The theory is settled and has been for decades. Check understanding while learning is happening, and adjust. The reason it collapses in real classrooms is logistics: you collect exit tickets on Tuesday, read them Tuesday night if you are conscientious, and by then Wednesday's lesson is already planned or already happening.
What has to be true for it to work
- The evidence has to be about a skill, not an assignment. "Sixty-eight percent" tells you nothing you can teach from.
- It has to arrive before the next decision, which means during the lesson or that afternoon, not after grading.
- Collecting it must cost almost nothing, or it stops happening in week three of term.
How ClassSense meets those
Every practice answer, quiz item and game round updates that student's mastery for a named skill at the moment they answer, recording mastery before and after, difficulty, hints used and time taken. There is nothing to collect and nothing to mark, so the third condition is met by default.
You get a heatmap of skills against students, gap analysis naming the weakest skills across the class, and notifications the moment a student is stuck or finishes a unit. That is formative assessment that survives a real schedule.
Formative means it is not a grade. The point is to change what happens next, not to rank. Mastery drives what students see: their difficulty tier, whether an alternate explanation is generated, what their daily plan contains. Assessment and teaching are the same loop rather than two processes bolted together.
Where it does not reach
It sees answers, not faces. A student who has quietly stopped trying, or who is guessing efficiently, shows up in the data as a pattern rather than a diagnosis. Reading that is still your job.
Common questions
Is this the same as a quiz?
A quiz is one instrument. Formative assessment is the loop of gathering evidence and changing what you do. Here that loop runs continuously from work students already do.
Do I have to set anything up?
No. Mastery tracking starts from the first answer once students join a course.
Can I still give summative tests?
Yes. The generator builds unit assessments as well, and they feed the same mastery picture.