Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Jumpstarting the Economy: The Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Program
- Credit Where It's Due: Prior Learning Assessment
- Methodology
- Harmonizing Policy: PLA Grant Activities
- Challenges with PLA Implementation
- Lessons from PLA Implementation
- Recommendations
- Conclusion
- Appendix
Challenges with PLA Implementation
We found that while many grantees developed policies for awarding credit for prior learning, they struggled with putting the programs in place. In MoHealth WINs, the final evaluation found that one of the strategies that stood out “as having not reached full implementation in most colleges” was PLA.1 The Pathway to Success in a Technical Career project—a grant to a single community college in Wyoming for improving energy programs—found “the process for developing a CPL portfolio is overwhelming for students and the review process is cumbersome for faculty so it is not typically utilized.”2 The Iowa Advanced Manufacturing grant, a consortium of 15 community colleges, cited PLA implementation as one of the weaknesses of the project.3
Not enough time has passed to determine whether the policies that grantees established ultimately affected students’ use of credit for prior learning. It is notable, however, how few students ended up using these alternative pathways by the time the evaluators wrote their final reports. We also heard that this low uptake continued well after the grant period had closed. For instance, at the end of the grant period for the NRC, only 7 percent of students earned credits through an assessment or a portfolio and only 12 percent earned credits through a third party evaluation.4 In the Oregon Credentials, Acceleration, and Support for Employment (CASE) project, five community colleges planned to put PLA policies in place and during the term of the grant the state passed policy supporting PLA implementation. However, only 24 participants were granted credit for prior learning.5
The Advanced Manufacturing Education (AME) Alliance—a consortium of three community colleges in Minnesota building manufacturing programs—also had trouble getting students to take advantage of the program. Students perceived the PLA “process as arduous and indicated that they would rather take the course to refresh their knowledge and be on the same level as their cohort,” the alliance’s final evaluation states.
Citations
- See Debera Bragg, MoHealthWINs Implementation: Third-Party Evaluation of Implementation of Programs of Study and Strategies. (June 2015) source
- See Leah Woodke, Larry Graf, & Daniel Driessen, Pathway to Success Project Evaluation Final Report. (July 2017) source.
- See Arlene de la Mora, Mari Kemis, Elisabeth Callen, Soko Starobin. Iowa Advanced Manufacturing (I-AM) Final External Evaluation Report. (September 2016) source
- See Derek V. Price, Leah Childress, Wendy Sedlak & Robert Roach. Northeast Resiliency Consortium: Final Evaluation Report. (October 2017) source
- See Bob Watrus, Heather Fercho. Oregon Credentials, Acceleration and Support for Employment (CASE) Evaluation Report: Results, Key Issues and Implications for Policy, Practice and Systems. (September 2015) source.