Occasional Paper

A New Decade for Assessment: Embedding Equity into Assessment Praxis

Entering into a new decade with an even more diversified college student population will not only require more assessment models involving students but also deeper professional development of institutional representatives key to student learning. Reflecting upon the conversations over the last three years around culturally responsive assessment and related equity and assessment discussions, this occasional paper highlights questions, insights, and future directions for the decade ahead by exploring what equitable assessment is and is not; the challenges and barriers to equitable assessment work; where the decade ahead may lead; and next steps in the conversation on equity and assessment.

NILOA Report

Higher Education Quality: Why Documenting Learning Matters

The NILOA policy statement outlines the warrant for multiple, systematic approaches to obtain evidence of authentic student achievement and addresses some well-reasoned concerns that poorly designed assessment efforts can distract from, rather than enhance, the quality of teaching and learning. The statement concludes with five principles, that when adapted appropriately to an institution’s educational purposes and programs, can spread and accelerate assessment work worthy of the promises colleges and universities make to their students, policy makers, and the public.

NILOA Report

Assessment that Matters: Trending toward Practices that Document Authentic Student Learning

Following up to its 2009 and 2014 surveys of chief academic officers, NILOA continues to provide a landscape of current approaches and practices related to assessing student learning. This report summarizes major findings and presents implications for policy and practice from a survey of 811 regionally accredited, undergraduate degree-granting institutions from throughout the U.S.

Occasional Paper

Evidence-Based Storytelling in Assessment

In this highly anticipated occasional paper, Natasha Jankowski helps conceptualize what is meant by Evidence-Based Storytelling (EBST)—an approach used at NILOA to refine and encourage evidence-based stories in assessment. According to Jankowski, two purposes are served within this paper “to re-examine what is meant by use of assessment results and to unpack evidence-based storytelling and its connection to assessment.” Here at NILOA we’ve done tons of workshops, presentations, webinars on EBST and hope that when you read this paper, you’ll be reminded of such and have been working on your institutional assessment stories in the meantime. 

Degree Qualifications Profile 3.0

Released in 2011, the DQP was updated in 2014, and now in 2021, based on feedback from over 800 institutions. NILOA was delighted to oversee the revision process which included a series of working groups who provide guidance and suggestions for revising the DQP, blogs from the original DQP authors, and a public comment process to the field at large. The revised versions, or DQP 3.0, for Associate, Bachelor, and Master’s levels can be found here.

Occasional Paper

Grand Challenges in Assessment: Collective Issues in Need of Solutions

This paper shares ten grand challenges identified through an examination of the assessment literature and a national survey. To Resource Occasional Paper read more about how the Grand Challenges were identified, please the recently released Research and Practice in Assessment article. Each of the grand challenges are described, of which four were identified as of greatest concern to the assessment community. Those four are being addressed by the Grand Challenges in Assessment Project for possible collective solutions. 

NILOA Report

Pandemic Insights to Shape a Better Future: Assessment for Teaching, Learning, Equity, and Student Success

In partnership with NILOA, Dr. Natasha Jankowski, former executive director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) and Dr. Divya Bheda of ExamSoft Worldwide LLC, explored what could be learned from the various shifts and changes to assessment-related processes and practices undertaken in response to COVID-19 in order to inform the future of assessment. In this report, Drs. Jankowski and Bheda discuss findings from a recent survey of higher education faculty, staff, administrators, and students who shared their perspectives and advice working to ensure student success and equity by improving curricula, assessments, teaching, and learning.