Illumina Interactive’s content partner, Education Development Center, runs the US Department of Education’s Regional Educational Laboratory for the Northeast U.S. & Islands region with the goal of fostering collaboration among educators, policymakers, and researchers in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Vermont through the REL Northeast and Islands at EDC. Working with stakeholders, the REL Northeast & Islands team designs research, coaching, and tools focused on pressing educational priorities. EDC approached the Illumina team to develop an online learning program, to be delivered on the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences web site, to address needs in improving and standardizing performance assessment throughout the region.

lllumina Interactive collaborated with the Education Development Center team to design, develop and launch the course “Creating and Using Performance Assessments: An Online Course for Practitioners.” This self-paced, online course provides educators with detailed information on performance assessment. Through five modules, practitioners, instructional leaders, and administrators learn foundational concepts of assessment literacy and how to develop, score, and use performance assessments. They also learn about the role of performance assessment within a comprehensive assessment system. Each module takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, with additional time needed to complete related assignments, such as creating performance assessments and rubrics. Participants receive a certificate of completion upon finishing the course. The live course can be seen at https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northeast/onlinetraining/