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Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning? Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement. Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feedback was among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has "struggled to understand the concept" (p. 173). And many writings on the subject don't even attempt to define the term. To improve formative assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is-and isn't.

When incorporated into a lesson, formative assessment provides the teacher with a snapshot of the teaching and learning while it is still happening.

At the end of the day, teaching is about learning, and learning is about understanding. And as technology evolves to empower more diverse and flexible assessments forms, constantly improving our sense of what understanding looks like-during mobile learning, during project-based learning, and in a flipped classroom-can not only improve learning outcomes, but just might be the secret to providing personalized learning for every learner.