Formative assessment as a compass for modern education: innovative system of Kateřina Berková’s team from VŠE uses AI

The Faculty of Finance and Accounting of the Prague University of Economics and Business has introduced an innovative tool for formative assessment that combines systematic feedback with the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the needs of modern education. The tool, which will be available free of charge to all schools, was introduced in the Horizon VŠE podcast by Ing. Kateřina Berková, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Finance and Accounting.

Formative assessment, one of the current topics in education, allows for continuous feedback between teachers and students and acts as a compass to help navigate the learning process, detect mistakes and find ways to improve them. “Formative assessment gives direction to the student on where they can improve, as the teacher defines certain learning outcomes such as knowledge, skills and competencies, and continually shows the student how they are performing at the moment. And the compass also works by guiding you all the time, it can help you at the beginning, but it can also help you when you are getting closer to that goal,” explains Kateřina Berková.

Dr. Berková from the Faculty of Finance and Accounting and her research team have come up with an automated system that will allow schools to easily implement formative assessment into their teaching without unnecessary administration. The system uses the traffic light method for simple assessment on a three-grade scale, which is easy to understand for students, teachers and even parents. The connection with artificial intelligence then generates reports on students’ progress and provides recommendations for further steps in education.

The research that Dr. Berk’s team has been working on for more than a year and a half is driven by collective effort and trust. Interested schools will be able to easily join the system and benefit from formative assessment. This tool not only saves time, but also strengthens students’ accountability for their own learning and offers teachers quality data for pedagogical decisions. “Our goal is that teachers don’t have to be trained, that they don’t have to study how to use the system, that it’s simply intuitive and that the teacher can adapt the tool to their course, modify it in different ways, edit it and so on. And because of all this, we think that it can save teacher’s time and that they can get good information about the student’s current performance in the process,” the researcher describes.

Although the Prague University of Economics and Business is mostly known for its economics and business programmes, it has long been actively involved in the field of education thanks to the Department of Economics Courses Didactics. This new tool represents another step in its efforts to improve the quality of teaching.

Video podcast with Ing. Kateřina Berková, Ph.D., is available as part of this press release: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yAjZzL1liKSVgGZtc83tI?si=a2f76471bd524002