Formative assessment in digital resources

Abstract

This study investigates to what extent formative assessment is promoted in two digital resources. The motivation of this study was to examine and gain knowledge on how formative assessment in digital teaching materials can support the teacher and the pupils in language learning. The research question is as follows: To what extent do the English digital resources in the textbook series Enter 8-10 & Echo promote formative assessment?

To answer the research question, the study used qualitative research. The data was analyzed and organized by using thematic analysis, which resulted in the themes “self-assessment”, “peer assessment” and “automated assessment”. The themes include data from tasks from the two digital resources. The theme “teacher” with the subchapter “lesson plans” include findings exclusively from Echo. The data included are derived from both the teacher and the pupil’s version.

The findings indicate that the two digital resources promote formative assessment to a differing and varying extent. The findings show that in some themes there is a big difference between the two digital resources. Thus, the research question is discussed and answered both as a whole and individually to the themes and the respective digital resource. The concluding remark is that the findings show that Enter 8-10 promotes formative assessment to a great extent both for teachers and pupils. The pupil version of Echo promotes formative assessment to a limited extent. However, if the digital resource is used alongside the lesson plans, the teacher’s version promotes formative assessment to a sufficient extent.

Keywords: formative assessment, assessment, digital resources, feedback, automated assessment, self-assessment, peer assessment.