1. Formative and Summative
Evaluation
Suresh Babu G
Assistant Profosser
CTE CPAS Paippad, Kottayam

2. Michael Seriven while discussing the role
of evaluation in 1967, classified
evaluation in two categories of
formative and summative evaluation.

3. Formative Evaluation
• When any education plan is evaluated during its
development stage and corrected accordingly,
then this evaluation is known as formative
evaluation. ie, evaluation during formal stage.
• It evaluate to increase quality, effectiveness,
desirability and utility.
• The aims of formative evaluation is to point out
shortcoming of the plan for
correction to the person
responsible for it.
Class test

4. Definition :
Evaluation taken at varying interval throughout a
course to provide information and feedback that
will help improve the quality of student learning
and the quality of the course itself.
Goal :
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.
Example : Asking students to
submit 1 or 2 sentences
identifying the main point
of a lecture

6. Characteristics of Formative
Evaluation
 It relatively focuses on molecular analysis.
 It is cause seeking.
 It is interested in the broader experiences of the
programme users.
 It’s design is exploratory and flexible.
 It tends to ignore the local effects of a particular
programme
 It seeks to identify influential variables.
 It requires analysis of instructional material for
mapping the hierarchical structure of the learning
tasks and actual teaching of the course for a certain
period.

7. Summative Evaluation
A summative evaluation (sometimes referred to as
external) is a method of judging the worth of a
program activities (summation) . The focus is on
the outcome or the final product.

8. Definition
Evaluation taken by students at the end of a
unit or semester to demonstrate the ‘sum’ of
what they have and have not learned.
Goal
To evaluate student learning at the end of an
instructional unit by comparing it against some
standard or benchmark.
Example : Assigning marks or a
grade to a final exam.

9. Characteristics of Summative
Evaluation
It tends to the use of well-defined evaluation
designs.
It focuses on analysis.
It provides descriptive analysis.
It trends to stress local effects.
It is unobtrusive and no reactive as far as
possible.
It is concerned with broad range of issues.
It’s instruments are reliable and valid.

10. Difference between Formative
and Summative Evaluation
Characteristics Formative Summative
Purpose To monitor projects of
students by feedback
To check final status of
students
Content focus Detailed narrow scope General broad scope
Methods Daily assignments
observation
Final test projects
Frequency Daily Weekly, quarterly etc.
Role To improve learning
allows teachers to make
decisions and monitor
their instructions based
on students’
performance
To predict & judge
students’ performance,
give grades and
determine if the content
being taught was
retained
Relation to instruction Occurs during instruction Occurs after instruction