A Review of Tools and Techniques for Data-Enabled Formative Assessment

The purpose of this literature review is to understand the current state of research on tools that collect data for the purpose of formative assessment. We were interested in identifying the types of data collected by these tools, how these data were processed, and how the processed data were presented to the instructor or student for the purpose of formative assessment. We identified two categories of data: machine graded and activity stream data. The data were processed using three methods: unprocessed activity streams, descriptive data analysis, and data mining. Processed data were presented to students through reports and real-time feedback, and to instructors through reports and visual dashboards.