Instructional design
Summative assessment is used as an evaluation technique in instructional design. It can provide information on the efficacy of an educational unit of study. Summative evaluation judges the worth, or value, of an educational unit of study at its conclusion. Summative assessments also serve the purpose of evaluating student learning. In schools, these assessments can be in a variety of formats: traditional written tests, essays, presentations, discussions, or reports using other formats. There are several factors for designers of summative assessments to take into account. A summative assessment must have validity. That is, it must evaluate the standards or learning objectives that were taught over the course of the unit. Second, a summative assessment must be reliable: the results of the assessment should be consistent. In other words, the assessment should be designed to be as objective as possible, though this can be challenging in certain disciplines. Summative assessments are usually given at the end of a unit, and they are usually high stakes with the grade being weighted more heavily than formative assessments taken during the unit. Many educators and school administrators use data from summative assessments to help identify learning gaps. This information can come from both summative assessments taken in the classroom or from district-wide, school-wide or statewide standardized tests. Once educators and administrators have student summative assessment data, many districts place students into educational interventions or enrichment programs. Intervention programs are designed to teach students skills in which they are not yet proficient in order to help them make progress and lessen learning gaps. Enrichment programs are designed to challenge students who have mastered many skills and have high summative assessment scores.Educator performance
Summative assessment can be used to refer to assessment of educational faculty by their respective supervisor, with the object of measuring all teachers on the same criteria to determine the level of their performance. In this context summative assessment is meant to meet the school or district's needs for teacher accountability. The evaluation usually takes the shape of a form, and consists of check lists and occasionally narratives. Areas evaluated includeMethods
Methods of summative assessment aim to summarize overall learning at the completion of the course or unit. * Questionnaires * Surveys * Interviews * Observations * Testing (specific test created by the teacher or establishment made to include all points of a unit or specific information taught in a given time frame) * Projects (a culminating project that synthesizes knowledge)See also
* Examination *References
{{reflist Educational evaluation methods Educational psychology School terminology