Brett LindenbergFormative assessment techniques are short, low-stakes checks you run during training to see what learners understand while there is still time to fix it. In corporate training, the useful ones take a few minutes and feed a decision: a pre-assessment that lets experienced staff skip ahead, one diagnostic question before you move on, short retrieval quizzes, confidence checks, exit tickets, teach-backs, scenario decisions, and observed practice. A check counts as formative only when someone acts on the result, by reteaching, sending a learner to more practice, or moving on. In the demo below, pick the privacy question that is still unclear, and the exit ticket opens a matching worked example.
What makes an assessment formative
Three things have to happen. You collect evidence of what learners understand, you interpret it, and you or the learner change the next step because of it. An ungraded end-of-module quiz that nobody reviews skips the last two steps, so it changes nothing. For a fuller definition and the difference from summative assessment, see what formative assessment is.
The research case started in schools. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam's 1998 review, Assessment and Classroom Learning, found firm evidence that changes which strengthen the frequent feedback students get about their learning produce substantial learning gains. Most of that evidence comes from classrooms, so treat it as a strong starting point for workplace training and check the results in your own programs.
Where formative checks fit among corporate training assessments
Corporate training uses several kinds of assessment, and each answers a different question. Formative assessment is the one that happens during the training.
| Assessment | When | Question it answers | Where to read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Training needs assessment | Before you design the training | What does each role need to learn? | Training needs assessment |
| Pre-assessment | Start of a course | What does this learner already know? | Technique 1 below |
| Formative assessment | During the course | What do learners understand now, and what should happen next? | This guide |
| Summative assessment | End of a course | Did the learner meet the standard? | Learning assessment strategies |
| Competence check on the job | After the course | Can the person do the task at work? | Training matrix template |
| Program evaluation | After the program | Did the training change results? | Training evaluation methods |
10 formative assessment techniques for corporate training
Each technique below says what it is, how to run it in a live session or a video course, and what to do with the result.
1. Pre-assessment questions
Ask a few questions before the content that teaches the answers. Learners who already know the material can skip that section. Everyone else starts the section knowing what to look for. In five experiments by Richland, Kornell, and Kao (2009), participants who answered questions about an essay before reading it scored higher on a later test than participants who got extra reading time, even on the questions they had answered wrong at first.
In a video course, put the questions at the start and use the answer to route the learner: a correct answer jumps past the section, and a wrong answer plays it. Do not grade the pre-assessment. If your procedure requires every learner to complete the full training, keep the questions to focus attention and turn off the skip.
2. One diagnostic question before you move on
At the point where the next section depends on this one, ask a single multiple-choice question, often called a hinge question. Write each wrong option from a real mistake that learners make, so every wrong answer tells you which mistake it was. Decide before the session what result lets you move on.
Live, collect answers with a show of hands, answer cards, or a polling tool. In a video, the question pauses playback, and a wrong answer can send the learner back to the explanation. After the first group finishes, look at how the answers split across options: one popular wrong option points to a teaching problem in that section.
3. Short retrieval quizzes
Ask a few questions that make learners recall what they learned, during the course and again days later. In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 experiments, students who took recall tests remembered more after 2 days and after 1 week than students who restudied the same passages, although restudying gave better recall after 5 minutes and made students more confident. A 2017 meta-analysis by Adesope, Trevisan, and Sundararajan found practice tests more beneficial for learning than restudying and every other comparison condition in the studies it reviewed.
Keep the quizzes short and low stakes, and show the correct answer after each question. A two-minute video with three questions, sent a week after the workshop, works as a retrieval check. Our guide on how to create an interactive video quiz covers question writing and setup.
4. Confidence checks
After a knowledge question, ask "How sure are you?" on a short scale. The pair of answers sorts learners into four groups:
- Correct and sure: move on.
- Correct and unsure: give more practice.
- Wrong and unsure: reteach.
- Wrong and sure: fix first, because this learner will act on the wrong belief at work.
The last group responds well to feedback. Butterfield and Metcalfe (2001) found that errors made with high confidence were the most likely to be corrected on a retest after people saw the correct answer. Live, you can run the check as "four corners": learners stand in the corner of the room that matches their confidence, then explain their choice to the others there. In a video, follow a multiple-choice question with a rating or Likert scale question.
5. Exit tickets and the muddiest point
At the end of a session, ask one or two short prompts: "What is still unclear?" (the muddiest point) and "What is the most important thing you learned?" (the minute paper). Both appear among the classroom assessment techniques that Thomas Angelo and K. Patricia Cross collected for college teachers. Their handbook, Classroom Assessment Techniques (2nd edition, 1993), describes 50 of them, and a third edition by Angelo and Todd Zakrajsek appeared in 2024.
Read the answers within a day, group them, and open the next session or send a follow-up that addresses the most common confusion. In a video course, use a free-response question at the end, or offer the likely confusions as buttons that each open a worked example, as the demo at the top of this page does.
6. Teach-back
Ask the learner to explain the concept in their own words, as they would to a customer or a new colleague. A multiple-choice question shows whether someone can recognize the right answer. A teach-back shows whether they can produce it. Give the reviewer a short list of the points a good explanation must include.
Live, run it in pairs: one person explains while the other checks the list. In a video, use a free-response question, or a voice or video response question where the learner records an answer of up to 120 seconds for someone to review later.
7. Scenario decisions
Show a realistic situation, such as a customer asking for an exception, and ask what the learner would do. Each choice plays out its consequence. The path a learner takes shows which judgment they get wrong, and a scenario tests application in a way a recall question cannot.
In a video, build each option as a branch with video branching. When a learner picks a weak option, show the consequence and the reasoning, then give them a second scenario of the same type. Our guide to scenario-based training covers how to write them.
8. Think-pair-share
This technique is for live and virtual sessions. Pose a question, give learners a set time to think alone, then a few minutes to discuss with a partner, then ask some pairs to share with the group. While pairs talk, the facilitator listens for misconceptions to address in the share round. In a virtual session, use breakout rooms for the pair step.
9. Observation with a checklist
For tasks people perform, watch them practice and mark a checklist of observable steps, then give feedback right away. The observation is formative when it happens during the learning period, before the final sign-off, so the learner can try again. Once the learner passes, the final observation becomes evidence of competence. The training matrix guide shows where to record it, and the ISO 9001 auditing guidance it cites lists observation as one way to check that training worked.
10. Practice recordings with rubric feedback
Learners record a practice sales pitch, customer call, or equipment walkthrough. A peer or manager reviews it against a short rubric and replies with specific feedback. Keep the feedback on the task. In Kluger and DeNisi's 1996 meta-analysis of 607 effect sizes, feedback improved performance on average (d = 0.41), but more than one third of the feedback interventions lowered performance. Feedback helped less as it pulled attention toward the person and away from the task. "Your second question came before you confirmed the customer's goal" is task feedback, while "You seem nervous" points at the person.
Formative assessment techniques compared
| Technique | When to use it | What you learn | Typical decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-assessment | Start of a module | What each learner already knows | Skip or play a section |
| Diagnostic question | Before a section that builds on this one | Which mistake the group makes | Reteach or move on |
| Retrieval quiz | During the course and days later | What learners can recall | Schedule more practice |
| Confidence check | After key questions | Who is wrong and sure | Fix confident errors first |
| Exit ticket | End of a session | What is still unclear | Plan the follow-up |
| Teach-back | After a concept learners must explain | Whether learners can produce the answer | Coach on missing points |
| Scenario decision | When judgment matters | Which judgment learners get wrong | Give another scenario |
| Think-pair-share | Live or virtual sessions | How learners reason out loud | Address misconceptions in the group |
| Observation checklist | Practice of a physical or system task | Which steps the learner misses | Practice again before sign-off |
| Practice recording | Conversations and presentations | How the learner performs the skill | Targeted feedback and another attempt |
How to act on formative results
Write down the decision rule before you collect the answers, for example "if most of the group picks option C, I re-explain the exception process before the role-play." Without a rule, results tend to get noted and then ignored.
Separate group patterns from individual gaps. When many learners make the same mistake, the teaching needs to change, so reteach it to everyone and fix the module for the next group. When one learner struggles, route that person to more practice.
Hattie and Timperley's 2007 review calls feedback one of the most powerful influences on learning and notes that its effect can be positive or negative, depending on the type of feedback and how it is given. In practice, tell the learner what to change and how to try again, and keep it about the work.
Keep formative checks out of performance reviews. Learners are more willing to admit confusion when the answer cannot count against them.
How to run formative checks inside training video
In recorded training, nobody is in the room to notice confusion, so the checks have to sit in the video itself. In Mindstamp, on supported plans:
- Questions pause the video at the moment you choose, and each answer is stored against the learner.
- An answer action can send a wrong answer back to the explanation, and Repeat Until Correct asks the same question again after a wrong answer.
- The Questions report shows the answers to each question across all learners, which is the group-pattern view you need for a diagnostic question.
- With the video setting Allow viewers to add comments turned on, a learner can type a question or note at any point. Mindstamp saves each comment with its video time in that learner's view report. Other learners cannot see or reply to it, so a learner can flag a muddy point privately.
- Conditional logic can use the running score to show a different ending or send a learner back when the score is below your pass mark.
One scoring detail matters if you mix practice and assessment in one video. The report score counts every attempt, so a learner who answers a question wrong and then right scores 50% on that question. Only some question types are scored. The help article on passing scores and retries explains both rules. If you want a clean final score, put the formative checks in a practice video and the scored questions in a separate one.
To compare dedicated formative assessment tools, including live polling apps and LMS quizzes, see our roundup of formative assessment online tools. For more on video in training programs, see Mindstamp for training.
Formative evaluation methods for a training course
Formative assessment checks the learner. Formative evaluation checks the course while you can still change it. The terms appear in Michael Scriven's paper The Methodology of Evaluation (1966), which discusses formative and summative evaluation of new curricula and other educational materials. Instructional designers usually run formative evaluation in rounds:
- Expert review: a subject matter expert checks accuracy, and a second designer checks clarity.
- One-to-one tryouts: sit with individual learners as they work through the draft and ask what confused them.
- Small-group tryout: a few learners from the target audience take the course on their own while you collect scores, time taken, and questions.
- Pilot: run the course with a full group under real conditions before the wider rollout.
Fix what each round finds before the next one. Once the course is live, judging whether it worked is summative evaluation, covered in our guide to training evaluation methods.
Common questions
What is the focus of assessment in industry?
Competence: whether a person can do the work to the required standard. ISO 9000:2015 defines competence as the "ability to apply knowledge and skills to achieve intended results," and the ISO 9001 auditing guidance on competence notes that taking part in a course does not necessarily show that a person is competent. Workplace assessment therefore leans on observation, work results, and tests of real tasks. Formative checks prepare learners for that final check.
How do formative and summative assessments work together in a training program?
Write both from the same learning objectives. Formative checks during the course give learners practice on the kinds of tasks the summative assessment will ask for, and give you time to fix gaps. The summative assessment at the end decides whether the learner met the standard. If many learners fail the summative assessment, look back at the formative results to find where they first went wrong.
How do you evaluate a training provider's assessments?
Ask for sample assessment items on your topics, and ask what happens after each check: who sees the result, and what changes for the learner. Check that you get results for each learner, in a format you can export, and that you can edit questions to match your own procedures. Ask how the provider handles a learner who fails a check partway through the course.
What platforms give learners immediate formative feedback?
Live polling tools give instant group results in a session, LMS quiz engines can show feedback after each question, and interactive video platforms put questions and feedback inside the training video. Our formative assessment tools guide compares the options.
Sources and further reading
OneNine, a web design agency, wrote a roundup of tools for real-time feedback customization (April 2025). It covers website and customer feedback tools such as Hotjar, Qualaroo, and HappyOrNot.
