention to sharing content in a concise, visual, and public format can be adapted to more closely reflect the meaning-making in the humanities. In fact, given many humanities disciplines’ appreciation of form reflecting content, the poster can make visible specific rhetorical moves, encouraging students to think not only about their ideas but also how they form their ideas.

It’s important to note that the poster is a conversation starter : it doesn’t have to present the project in its entirety. Instead, it can highlight part of the project, which the presenter uses to begin an oral explanation of the rest of the project.

• “ Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides: The Assertion-Evidence Structure ” similarly re-envisions what slides can do for engineers and scientists. (The rhetorical move of making an assertion and supporting it with evidence is of course used in the humanities as well.) The focus of that work is PowerPoint slides for presentations, but the framework can be applied to a single slide for a poster by stating the assertion and then illustrating it with visual images (or text boxes).
• The infographic on Maria Popova’s “ The Lives of 10 Famous Painters, Visualized as Minimalist Infographic Biographies ” illustrates additional possibilities, although they’re made with more sophisticated software than PowerPoint. Using them as examples, though, will inspire some students to go further than the simpler models described above.
• There are plenty of websites with step-by-step instructions on how to make academic posters using the traditional scientific poster model. (Simply Google “academic posters.”) For our purposes, though, most of their instructions don’t apply–except for their useful explanations for using PowerPoint .
• Chick, Nancy L. (2002). Anthologizing transformation: breaking down students’ ‘private theories’ about poetry . Teaching English in the Two-Year College , 29 .4. 418-423.
• Hallock, Patrice W. (Sept 17, 2012). Using ‘frameworks’ to enhance teaching and learning. Faculty Focus. Magna Publications.
• Hess, George, Tosney, Kathryn, and Liegel, Leon. (2013). Creating effective poster presentations . North Carolina State University.
• Pierce, K. (2013).  Concept maps in philosophy courses. In Socrates’ Wake: A Blog about Teaching Philosophy.
• Shulman, Lee S. (2004). Teaching as community property: Putting an end to pedagogical solitude . Teaching as Community Property: Essays on Higher Education . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 140-144.

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Sarah Schaible

November 23rd, 2021, how to approach formative essays at lse.

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Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

As teachers will tell you, formative essays are the best opportunity to get feedback on your work. This is particularly important if you are studying a qualitative subject. Quantitative courses have more frequent homework assessments, but for any other modules, you only get the opportunity to submit your own work once or twice a term.

Having made the general importance of formatives clear, here are my pieces of advice:

1. Start early

By this, I don’t mean to start writing weeks before the deadline. However, I have found that it pays off to think about the topic early, perhaps once you receive the assignment prompt. This allows you to think about the topic in classes in the back of your head and might give you good ideas later on. Besides, this also means you will be able to clarify any questions.

2. Be strategic

Continuing about topic selection, it is worth thinking about the summative assignment when choosing your topic. This matters especially when your graded assignment is based on coursework, meaning you will submit an extended essay. Often, you will be able to draw and expand on the research you already did during the term. In my Master’s for instance, I submitted outlines and topic proposals for summative essays.

Being strategic also matters when the final assessment takes place in form of a timed exam. Most exams will require you to be strategic and choose topics to specialise in. Therefore, if you find something interesting during the term, you will be able to save yourself a lot of time later if you’ve already written an essay on it.

3. Plan ahead

To avoid stress just before the deadline of the formative, make sure to make a rough plan of when you are going to write your essay. I tend to do readings and then choose a day to sit down and write the essay. This doubles as practice for exams.

4. Prioritise

It often gets to week six or seven of the term and suddenly you have to fit in several assignments with your usual weekly tasks. This is undeniably stressful. To avoid burning out, it is worth considering whether you want to prioritise some tasks over others. Not everything needs to get done at once. It’s okay to do one thing at a time and plan on catching up on other tasks later in the term.

5. Implement feedback

The last step is key in making the most of your assignment. Look at the feedback that is given to you and try to take steps to implement it for future essays. You could, for example, go back to your notes and make changes. If you still have open questions, go to office hours or email your professors. This has often helped me to get an even better understanding.

These strategies have helped me to manage the increased workload in the middle of term. The most important thing to keep in mind: assignment season is temporary. Once your essays are submitted, there will be time to catch up on readings and enjoy more free time again. While making a start on an essay is always daunting, in my experience, completing it is very rewarding.

About the author

Hi, I'm Sarah! I am an LSE BA Anthropology and Law graduate and a current LLM student.

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4 Summative Assessment

Before we explore alternatives to direct instruction, we need a short side conversation about assessment. Remember the wisdom of Yogi Berra: “ If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. ” Direct instruction, more than most models assumes you know where the class is supposed to be going. Another way to frame this is Stephen Covey’s “ begin with the end in mind “. Or in IT terms, what are the deliverables? As an instructor, you need to deliver lessons. But what must the students deliver? Also, what kind of quality assurance is there to verify the students delivered performances to meet the requirements of the course? The educational theory term for these considerations is Summative Assessment.

Summative Assessment occurs at the end of the class, to verify how much each student has learned. Final exams by their nature are summative. In summative assessments, there are no “do overs”. So depending on how much grading weight goes on the final exam (or any other summative assessment), summative assessments can be high stakes. There are European, Asian, and other countries around the world that think some massively high stakes exam at the end of a school year (or even a school career), is the right way to teach. United States education, in general, tends to favor more frequent, and lower stakes assessments. When student diversity is in play, ultra-high stakes assessments are a bad idea. Underneath racial, gender, age, socio-economic, and every other kind of diversity is a more primal sort of cognitive diversity. This cognitive diversity is often called “learning style”. Assume your students come with all sorts of different learning styles. Some prefer to read. Others prefer to listen. Others do better with videos or illustrations. Some need to be hands-on. Anyway, our “layered” instructional tool kit can handle all sorts of cognitive diversity (following sections will show how), but if the quarter grade is based mostly on a single high stakes exam, your outcome measures will make it look like half the class learned nothing at all. Why? Because narrow measures get narrow data. If it’s all an essay test, you lose students uncomfortable with reading or writing. If it’s all a multiple choice test, you lose students who are more creative or hands-on. If it’s all a performance test, even students who basically know the content may freeze up due to performance anxiety.  If you put all your assessment eggs in one basket, prepare to break a lot of eggs!

There is nothing unreasonable about requiring students to demonstrate learning at the end of the quarter. Handing out the equivalent of “participation trophies” to every student does students no favors. Grade inflation has predictably led employers to discount transcripts and grade point averages as measures of student employment-worthiness.  So having an actual grading standard (something for students to live up to), is by far the preferred approach. But to make high standards work for students who start the class in very different places, you need to create multiple pathways up the mountain, so to speak. For diversity education, diversify summative assessments first and foremost. Don’t base more than about 20% of the exam grade on any one thing. Mix and match essays, demonstrations, factual questions, opinion questions, calculations, and recall. Don’t make failure on any one activity tantamount to failure on the whole exam. For complex questions (like essays, demonstrations, or lengthy calculations) give partial credit as appropriate, based on demonstrated partial understanding. Even on a summative assessment like a final exam, recognizing an underlying continuous improvement model is valid. In IT, there is always a “next version”. Schools arbitrarily force quarter grade submission at specific calendar dates, but it’s still a good idea to act as if the student can pick up where they left off in the “next version.” Remember that classes are part of pathways, pathways are part of degree programs, and degree programs are part of lifelong learning. In this greater scheme of things, a given final exam is just one of many milestones.

Making Connections: Instructors Guide for Information Technology Copyright © by Robert Bunge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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