Posts Tagged ‘prior learning assessments’

Research Roundup: Prior Learning Assessment as a Strategy for Upskilling Learners

Wednesday, April 26th, 2023

Advance CTE’s “Research Round-Up” blog series features summaries of relevant research reports and studies to elevate evidence-based Career Technical Educational (CTE) policies and practices and topics related to college and career readiness. This month’s blog highlights prior learning assessment as a strategy for upskilling learners by offering college credit for previous academic and professional experiences which aligns with CTE Without Limits: A Shared Vision for the Future of Career Technical Education where each learner’s skills are counted, valued, and portable.

Prior learning assessment (PLA) is a strategy being utilized by postsecondary institutions to increase enrollment and retention of learners in their CTE programs. PLA, which is similar in design and implementation to credit for prior learning (CPL) offers benefits for both learners and institutions. These programs are effective options for adult learners that have work or academic experience but lack the credentials and the information they need to upskill to complete a degree. 

Methods of PLA include:

The PLA Boost Report

The PLA Boost, released in 2020, was collaboratively produced by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL). This study examined the use and impact of prior learning assessment (PLA) on adult outcomes using enrollment, credit-earning and degree-earning data from 72 postsecondary institutions of more than 465,000 learners of all ages, focusing in particular on more than 232,000 adult learners (defined as learners age 25 and older) from 69 of the participating institutions that were able to provide the most detailed data on PLA credit-earning.

Findings: The shared benefits of PLA to learners and institutions

When postsecondary institutions acknowledge previous education and training through PLA, it removes a barrier to returning to the classroom for adult learners by decreasing the cost of earning their degree. 

Based on the report’s findings, learners can save money by taking advantage of PLA: The adult students in this sample saved an estimated average of $1,481 at two-year public institutions, $3,794 at four-year publics, $10,220 at four-year privates, and $6,090 at for-profits when considering the lower costs of PLA compared to course tuition.

In addition to saving money, PLA allows the learner to save time and reportedly, increases feelings of motivation and validation. PLA was strongly associated with higher rates of credential completion for adult learners. The 24,512 adult students who earned PLA credits had a credential completion rate of 49 percent over the seven-and-a-half-year observation period, compared to 27 percent among adult students with no PLA credits.

Adult students with PLA were more likely to persist and continue to complete their degree at their participating institution. Adult students with PLA earned an average of 17.6 more credits from institutional courses compared to adult students without PLA.

Study Limitations 

The sample was overly representative of predominantly online institutions, some of the results (most notably for the sector and for race/ethnicity groups) were influenced by a handful of large institutions or by institutions where key student groups were concentrated, and there were too few students in some of the race categories (Native Hawai‘ian/Other Pacific Islander and American Indian/ Alaska Native). While this study was able to demonstrate the benefits of PLA,  the sample of adult learners was relatively small. Forty percent of the participating institutions reported participation rates of under three percent of adult learners with PLA. Disaggregating this data also revealed low participation rates for female, low-income and Black adult learners compared to other subgroups. It is worth noting that, despite variation in the extent, all learner subgroups experienced credential boosts from PLA.

Recommendations and Additional Resources

Now is the time to invest in PLA. PLA offers a solution for increasing credential attainment by extending an opportunity for adult learners to upskill and/or return to complete their degrees. The data shows us that access to PLA is not equal across adult learner groups. In order to provide access for all adult learners institutions should critique their data to better identify the gaps in access and to leverage the full potential of these programs.

To learn more about strategies to increase participation in PLA and CPL, check out the Credit for Prior Learning Messaging Toolkit. This toolkit provides effective messages targeted to key audiences and strategies for dissemination to increase participation in Credit for Prior Learning among adult learners who are pursuing career pathways and CTE programs of study that lead to jobs in in-demand fields. 

For state and local CTE leaders looking to increase their data literacy, Advance CTE’s Train the Trainer: Opportunity Gap Analysis Workshop focuses on the skills that leaders need to investigate outcome gaps and perform root cause analysis. These sessions will provide the necessary training and resources to support state leaders in addressing gaps in access to high-quality CTE. 

Amy Hodge, Policy Associate

By Jodi Langellotti in Research
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Advance CTE Fall Meeting Sponsor Blog: Gold Sponsor, NOCTI – Navigating Uncertain Times

Friday, September 23rd, 2022

This post is written by NOCTI, a Gold Level sponsor of the 2022 Advance CTE Fall Meeting.

A “black swan” event is an unpredictable occurrence beyond what is normally expected of a situation, often with severe consequences. While the entire educational environment was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, Career Technical Education (CTE), which focuses on hands-on learning, was heavily impacted by this black swan event.  In addition to navigating the perils of COVID-19, CTE experienced instructor shortages and concerns about the limited related work experience of those available for these positions. Though many states have relevant, standardized, industry-identified competencies, the associated curriculum must be delivered by individuals with a solid understanding of the field, which is generally based on work experience. In some cases, these concerns can result in a reduction of content depth delivered in a CTE classroom. 

How does the CTE community respond to these kinds of events? What can states, teacher preparation systems, schools, and administrators do to increase equity and access to CTE programs as well as maintain high-quality program content and delivery? To address these variables would take more space than this blog offers, but we can describe three tools offered by NOCTI and Nocti Business Solutions (NBS). 

Let’s start with a focus on a teacher candidate’s technical skill competence. NBS offers assessments that are used in the hiring process. These assessments can be used to verify a candidate’s experience, determine a candidate’s fit to a position, and establish an employee’s professional development plan upon hire. Using these assessments longitudinally can provide additional information to those hiring CTE teachers.

The second tool is a credentialing assessment developed by NOCTI and several other associations, entitled “Principles of CTE Teaching”. The credential offers two levels and establishes an individual’s understanding of CTE pedagogy and covers student management techniques, facility management and safety, teaching, and both formative and summative assessment strategies. 

The final tool developed by NOCTI, micro-credentials, gathers the collective knowledge of seasoned CTE instructors and subject matter experts. NOCTI utilized longitudinal data across a variety of industries to identify areas in which CTE learners were having difficulty. NOCTI then worked with instructors to design short video segments to address these specific areas. The resulting content segments are available 24/7 and can be viewed repeatedly in both synchronous and asynchronous settings. Micro-credentials can be used in a variety of situations and can be an effective tool to reinforce an instructor’s content knowledge. 

Acting without deliberate planning can exacerbate problems and pondering an issue without action rarely helps anyone progress. NOCTI’s tools were designed to assist in the expansion of the CTE community and represent thoughtful actions to inspire state CTE leaders to address instructor pipeline challenges and empower new instructors to be successful in CTE.  Please reach out to us to find out more at [email protected].

Dr. John C. Foster, President and CEO, NOCTI & NBS 

 

By Stacy Whitehouse in Advance CTE Fall Meeting
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Guided Pathways Initiatives Require Major Overhaul of How Things are Done at Community Colleges

Friday, January 5th, 2018

A recent article from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) highlights efforts from CCRC and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) to implement guided pathways reforms at community colleges. The goal of guided pathways reforms is to create college environments that learners can easily and confidently navigate to completion and successful employment upon completion, and includes four main practice areas:

Reforms in all four of these areas require major changes to program structure, advising, administrative policies and classroom practice, and therefore require buy-in across the institution and a several-year commitment to the reform process. CCRC and AACC have been working with 30 colleges to implement guided pathways through the Pathways Project, and shared some of their lessons learned from the project’s first year.

For example, Jackson College in Michigan quickly realized that its four advisors for more than 5,000 students were not adequate for helping all students learn about and choose program pathways. The college has now hired “student success navigators,” who call every single student before orientation and work with each student in person multiple times in their first semester to design a pathway that works for them. San Jacinto College in Texas reorganized its 144 degree and certificate programs into eight meta majors, allowing a student to choose one of the eight early on and begin introductory courses without being locked into a specific degree or certificate program. The college also worked on transfer-oriented programs by creating maps for the college’s five most common transfer destinations to help students choose the courses that will allow them to transfer non-elective college credit to the new institutions.

For Effective CTE, States Should Adopt Eight Non-Negotiables

ExcelinEd recently released a new playbook for state policymakers related to effective CTE. The report argues that while the importance of CTE has been recognized at the federal, state and local levels, not enough has been done to ensure that CTE programs are meeting workforce needs effectively. This is largely attributed to common challenges of the broad spectrum of programs available, the disconnect between K-12 and industry, and the negative legacy of “vocational education.” To address these challenges, the report recommends that states adopt eight “non-negotiables” related to their CTE policies:

  1. All promoted programs of study align with state and/or regional industry and labor market data;
  2. Programs of study incorporate experiential learning and capstone experiences valued by industry;
  3. Secondary programs of study vertically align with postsecondary programs;
  4. Courses are sequential and progressive in a given program of study;
  5. Secondary programs of study incorporate courses and exams eligible for postsecondary credit or hours where appropriate;
  6. Course standards are robust and accurately represent the academic, technical and employability skills learners must master;
  7. Educators receive ongoing, progressive training and professional development to ensure their instruction is reflective of course standards and current industry work environments; and
  8. Federal, state and local funding are utilized to leverage and drive programmatic changes leading to the implementation of vertically aligned education-to-career learning pathways.

 

The authors propose that these eight non-negotiables be implemented in a four-phase plan, to ensure thoughtful and sustainable changes are occurring. They provide examples of successful implementation of each of the eight non-negotiables in Delaware, Florida and Tennessee.

Odds and Ends

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce recently released a new report on the integration of education and workforce data. The report focuses on states who have created publicly available data tools in five areas:

Education Commission of the States recently released a 50-state comparison of policies related to Prior Learning Assessments (PLAs). PLAs allow learners and institutions to determine the level of previous of knowledge and experience before entering a postsecondary program, and can be used to incentivize re-entry for older learners.

A new report from the American Enterprise Institute examines the barriers community colleges face in providing high-quality CTE, including funding allocations, accreditation requirements and credit-transfer policies, among others. The report also makes recommendations for community colleges to make the most of their CTE offerings and reduce the proliferation of general studies programs at community colleges.

Ashleigh McFadden, State Policy Manager

By admin in Research
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