A review of tertiary formative assessment using digital technology in the past decade: what has been facilitated?

Abstract

Assessments serve a pivotal component of any teaching and learning system, especially when they motivate and enhance better teaching and learning. Together with the seamless permeation of digital technology in universities, formative assessment(FA) using digital technology has been increasingly used at the tertiary level of educaiton in recent years. FA using digital technology plays an important role in the quality assurance of teaching and learning (and hence assessment) in nuniversities. How has the emerging digital technology efficiently served and enhance the formative teaching and learning in universities in the past decade? This study explores this issue by conducting a systematic review of peer-reviewed empirical papers on formative assessment using digital technology in universitites over the past decade. It is found that mainly four major aspects of FA has been facilitated by the emerging digital technology applied in higher education in past ten years. Keywords: formative assessment; digital technology; higher education