53. Formative – Get Deeper Insights into your Classroom

As nominated by Beth Holland.

Formative was born out of research during the founding team’s time as UCLA graduate students. Prototyped in the Startup UCLA program, vetted by teachers in the 4.0 Schools incubator, and turned into a company in the Imagine K12 accelerator, Formative was launched for educators in January 2015. The company is now partnered with the Jefferson Education Accelerator and schools around the U.S. in an effort to bring “formative teaching” to educators everywhere, eroding the need for assessments after the fact.

Formatives goal is to help all stakeholders have more recent and actionable data by using its platform both for formative assessments and daily activities, such as lab reports, homework, and more. A teacher can use previously created materials, share with colleagues, or create something on the fly. All responses are served back to the educators in a clean and helpful dashboard that helps them see overall and individual trends. Very soon, those same educators will see the students’ progress on standards as they go through the year, getting ahead of their summative assessments.