Formative assessment strategies for students' conceptions—The potential of learning analytics

Abstract

Formative assessment is considered to be helpful in students' learning support and teaching design. Following Aufschnaiter's and Alonzo's framework, formative assessment practices of teachers can be subdivided into three practices: eliciting evidence, interpreting evidence and responding. Since students' conceptions are judged to be important for meaningful learning across disciplines, teachers are required to assess their students' conceptions. The focus of this article lies on the discussion of learning analytics for supporting the assessment of students' conceptions in class. The existing and potential contributions of learning analytics are discussed related to the named formative assessment framework in order to enhance the teachers' options to consider individual students' conceptions. We refer to findings from biology and computer science education on existing assessment tools and identify limitations and potentials with respect to the assessment of students' conceptions.

Influence of self‐assessment and conditional metaconceptual knowledge on students' self‐regulation of intuitive and scientific conceptions of evolution

“…Existing studies cover a wide range of self‐assessed content but fail to focus on students' conceptions. Congruently, many teaching suggestions include an assessment of students' conceptions by the teachers (Hartelt et al, 2022; Morrison & Lederman, 2003; Stanja et al, 2023; Werth & Allchin, 2020), but seldom by the students themselves (cf. González Galli & Meinardi, 2011; Gresch, 2020).…”

Evaluating the Impact of Learning Management Systems in Geographical Education in Primary School: An Experimental Study on the Importance of Learning Analytics-Based Feedback

“…In particular, this LMS offers features to design and conduct different kinds of activities and concurrently monitor their performance on a daily basis. This allows educators and students to track learners' activity completion and the academic achieve-ments attained [13,30]. In fact, the significant information gathered enables teachers to predict students' academic performance [10,12,31].…”

“…In the specific case of social science, different authors propose that the assessment process should be integrated as any other class activity to regulate and enhance student learning, address mistakes, and make informed decisions [9,23]. Thus, the use of LAs is aligned with this purpose, as it enables more effective monitoring of learning and the contextual factors influencing it [8,10,30].…”

Learning analytics and assessment: Emerging research trends, promises and future opportunities

“…Importantly for strengthening the relationship between learning analytics and assessment, learning analytic methods and findings from both studies can inform formative assessment activities in similar learning tasks in the future. In the remaining two studies in this group, Stanja et al (2022) reviewed prior research on student conceptions and discussed future opportunities for using learning analytics to assess students' conceptions. The authors indicated that learning analytics techniques for unstructured and multimodal student data hold the potential to further assess and elicit students' conceptions.…”