Formative assessment plays a crucial role in the teaching and learning process, allowing teachers and students to gather evidence of learning and make necessary adjustments to instruction and support. Supported by Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, we at Turn.io have developed the Formative Assessment (FA) Playbook.
To make formative assessment more engaging and accessible, this Formative Assessment(FA) Playbook was developed as a chat service tool using the WhatsApp. This tool aims to assist educational organisations and teachers in conducting formative assessments more interactively for students.
With approximately 2 billion active users across 180 countries, WhatsApp offers an accessible and cross-platform solution, particularly beneficial for students in developing countries with limited internet access, making the FA playbook and accessible tool to use for Education organisations.
To develop the FA Playbook, insights were gathered from two prominent education companies, Rising Academies and EEDI. Rising Academies focuses on providing quality education in Sierra Leone by creating engaging lesson plans for teachers and high-quality learning materials for students. EEDI, on the other hand, is a UK-based platform designed to assist teachers in identifying student mathematics misconceptions through diagnostic multiple-choice questions.
In the initial iteration of the FA Playbook, the focus was narrowed down to address two fundamental questions:
- How do we upload formative assessment questions into a chatbot?
- How do we score the formative assessment on the chatbot?
By addressing these questions, the FA Playbook aims to streamline the process of integrating formative assessment into the chatbot, ensuring a seamless experience for both teachers and students.
The key message of the FA Playbook is to provide educational organisations with a powerful tool for developing education chatbots specifically tailored for formative testing purposes. By leveraging the widespread use of WhatsApp and its user-friendly interface, the FA Playbook aims to enhance student motivation and engagement while positively impacting their achievement.
Formative assessment has been recognised and supported by international organisations like UNESCO and the World Bank, particularly in developing countries, as it promotes effective teaching and learning practices. Research indicates that formative assessment testing can lead to significant gains in student achievement, with effect sizes ranging from 0.4 to 0.7, as demonstrated in a meta-analysis of 500 studies.
The FA Playbook's chat service tool on the WhatsApp platform opens up exciting possibilities for educational organisations and teachers to implement formative assessment in a more engaging and accessible manner. By harnessing the power of chatbots and the global reach of WhatsApp, the FA Playbook aims to revolutionise formative testing and contribute to improved learning outcomes for students worldwide.
If you are interested in trying the Formative Assessment Playbook, get in touch with the us at impact@turn.io
