A Framework for Formative Assessments Co-Created with Students for Large Classes

Large university classes with diverse student cohorts pose persistent challenges for maintaining engagement, delivering effective assessment, and providing timely feedback at scale. This paper introduces a participatory approach to co-creating constructively aligned formative assessments with students as a direct response to these challenges, demonstrated through a very large, online, and asynchronous Data Literacy and Analytics (DLA) module across 15 programs at Dublin City University. The Formative Assessments Co-Created with Students (FACCtS) framework guided the collaborative design of 500 interactive formative assessment questions with immediate feedback, involving students who had completed the module to ensure learner-aligned, inclusive design grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Reaching over 2,000 students annually, the approach demonstrates that co-creation is not only pedagogically sound but scalable across large, diverse cohorts. Post-implementation evaluation showed improvements in student engagement, metacognitive awareness, and summative assessment performance. The study offers a transferable, research-informed model for addressing the core challenges of engagement, assessment, and feedback that are amplified in large, online, asynchronous higher education contexts.