Plickers as an Online Formative Assessment to Improve Secondary School Students’ English Learning

Abstract

With the spread of the worldwide pandemic-Covid 19, English teaching and learning needs to be directly integrated into an online process, including its formative assessment process. As a planned process, formative assessment that provides non-evaluative feedback must be synchronized too. Plickers is one of the technology-embedded formative assessments that helps the students to have immediate feedback in their learning. This study is intended to find the students’ perception on plickers as an online formative assessment in ameliorating secondary school students’ English learning. By conducting a mixed-method research design, a questionnaire and interview were used to gain the data from 341 Junior High Schools’ students in Semarang, Indonesia. The study findings showed that students realized the significance of formative assessment as they got the feedback through plickers. Moreover, the use of plickers raised the students’ English learning and created an innovative and stimulating English learning environment. It concludes that the use of plickers as an online formative assessment was positively perceived by students. This encourages the other English instructor to integrate technology in implementing formative assessment in English classes.