Yom Kippur and Pedagogy
I’m a college professor, and we talk a lot about strategies for teaching and helping our students. In this context, we use two types of assessment: formative assessment and summative assessment. Summative assessment is when you look everything over and give the student a grade. Formative assessment, on the other hand, is when you look at the student’s work, well before the end of the term and say “you didn’t get this answer right”, “your writing here isn’t in the right format”, or “you need more citations to support this assertion.” This type of assessment is how we learn. If you’re self-motivated, you can learn just fine without summative assessment. You don’t need grades to learn. You do need formative assessment. Someone (which could be yourself!) needs to look at your work so far and say “This part looks good. This part needs work. And over here, it seems like you’re not really getting the concept we’re working on.” Without formative assessment, you don’t know what you still need t...