12 Learning Objectives and Formative Assessments

Learning objectives should not only guide instruction but also assessments. To discover whether your learners are understanding the content and topics you’ve designed for your course, formative assessments should be designed to assess learner progress toward the objective(s).

As you learned in a previous chapter, formative assessments are designed to assess a learner’s learning in the middle of a lesson or module. Instead of waiting until the end of a module or a lesson to determine if the material was absorbed, formative assessments can help you know a learner’s current progress and understanding and adjust accordingly.

If you’ve written learning objectives that are measurable, it should be easier to design formative assessments that align to your learning objectives.

Use the following questions to help you create formative assessments that align with your learning objectives:

• Does your formative assessment measure student progress towards the learning objective(s)?
• Are there logical steps students must take towards mastering the learning objective(s)? Are those steps assessed in the formative assessment?
• Are students on track and meeting those steps towards the learning objective(s) at the expected rate?

If students are not progressing towards mastering the objective(s), the instruction should be adjusted to accommodate and help the learners get back on track. By including formative assessments that align with measurable learning objectives, you are better preparing your learners to be successful in your course. You can read more about aligning your formative assessments in the article “Aligning Objectives and Assessments,” published by the University of North Florida.