The Effectiveness of the Formative Assessment Strategy in Developing Coloring Skills among Students of the Department of Art Education in the Course of Design and Colors

     This study aims to explore the effectiveness of the formative assessment strategy in developing coloring skills among students of the Department of Art Education in the course Sketch and Colors. The research was motivated by the difficulties students face in mastering the principles of color blending and harmony, as well as their limited ability to employ colors in constructing balanced and aesthetically pleasing artworks. Such challenges can be attributed, in part, to the reliance on traditional teaching methods that lack interaction and continuous feedback. To achieve the research objective, the experimental method was adopted using a one-group pre-test/post-test design. A pre-test was administered to measure the level of coloring skills among a sample of (20) second-year students from the Department of Art Education, College of Fine Arts, University of Basrah. The students were then taught using the formative assessment strategy over a period of five weeks, followed by a post-test. The results were analyzed using appropriate statistical methods (paired-sample t-test), which revealed statistically significant differences at the (0.05) level between the pre-test and post-test mean scores in favor of the post-test. These findings indicate that the use of formative assessment contributed to improving students’ performance in coloring, enhancing their ability to achieve color blending, balance, and aesthetic harmony in their artworks. The study concluded that formative assessment represents an effective pedagogical framework for developing coloring skills, as it fosters classroom interaction, provides immediate feedback to correct errors during learning, and raises students’ motivation as well as the quality of their artistic outcomes. Accordingly, the study recommends adopting formative assessment in teaching practical art education courses and training instructors in employing its techniques. It also proposes conducting further studies to investigate the impact of this strategy on developing other artistic skills such as drawing, design, sculpture, and Arabic calligraphy.