Abstract: Objective Investigate the effects of formative assessment in teaching histology. Methods Multiple methods were used, including homework, self-test and quiz, questionnaire survey and so on, to evaluated teaching process. Collected data were analyzed statistically. Result Autonomous homework was welcomed by students: 89.8% of the students believed that homework was necessary, and nearly half of them thought they got profit from this. Students who completed the self- tests more got higher score in the final exam than those who completed less. Questions with high error rate in quiz got higher accuracy in the final exam. Students thought their ability, especially the autonomous learning ability, improved during the learning process. Conclusion Both teachers and students got profit at the aspects of knowledge, ability and emotion from introducing formative assessment into teaching and learning process. Quality of teaching histology would improve through better assessment methods and means.

Key words: formative assessment, teaching quality, histology