Talking about assessment the thought word coming to your mind his “grade” but I would like to share with you the story of the Italian word for grade. In Italian language "grade" is "voto" and the story of this word could be very, very, interesting It is a very peculiar word, because its meaning spans from the vow to a divinity, to the vote, that is the expression of a preference in an election, to the grade that is the summary result at the end of a process of assessment. Why does it have so many different meanings? Because if we look at the origin of the Latin word "votum", we will find the Indo-European root "vagh". It has a very interesting root, linked to the topics of the sacred but it’s not very clear when and how, in the history of language, this root started accompanying the development of words that in time strayed from the topic of the sacred. It went instead towards topics, for example, related to “expressing a preference" or “giving an evaluation”. Such a rich journey in the history of our language, of the word “voto” should make us reflect. When we talk about grades, we are talking about that spark that can suddenly cause, on the learning scene, an explosion of feelings, sensations and also a system of values that may have may have been hidden in the background until that moment. Grades should not be taken lightly. The assessment is a very important part of the teaching and learning process and, therefore, it must be the product of a careful design process. There’s even a discipline called docimology that deals with all the aspects tied to the topic of evaluation. Naturally, we will only have the chance to quickly give a glance at this to identify which are its key topics and take some cues for our design process. It is a world that is constantly evolving, and it truly deserves our interest. When we think about assessment, the first image that comes to our mind is the “final examinations”, written or spoken, to evaluate the results that students achieved. But assessment processes can help us in many different phases of the teaching and learning experience. In the initial stage, in fact, assessment can help us understand what’s the starting point of each student and the class as a whole. Then, an assessment can help us monitor the progress of students and the class. But also evaluate the efficacy of the actions we are carrying out. Finally, at the end of the journey, it can help us observe whether the Intended Learning Outcomes have been reached or not. In this case we are facing three different types of assessment: we can define the first one as diagnostic, as it allows us to effectively carry out a sort of diagnosis of the situation; the second case, instead, is formative assessment. It is formative because it aims at supporting the formative process, providing feedback to both students and teachers. Lastly, summative assessment is basically the final evaluation of what students achieved, assessing in particular, if students reached the Intended Learning Outcomes. We’ll focus on these last two areas of the evaluation process. First of all, these two perspectives of evaluation have two very different objectives: the formative assessment aims to provide feedback, to students and teachers, on the path towards the Intended Learning Outcomes. Summative assessment, on the other hand, aims at summarizing, to create an overview of the students’ achievement of the Intended Learning Outcomes. Consequently, the formative assessment is more effective when it is repeated throughout the teaching and learning experience. It can even be repeated daily, at every meeting, at every lecture or at the completion of a short topic. Moreover, a formative assessment is usually done quickly and briefly, to focus on a small part of the Intended Learning Outcomes. Summative assessment, instead, is normally carried out at the end of a learning path, or at the end of a significant part of a course. To be able to carry out formative assessments quickly in medium and large classes, it can be helpful to use technological tools such as Student Response Systems. They are online tools that allow us to create tests, quizzes, small problems and exercises that students can analyze from their devices: smartphones, tablets or PCs. They allow students to rapidly solve those problems in class, and teachers can carry out a quick summary of the status of the class giving directions to each student on their progress. Summative assessments, on the other hand, generally require a fairly long time, because they are done at the end of an educational path and aim at analyzing a wide array of Intended Learning Outcomes. Formative assessments differ from the summative ones also for their level of formality, meaning that when we activate formative assessments in class, we generally don’t worry so much about being careful that nobody is copying or accessing supporting material. The aim is to create interactive dynamics and provide feedback to guide students in answering correctly. We tend to be less formal dividing students in pair or small groups that together answer the questions. This cannot happen during summative assessments, which are characterized by a high level of formality. In the debate on the different assessment strategies there’s often contrast between formative and summative assessment. This is because formative assessments can be described as the activation of all those strategies that can foster dialogue and interaction among students and teachers, and that can lead to learning innovation processes centered on students. On the other hand summative assessments are often seen as the expression of a more traditional style of teaching, following processes rarely centered on the students. Both assessment strategies are extremely important for the effectiveness of an educational path and they should be the result of a careful design phase. This is the reason why it makes no sense to forcefully compare these two perspectives. Benedetto Vertecchi, one of the pillars of Italian docimology, explains this very well. “In the current debate on evaluations, we are seeing forced and frivolous oppositions among assessment functions. For example, formative assessment is considered “good” compared to the summative one that is described as “bad” because it leads to judgements on the skill level reached by students. None of this makes sense: all types of assessments are important and none are good or bad. If anything, the problem is to find a way during all the assessment phases to provide useful and real information that can guide academic work." We’ll now wrap up the main points: an assessment can have many different objectives. In particular, we have focused on the so-called formative assessments, whose main objective is to provide feedback to students and teachers towards the Intended Learning Outcomes. The other type of assessment, called summative, aims on the other hand at achieving a final overview, at the end of an educational path, that can document if and how the Intended Learning Outcomes have been reached.