Secondary school teachers' use of online formative assessment during COVID-19 lockdown: Experiences and lessons learned

Sep 15, 2026

Uploaded by Levi

During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, secondary school teachers had to transfer teaching and assessment to online environments. Formative assessment (FA) was seen as a way to engage, guide, and monitor student learning, yet evidence was limited on how teachers could run the full FA process online. Using mixed methods with 50 teachers in an FA learning network, the study examined online FA practices, challenges, opportunities, and lessons to inform future (blended) assessment.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Formative assessment in COVID-19

Methods

Data sources and analysis

Results

Online implementation of FA phases

Discussion

Implications for future blended practice

Received: 16 June 2021 Revised: 28 April 2022 Accepted: 15 May 2022 DOI: 10.1111/jcal.12699 ARTI CLE Secondary school teachers' use of online formative assessment during COVID-19 lockdown: Experiences and lessons learned Maria Joanna Veugen | Judith Theresia Maria Gulikers | Perry den Brok Education and Learning Sciences, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands Correspondence Maria Joanna Veugen, Wageningen University and Research, Education and Learning Sciences, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN, Wageningen, The Netherlands. [Email:](Email: marijke.veugen@wur.nl)[ marijke.veugen@wur.nl](Email: marijke.veugen@wur.nl) Funding information Government of the Netherlands, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Grant/Award Number: 113214 Abstract Introduction: During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, teachers had to shift their teaching and assessment to online. Formative assessment (FA) can help teachers to engage, guide and monitor students' (online) learning. However, more knowledge is needed of how teachers could use the full FA process online. Methods: In this study data from 50 secondary school teachers, who taught different grade levels and subjects and joined a FA learning network that started before and continued during the lockdown, were collected. The study investigates how they used online FA practices differently than face-to-face FA, what challenges and opportunities they experienced in online FA and what lessons they learned and intended to keep. This mixed methods study used data from a questionnaire, interviews and webinars that were segmented, coded and analysed. Results: Results showed that many teachers implemented new FA strategies and adopted, more often than in their face-to-face practice, all the five phases of the FA process in an aligned matter in online FA. Teachers indicated opportunities in stimulating student engagement and guiding and monitoring student learning more at an individual level in the online FA process, but also experienced challenges, mainly in lack of interaction online. Discussion: The sudden and necessary shift to online FA, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, challenged teachers to more fundamentally reconsider their assessment practices and assumptions. Teachers intended to make use of these learned lessons to improve their future (blended) FA practice. KEYWOR DS formative assessment cycle, online formative assessment, online learning, secondary education, teacher development 1 | INTRODUCTION Since the COVID-19 lockdown periods in 2020, online education has made a tremendous transformation. Schools were physically closed worldwide for certain periods and students were taught by their teachers online in virtual classrooms (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2020; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2020) . Secondary school teachers had to suddenly shift their teaching practice to online, which resulted in adapted lesson plans and alternative ways to monitor students' learning processes (König et al., 2020; OECD, 2020) . This was also the case in the Netherlands, in which all This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. education had to shift suddenly to online and all teachers had to adapt their digital skills, even the ones who were not used in doing so before, to educate their students via Zoom or other platforms (Van der Spoel et al., 2020) . Teachers had to design this online education within a week and were not guided in how they should do so at the start of the lockdown. This sudden shift to online teaching came with its challenges for teachers, especially in engaging all students and guiding and monitoring

FAQs

What problem did the study address about online formative assessment during COVID-19 lockdowns?

It examined how secondary school teachers could use the full formative assessment process online, not just isolated practices.

How was the study conducted?

It used mixed methods based on data from 50 secondary school teachers collected through a questionnaire, interviews, and webinars, which were segmented, coded, and analyzed.

What were the main opportunities and challenges teachers reported with online formative assessment?

Teachers reported opportunities in stimulating student engagement and supporting learning more individually, while challenges centered mainly on limited online interaction.

Sep 15, 2026

Uploaded by Levi