Making learning happen: The missing link between formative and summative

To a small cohort of students on the Dubai campus, we introduced a scaffolded formative assessment on a second-year quantitative module. The purpose of the formative assessment was to guide students towards the summative one and to improve their performance, engagement, understanding and sense of support.

At the end of the module, a questionnaire was conducted to collect students’ feedback on the formative assessment, which was followed by a focus group to investigate students’ learning experience. In both instances, the hoped improvement in students’ understanding, quantitative skills, and learning experience seems to be attained.

However, there was a missing link on how the formative assessment prepared the students for the summative one, since performance was not adequately improved. Given that more than two third of students did not feel sufficiently supported, which was attributed to the difference in their structural design, we propose additional mapping to fill this gap.