The Illogical Leap to Summative Without Formative: Incorporating Low-Risk Assessments to Better Serve High-Risk Students.

Nationally, students fail anatomy and physiology courses at some of the highest rates compared with other undergraduate-level courses. Formative evaluation guides future learning by assessing the quality of student achievement while the student is still learning. Formative assessments were introduced in an undergraduate human anatomy course intended for students majoring in various allied health fields. In this research, the formative assessments were utilized throughout the course, leading to each of the five summative assessments. The results were analyzed using a partial correlation and regression to establish whether any relationships existed between the formative and summative assessments, and we looked for any significant impact on the summative test scores. The results suggest that at-risk students can be identified using formative assessment before the first summative assessment in the class, increasing the likelihood that these students will successfully complete the course. The implementation of formative assessments in college science courses should be considered a way to inform the instructors of student learning gaps and increase student success in the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]