In March 2020, institutions abruptly pivoted to remote instruction, sending students, faculty, and staff away from college campuses in response to COVID-19. In June 2020, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) launched a survey to capture a snapshot of assessment-related changes made during Spring 2020 in response to the…

According to the authors, to infuse equity truly in assessment requires that students be actively involved in the process of assessing their own learning. Equitable assessment argues that students can demonstrate attainment of learning outcomes in many ways, and in any particular instance of assessment, students can be offered multiple ways to…

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…

Stronger connections are needed between employers and higher education, however, questions abound about how best to work in partnership. Stemming from various conversations with members of the higher education and employer communities, this Occasional Paper provides tips for fostering successful partnerships and collaboration. Three lessons…

This Occasional Paper outlines lessons learned about mapping and assessing learning in student affairs and student employment. Over the last three years, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) assisted institutions developing Comprehensive Learner Records and scaling high-impact practices. In each of these initiatives,…

Traditionally, transcripts present a collection of lists of courses and grades in a format valuable for trading information between and among institutions of higher education. What if transcripts were reimagined to not only provide information on credits earned, but also provide information on learning acquired both inside and outside the…

Through the case example of the Learning Recognition Collaborative, this article examines possible connections between Essential Learning Outcomes, prior-learning assessment, and equity in learning for today's students.

As colleges educate a more diverse and global student population, there is increased need to ensure every student succeeds regardless of their differences. This paper explores the relationship between equity and assessment, addressing the question: how consequential can assessment be to learning when assessment approaches may not be inclusive of…

Designing the tasks that students are required to complete in their courses has always been an essential part of what faculty do as teachers, and many faculty members work hard to shape and reshape those tasks in ways that bring out the best in students. But such work has mostly been done behind the scenes. A growing number of programs, campuses,…

Examples from the field indicates that effectively using the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) can benefit both students and institutions (Jankowski & Giffin, 2016). But what does "effective use" entail and how does it unfold? That is, what is the nature of the process that makes it possible for institutions to use the DQP to…

Following the release of the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) in 2011, many institutions of various types tried out different ways to use the DQP. Although over 680 institutions have used the DQP to date, until now the impact of the DQP on institutions and students has not been documented in a systematic manner. To determine the effects of DQP…

Tuning is a bottom-up, faculty-led process which leads to the creation of a discipline-specific learning outcome document along with a degree profile that is used to communicate the value of a particular degree to a variety of audiences including students, employers, policy makers, and the general public. Tuning, introduced in the United States in…

The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment's (NILOA's) online library of faculty-created assignments that both produce and demonstrate learning makes pedagogical work visible and available for colleagues to learn from, build on, and reward. This online library allows faculty to collaborate in sharing, critiquing, and improving…

Over the past decade, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) has been documenting what colleges and universities are doing to gather evidence about student learning and helping institutions to productively use assessment data to strengthen undergraduate education. NILOA also has been monitoring how institutions communicate…