The Integrating Formative Assessment in Hybrid Pedagogy in Higher Education: From Theory to Practice

Abstract

Educational policies on teaching, learning, and assessment have been reexamined and redefined under the influence of emerging theories and research findings, as well as various political, cultural, and social changes, particularly intensified after the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. Newly created online and hybrid teaching and learning environments spurred policymakers and educators to adapt the existing educational practices to these educational contexts and improve the quality of teaching they provide. This paper focuses on the importance of creating a meaningful assessment framework in higher education thateffectively responds to the demands of hybrid pedagogy. It aims at providing an instructional assessment framework that supports not only assessment of learning but also assessment as/for learning, reporting on the case study researching the correlation between utilizing formative assessment practices and learning outcomes. The case study involves three groups of students who attended the English Syntax course - one experimental and two control groups. The research is based on the analysis of the results obtained from two midterm tests done by all students, and from ten continuous assessment tasks done by the experimental group. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the analysis of the results, and the paired sample t-test results show that there is a significantly higher difference between the scores obtained on midterm test 1 and midterm test 2 by the Experimental group than by the control groups, which leads to the conclusion that there is a positive correlation between learning outcomes and the integration of formative assessment in teaching and learning processes.