Our Work
Explore current NILOA initiatives and projects along with associated resources and tools.
Assignments
Assignment Library
Featured Assignment: Liberal Arts in Action
Assignment Charrette
What constitutes an effective assignment? How can we use assignments as effective tools for assessment? The NILOA Assignment Library initiative helps answer these questions. The library is an interactive, online collection of high-quality, peer-reviewed assignments at different degree levels from various academic disciplines.
Featured Assignments offer a deeper dive into select assignments in our Library. With additional guest commentary, context, author narratives, and examples of student work, these Featured Assignments paint a more robust picture from which others can learn.
How can we design effective assignments that serve as authentic assessments of learning? The NILOA Assignment Charrette Toolkit provides support for advancing assignment design conversations within your own unique context.
Equity & Assessment
Equity Responses
Since the release of NILOA’s Equity and Assessment papers, over 15 faculty, staff, and administrators have authored responses which explore and elevate relationships between equity and assessment. The conversations have refined ideas and added various challenges and opportunities to consider.
Case Studies
NILOA, the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS), and other interested partners invited case studies around Equity in Assessment to highlight examples to advance culturally responsive assessment.
HBCU CEEQA
The Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Collaboration for Excellence in Educational Quality Assurance (CEEQA) – the first of its kind – is composed of assessment and institutional effectiveness leaders dedicated to advancing student learning, institutional quality, and student success. CEEQA seeks to help address accountability measures while being true to HBCU missions.
Transparency
Transparency Framework
Excellence in Assessment Designation
Evidence-Based Storytelling
Featured Website
Informed by research on over 2,000 institutional websites, the Transparency Framework supports institutions in sharing evidence of student learning online.Â
Excellence in Assessment (EIA) designation recognizes institutions that successfully integrate assessment practices throughout the institution, provide evidence of student learning outcomes, and use assessment results to guide institutional decision-making and improve student performance.
Explore NILOA’s work with evidence-based storytelling – an approach that assists practitioners in more meaningfully communicating the narratives around their assessment processes and practices.
The Learning Outcomes Assessment website from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign is NILOA’s September 2020 Featured Website.
Podcast
The Assessment Perspectives podcast highlights useful practices, innovations, personal experiences of those doing assessment work, and examines career trajectories of leaders that have impacted the field of assessment. We see this podcast as being another way to supplement the great work NILOA does. As part of our mission, we strive to continue to find different ways to find and deliver resources to you, and hope you find these conversations useful. If you have feedback or ideas for future guests, please emails niloa@education.illinois.edu.
Episode 1. Bridgewater State University’s Transparency Project
Christina Ouellette, Graduate Student, BSU
We thank you for listening, and encourage you to also participate in BSU’s short survey on your perceptions of the visibility and understandability of learning outcomes in higher education campuses and organizations.
Mapping Learning
The Mapping Learning Toolkit presents approaches to identify alignment with learning outcomes within program, co-curriculum, general education, employment, and elsewhere learning occurs. The Mapping Learning Toolkit provides resources for conducting meaningful mapping along with examples from institutions.
NILOA Archives
This archive is a collection of select resources that provide important insight into the assessment landscape, guidance for good assessment work, and/or inform practice. This archive is not intended to be an extensive library of assessment resources, but more-so a location to preserve important resources.
NILOA releases a monthly newsletter to keep readers informed about new publications, projects, examples from the field, partnerships, and presentations, as well as events and assessment related news.
NILOA conducts national surveys of the assessment landscape in the United States. This page provides an archive of each iteration of the questionnaire utilized, exploring program-level assessment processes and practices as well as institution-level assessment efforts.
