Exploring Undergraduate Students' Abilities to Collect and Interpret Formative Assessment Data

Formative assessment has been proven to be highly effective in improving student understanding. Nevertheless, many instructors struggle to engage in this practice, particularly when working in large-enrollment classrooms. To facilitate and foster the implementation of formative assessment in chemistry courses, undergraduate students at our institution have been trained to gather and analyze formative assessment data in real time in different classrooms. These "Learning Researchers" generate written reports that instructors use to inform their practice. In this article, we characterize what learning researchers involved in this project tended to notice in their observations and the nature of the interpretations that they built. The findings of our qualitative study provide insights into the affordances and potential constraints of using undergraduate students to collect and interpret formative assessment data to inform instructional practices in large-classroom environments.