Hello Illinois History Day Teachers!

WE ARE IN PERSON AND AT MILLIKIN UNIVERSITY FOR 2024!!

Important Dates: 

• Registration deadline is March 1, 2024.
• Websites and Papers are due March 1, 2024.
• WebCentral Lockout begins on March 1, 2024.
• Website and Paper judging will take place between March 4 - 8, 2024.
• Competition will be in person on March 9, 2024 at Millikin University. (Day of information to come)

The Contest Rule Book 

After much discussion with stakeholders and the national office, the Illinois History Day competition will now use the National History Day Rulebook. We will no longer use the Illinois History Day Rule Book, so please remove it from circulation with your students. The IHD leadership team determined this would be the best year to change to the NHD Rule Book as it was significantly updated this year. Please take the time thoroughly review the update; for a list of specific changes, see NHD's Summary of Significant Rules Changes.

NOTE: All project submissions will be subject to the NHD Rule Book and must adhere to the yearly theme. This year's theme is "Turning Points in History."

Evaluation Forms

In addition to updating the Rule Book, NHD also updated the evaluation forms for all categories. Students are now evaluated using a standardized rubric. This will assist judges in providing clear, objective feedback to students while ensuring students understand the expectations in each category and can respond, meaningfully, to judge feedback. The hope is also to enable them to self-reflect on the quality and progress of their projects during the creation stage. 

Beginning this year, IHD will use the NHD forms to evaluate students' projects at our Regional and State competitions. You are encouraged to do the same at your local competition.

Please see the updated evaluations below: 

Documentaries

Exhibits

Papers

Performances

Websites

To further assist students working on their project, NHD created a project checklist for each category. Please ask your students to use these as they create their projects to ensure their alignment with NHD standards. 

Qualifications

With these changes, all students will be required to compete and rank at a recognized Regional Competition (Northern, Southern, Central, or Chicago Metro) in order to advance to the State competition. 

Further, all students who compete at the Illinois History Day state-level competition will now be ranked for advancement to the National History Day competition. Each year we have a substantial number of well-qualified projects that choose to not enter the National History Day competition. We hope this change allows these projects to be considered for advancement and these students to experience success at the National level.

I am looking forward to another great year and am excited to see all of the amazing projects our Illinois students will create. We were blown away with what they created last year in the midst of a major shift in education and the competition and I know this year will only be better. Here's to 2024Team Illinois!