Virtual schools can provide education for students who cannot – or choose not to – attend a physical school. We can define online schooling as education that uses technology to deliver instruction and support regular, substantive interaction between teachers and students. Nancy Sheehan is an experienced teacher who has spent over 20 years teaching in traditional classrooms and blended learning environments that incorporate educational technology. Nancy believes that virtual schools are one way to offer high-quality education across geographic boundaries while also helping those who do not have access to quality public education choices.
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Formative Assessment: Enhancing Student Learning and Progress
✨ Updated November 2025: Enhanced with AI-powered formative assessment strategies
Formative assessment plays a crucial role in the educational process by providing educators and students valuable insights into learning progress. These assessments are designed to gather information about a student’s understanding, skills, and knowledge in real time. By leveraging this data, teachers can make informed decisions, adjust instructional strategies, and address individual needs to foster the growth and success of each student.
One fundamental principle of formative assessment is that it’s conducted during the learning process rather than after its completion. This approach helps identify students struggling with the material, offering opportunities for targeted intervention and support. As a result, formative assessment can significantly promote a more engaging and effective learning environment.
In essence, formative assessment enables educators to deliver personalized instruction, foster a deeper understanding of content, and ensure all students progress toward achieving their academic goals. By implementing various assessment techniques, teachers can create a dynamic classroom experience that keeps students motivated, engaged, and on track to succeed.
Summative Assessment
Summative assessment judges how far learners got at the end of a stretch of teaching, against criteria set in advance. It is the counterpart of formative assessment, which is used during the work to change teaching. For that pair, see comparing formative and summative assessment.
Last reviewed: 31 August 2026.
What it is for
To certify or summarise achievement: a grade, a pass, evidence that a unit’s goals were met. Typical forms: end-of-unit tests, exams, performances or portfolios used for a final judgement.
It should not be the first time anyone discovers the class cannot do the thing. Formative work should have made the summative task unsurprising.
Design checks
- The task matches the stated goals, not a surprise skill
- Conditions are fair enough to compare (time, access, language)
- The mark scheme is usable by more than one marker
- Feedback, if given, is still worth reading even when the grade is done
What it is not
- Not the enemy of formative assessment. Most courses need both.
- Not the same as formal assessment. Formal vs informal is a different cut. See formal and informal assessment.
Sources
- Black, P. and Wiliam, D. Formative assessment as feedback that moves learning on; summative as the complementary judgement of achievement.
Online education vs traditional education – which one is better and why
Online education is teaching designed to happen primarily through a network and a device. Traditional or in-person education is teaching designed around a shared physical room and timetable. Neither is inherently better. The useful question is which design fits the learners, the subject and the constraints you actually have.
Last reviewed: 31 August 2026.
What is online education?
Learners and teachers meet through a platform, video, documents or a mix. It can be live (synchronous) or anytime (asynchronous). It is not the same as “there is a PDF on the school site”.
What is traditional education?
Here it means face-to-face class teaching: a place, a time, a group in the same room. It can still use books, boards and some devices. Traditional does not mean outdated by definition.
What is the difference between online learning and a traditional classroom setup?
| Online | In person | |
|---|---|---|
| Place | Depends on a device and a connection | Depends on getting to the room |
| Time | Can be flexible, especially asynchronous | Usually a fixed timetable |
| Social | Has to be designed (forums, live sessions, group docs) | Happens in the room, for better and worse |
| Self-direction | Higher demand on the learner to start and persist | The room and the timetable carry more of that load |
Online teaching vs classroom teaching
Good online teaching is still teaching: goals, explanation, practice, feedback. A recorded lecture with no check is a weak class, online or not. A weak in-person lesson is not saved by being traditional.
Choose online when distance, safety or scale require it and you can support access. Choose in person when the work needs shared materials, movement, or supervision you cannot give through a screen. Blended designs use both on purpose.
Related: virtual learning environments and what an LMS is.
Why is internet and social media literacy so important?
Internet literacy is the ability to use a device to get online, move through sites and apps, and notice that content was published by someone for a reason. Social media literacy is the same work on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or X: how the feed is built, who is speaking, and how the post is trying to make you feel.
It is a specialist page. For why media literacy matters as a civic and classroom skill, use Why is media literacy important? Last reviewed: 31 August 2026.
What does literacy mean?
Literacy here is not only decoding words. It is being able to read a message, say what it is doing, and decide what to do next. On the internet that includes images, video, comments and ads dressed up as posts.
What is internet literacy?
It covers access (a phone or laptop, a connection, a browser or app), navigation (search, links, menus), and judgement. Search results are ranked. Adverts can sit inside articles. Some material is meant to be shared under a Creative Commons licence; some is meant only to spread. Being internet literate includes spotting which is which.
What is internet media literacy? And what is social media literacy?
Media literacy is identifying a media form and the message it carries. Social media literacy looks at a specific platform: who can post, how replies and shares work, and that algorithms choose what you see. A bio, follower count or join date is not proof of reliability. Offline affiliation and a checkable source still matter.
What skills are developed from internet or social media literacy?
- Technical: how the platform actually works
- Cognitive: who made this, for whom, with what evidence
- Emotional: noticing when a post is working on fear, outrage or belonging before you share it
What are the benefits of internet or social media literacy?
You become harder to bounce into sharing something you have not checked. You also become a more careful maker of posts. That is useful in class and outside it. It does not, by itself, solve misinformation.
Some questions to ask yourself when analysing social media posts
Adapted from the Center for Media Literacy.
- Who made this post? An account name is not always the author.
- Why has it attracted my attention? Technique, emotion, or both?
- How am I reading it, and might someone else read it differently?
- What values and lifestyles are shown, and what is left out?
- Why was it made, and who does that purpose serve?
Sources
- Center for Media Literacy. Questions for analysing media messages. https://www.medialit.org/
Top teachers integrate technology in the classroom – this is how!
Integrating technology in the classroom means using a digital tool as part of teaching so that the learning task is possible, clearer or better checked. A projector, a shared document, a simulation or a quiz app can all count. The tool is not the lesson.
Last reviewed: 31 August 2026.
What is integrating technology in the classroom?
The teacher chooses a tool that serves an objective already set: explain, practise, collaborate, retrieve, or show work. If the same objective is met better on paper, use paper.
Why is integrating technology in the classroom important?
Learners already meet information, work and entertainment through screens. School can practise those skills with a purpose, or it can pretend the devices are not there. Integration is also how some schools keep teaching when the class cannot all be in one room.
How are teachers using technology in the classroom?
Common, durable uses: presenting; collecting a quick check of understanding; shared writing; research with a source rule; a simulation when the real thing is unsafe or unavailable; a class platform for files and deadlines. Calculators and projectors were already this idea.
What are examples of technology in the classroom?
- Presentations and visual models
- Quizzes and polls for a mid-lesson check
- Shared documents for group writing
- Virtual visits or digitised collections when a trip is not possible
- Simulations (a process you cannot run live)
- A learning management system for files, tasks and a record of who submitted what
For game-like features, see gamification. For judging sources, see internet and social media literacy.
But is technology useful in the classroom?
It is useful when it changes the task in a way you can name: more practice, a clearer model, faster feedback, access you did not have. It is not useful when it mainly adds login friction, noise or a gap between learners who have data and learners who do not.
Advantages and disadvantages
Benefits, when the conditions are there: variety of task, faster checks, collaboration at a distance, access to sources and models.
Costs and risks: devices and connectivity; distraction; cheating if the task is copyable; teacher time to learn the platform; inequality of home access; privacy and children’s data.
Related: benefits of digital education and ICT skills for teachers.
Virtual Learning Environments take over
A virtual learning environment (VLE) is the online space where a course lives: content in order, people, communication and, usually, assessment. Schools often say VLE and LMS as if they were the same thing. An LMS is the software that administers learning. A VLE is the environment learners experience. In practice one product often does both.
Last reviewed: 31 August 2026.
What is a virtual learning environment?
A designed online place for a class or course, not a random folder of files. Moodle, Google Classroom and similar platforms are commonly used as VLEs.
Purpose of a virtual learning environment
- Structure content in a sequence
- Hold more than one media type in one course
- Hold tasks and quizzes
- Manage who can enter, and how people message
- Keep a record of activity and results
What is the difference between a learning management system and a virtual learning environment?
LMS emphasises administration and records. VLE emphasises the learner-facing course space. If you came here to look up the abbreviation LMS, use what does LMS mean.
A VLE is only as good as access, teacher skill and the tasks inside it. Empty courses still fail.
Learning about Covid-19 at schools
How do you teach students about Covid-19 at schools? How do you explain the concept of a pandemic? And how to do you get across guidance around prevention? What does this look like for a six-year-old as opposed to a 16-year-old? These are some of the issues Cambridge University Press grappled with as we developed a series of worksheets to explain the virus and the situation we find ourselves in globally and in South Africa.
Working with Life Orientation specialist and author Edna Rooth, we have published these worksheets for use at home or in the class. The worksheets are a response to Covid-19 and function as a Social and Emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. We divided the worksheets by the four phases in the curriculum, covering all twelve grades. Each pack has between ten and fifteen worksheets with extensive teaching notes. The worksheets are printable, and we are encouraging users to share them via email or WhatsApp, so they reach the teachers and learners who needed them most. Parents can also use these worksheets with their children. Topics covered include information on pandemics, facts about the Covid-19 virus, prevention, stigma and depression. There are many practical tasks included in the worksheets, such as guidance on how to make a mask.
Sample Worksheets for teaching Covid-19 at schools
They are really brilliant! What great work, and clearly a lot of work. This is the most comprehensive set of materials for schools I have seen – probably the best in the world right now.
Dr James Lees. Senior Lecturer, HIV & AIDS Programme, University of the Western Cape
Yizani – resources for teaching isiXhosa as an additional language
The Incremental Implementation of African Languages (IIAL) is a programme by South Africa’s Department of Basic Education to introduce the learning of an African language as a second or third language for pupils at schools. This programme will start learning-language in grade 1 and then follow it through to the end of schooling in grade 12 – that’s where the incremental implementation part comes in. While a laudable initiative, there are not enough trained African languages teachers in schools currently. The public broadcaster SABC has attempted to assist with a terrifying puppet-show series, but it fails to provide adequate support to teachers and guidance on how to structure a lesson. With Yizani, we’ve attempted to bridge this gap.
Learning Theory: Connectivism
Connectivism is a later account of learning, associated with George Siemens (2005) and Stephen Downes, that treats knowledge as distributed across networks of people, resources and tools. Learning, on this view, includes the ability to find, filter and plug into those networks.
It is not constructivism (building understanding in the mind or through social activity in a class), and it is not a full replacement for either. Last reviewed: 31 August 2026.
What it claims
In a digital environment, no one holds the whole of a field. What matters is knowing where knowledge lives, when it has changed, and who or what is a reliable node. Currency can matter as much as storing facts.
Classroom use
Useful where the task is to locate, compare and update sources: a research brief, a professional learning network, a class that must judge a live issue. Teach how to evaluate a source and how to leave a trail of what was used. Do not confuse “we used the internet” with connectivist design.
What it is not
- Not a licence to skip teaching content. Networks are weak if learners cannot read, calculate or check a claim.
- Not behaviourism or cognitivism. Those still explain practice and memory. See behaviourism and cognitivism.
Related: constructivism.
Sources
- Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: a learning theory for the digital age.
- Downes, S. Work on connective knowledge and networks.
Learning Theory: Constructivism
Constructivism is a family of learning theories that treat knowledge as something learners build, not as a packet transferred from teacher to student. New ideas are fitted into what the learner already understands, or they force that understanding to change.
It is not behaviourism (observable stimulus and response) and it is not the same as cognitivism (information processing, memory, cognitive load). Last reviewed: 31 August 2026.
What it claims
Learners are active. They interpret tasks using prior knowledge, language and social setting. Teaching that only presents information, without a chance to use it, is a weak fit for this view.
Two strands are often mixed and should not be:
- Cognitive constructivism (often linked to Jean Piaget): the individual reorganises mental structures as they meet new experience. Piaget’s stage labels are a historical developmental model, not a classroom timetable.
- Social constructivism (often linked to Lev Vygotsky): learning is mediated by other people, language and tools. The zone of proximal development is what a learner can do with help that they cannot yet do alone.
Classroom use
Start from what learners already know. Set a task that requires them to explain, make, compare or justify, not only recall. Use talk, models and worked examples as support, then remove the support. Check the product against criteria so “construction” does not mean “any answer will do”.
What it is not
- Not unguided discovery as a default. Complex new material usually needs guidance first.
- Not learning styles.
- Not connectivism. Networks and digital nodes are a later, different claim. See connectivism.
Related: behaviourism.
Sources
- Piaget, J. Work on the construction of knowledge and developmental stages. Treat age bands as historical theory.
- Vygotsky, L. S. Social mediation of learning and the zone of proximal development.
Learning Theory: Cognitivism
Cognitivism is a family of learning theories that treat learning as the processing of information in the mind: attention, memory, organisation and retrieval. It developed in part as a response to behaviourism, which focused on observable behaviour and consequences.
It is not one single school, and it is not the same as Piaget’s stage theory, Vygotsky’s social constructivism or Bandura’s social cognitive theory. Those ideas overlap with questions about thinking, but they should not be collapsed into one tradition. Last reviewed: 30 August 2026.
What cognitivism claims
On a cognitivist account, learners are not empty vessels. They notice some information, hold a limited amount of it in working memory, connect it to what they already know, and store organised knowledge that can later be retrieved. A common teaching implication is that new material should be structured so that working memory is not overloaded, and so that learners can attach it to existing knowledge.
Useful ideas that sit in or beside this tradition include:
- Information processing: attending, encoding, storing and retrieving.
- Schema: organised prior knowledge that shapes how new material is understood.
- Retrieval: using stored knowledge later, which also strengthens it.
- Cognitive load: working memory is limited. Instruction that adds unnecessary complexity makes learning harder. Cognitive load theory, associated with John Sweller, is one research programme on that point, not a synonym for all of cognitivism.
What it is not
- Not Piaget as a rigid age ladder. Jean Piaget described sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages. Treat those age bands as a historical model of development, not as universal clocks that every learner must hit.
- Not Vygotsky. Lev Vygotsky’s work on social interaction, language and the zone of proximal development is better placed with social constructivism than with information-processing cognitivism.
- Not Bandura. Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory is about learning through observation, models and self-efficacy. It is neighbouring work, not a cognitivist sub-heading.
- Not learning styles. Matching teaching to unsupported style categories (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic as fixed types) is not a cognitivist requirement and is not supported as a design rule here.
- Not unguided discovery as a default. Jerome Bruner argued for learners constructing knowledge. Later evidence on complex new material often favours guided practice first. Discovery is a method, not a guarantee.
Classroom use
Start from what learners already know. Present a small amount of new material at a time. Make the organising structure visible. Ask them to retrieve, explain or apply it, rather than only re-reading. Give feedback that names the thinking, not only the score. Reduce decoration and extra instructions that do not serve the task.
Related: Behaviourism and Constructivism.
Sources
- Piaget, J. Work on cognitive development stages, commonly summarised as sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. Treat as historical developmental theory.
- Sweller, J. Cognitive load theory and the limits of working memory in instructional design.
- Bruner, J. Work on discovery learning and modes of representation. Use with later evidence on guidance.