 Let's look at some examples. An example of a formative assessment that is useful for assessing facts and also assessing students' ability to reflect is called the Background Knowledge Probe. You ask either open-ended or multiple-choice questions about students' prior knowledge and if you want their beliefs about the subject matter. For example, you can give them a list of terms or ask them to rate each one, such as I've never heard of this, I know a little bit about this, or I know a lot about this. Be sure to tell your students that they won't be graded for their answers. The answers will only be used to guide instruction. If you and your students have access to a reliable internet connection in your classroom, you can use polling software, such as Kahoot or Poll Everywhere, to gather their responses quickly and anonymously. You can then take the information you learned about what students do, know and what they don't know, and use their answers to plan your unit or course. Another example of a formative assessment is called the Application Card. You do this one after you have already covered course material. In it, you ask students to write down a way they could apply a concept you give them in real life. For example, in a sociology course, the instructor could distribute index cards to the students with the word community on one side and ask each student or small groups of students to write down an example of how the concept of community applies to their own lives. Students might write something such as, community is important to me because of my family and neighborhood. I know that my community helps me succeed in school and with my friends, such as when we celebrate weddings or holidays together. This demonstrates that students understand the concept of community. A potential incorrect answer here would be, community is good. If students only wrote this type of answer, the instructor would probably want to spend more time on the concept in the next class. A third type of formative assessment is quizzes, graded or ungraded, that can be offered during class or as homework to be done online. Here is an example of an online quiz question that students can do as homework before they come to class. Many learning management systems allow instructors to create these quizzes. These types of questions allow students to check their understanding before class. A fourth type of formative assessment is group problem-solving activities. Group problem-solving activities means that you put students in groups and give them a problem to solve, a case study to discuss, or a discussion question to work through. You walk around the room and listen to the groups and observe if they are getting the answers correct. You can also answer any questions that they have. This informal information can then be used to plan future classes. Formative assessment is different from summative assessment, which is used at the end of a unit or term, and the purpose is to assign grades. When you give a summative assessment, you won't use student scores to decide what you will teach next. They just get a grade and that's it. We typically use summative assessment at the end of a unit or the course. So what should we do in our classes? It's best to use both formative and summative assessments in your EMI course. As you plan your course, you can consider where you can include both types while keeping in mind factors that will affect your choices, such as course content, class size, time restrictions, or scheduling demands. For many instructors, the idea of formative assessment is new and something they have not tried before. Many people are more used to giving only summative assessments and moving on, but I encourage you all to try giving formative assessments in your class and using the information that you gather to plan instruction so that students can meet your learning objectives.