Black and Wiliam (1998a, 1998b) demonstrate that formative assessment is one of the most effective strategies for promoting student learning. Since the publication of their reviews, formative assessment has gained increasing international prominence in both policy and practice. However, despite this early innovation, the theory and practice of formative assessment are currently at a crossroads....

One of the challenges in the contemporary education is improving learner’s learning capability during the learning period through formative assessment in virtual learning environments. The formative assessment process requires learner to be active participants in the learning process by communicating and interacting with the instructor. The formative assessment process accommodates learner resp...

Formative assessment was first used by Scriven (1967), but studies focused on formative assessment in ESL and EFL classes started in 2000. Formative assessment is integrated in learning and teaching, so a great part of classroom assessment is formative. However, classroom assessment has been not defined clearly, as most of the texts about this type of assessment define it in terms of its format...

First year biology courses at the University of Sydney have traditionally incorporated assessment activities requiring students to write reports. Despite increases in the size of the student cohort during the past 10 years (n=1000 – 1600), we have maintained the philosophy that writing is integral to learning biology (Moore, 1993) and to the development of generic skills. The curriculum therefo...

Current computer-based tools for writing instruction show high scoring accuracy but uncertain instructional efficacy. One explanation is that these systems may not effectively communicate valid and appropriate formative feedback. In this paper, we describe an exploratory method for developing feedback algorithms that are grounded in writing pedagogy. The resulting threshold algorithms are shown...