The use of digital technologies to enhance formative assessment processes

This contribution addresses the theme of technology for formative assessment in the mathematics classroom. Taking a design-based research approach within the European project FaSMEd, we focus on the ways connected classroom technology may support formative assessment strategies in whole class activities. The theoretical background will be based on a three-dimensional model that relates the enactment of different formative assessment strategies by the various agents (teacher, peers, and the student) to different functionalities of technology. The study is based on design experiments, developed through the use of a connected classroom technology (IDM-TClass) through which students may share their productions, opinions and reflections with their classmates and the teacher during or at the end of a mathematical activity. Among other features, IDM-TClass enables the teacher to create polls, submit them to the students, gather their answers and show the results in real time. The paper discusses how polls can be used during classroom activities to foster the activation of formative assessment strategies. As a result of the design based research, we will present our classification of polls according to their contents and aims. Data analysis will be conducted on qualitative base and different ways of structuring classroom discussions and patterns of formative assessment strategies will be discussed.