How Uniform Practices Can Support the Diversity of CPL

Earlier this year, a working group of CAEL members formed to tackle the challenges of CPL transfer. Unsurprisingly, Matt Bergman, Ph.D, is among its participants. Bergman can be found seemingly anywhere credit for prior learning (CPL) might propel college and career success. In theory, those intersections should be practically infinite. In practice, Bergman notes, they are underutilized. Too often, they are also disconnected and desultory. His participation in CAEL's working group is one of several ways he is working to change that.

Bergman, an associate professor at the University of Louisville, a CAEL institutional member, is the author of Unfinished Business: Compelling Stories of Adult Student Persistence. He is also a CAEL Ambassador and member of the Prior Learning Assessment Network led by Nan Travers, director of the Center for Leadership in Credentialing Learning at Empire State University, and Melissa DeBlois, director of prior learning assessment at Community College of Vermont. Both institutions are CAEL members. Bergman describes the network as a solidarity movement that brings its diverse network of more than 100 institutions across the country together around the common cause of advancing credit for prior learning.

For Bergman, one of the core strengths of CPL -- embracing and valuing diverse learning experiences -- can present a challenge for practitioners trying to make the recognition and use of CPL credits more efficient and seamless for students. "There is a wide array of approaches to CPL that are very effective, and very rigorous, but they're not perfectly similar,' said Bergman. "That being said, that is also true of the way college algebra is taught at different universities. Just because content delivery varies doesn't mean rigor is diminished, but making CPL symmetrical among institutions is what we're trying to do at places like CAEL's working group and the Prior Learning Assessment Network."

Such collaboration has forged productive relationships within Bergman's home institution and connections to employers and other colleges and universities. "We've had some really interesting conversations around apprenticeships through UofL's MAPS program, and how they are not only creating pathways for individuals but also opportunities for us to evaluate workplace expertise," he said. By enlisting curriculum analysts to evaluate workplace learning experiences and translate them into academic credit directly, the university can add pre-vetted credit pathways to its CPL database.

Completing CPL evaluations on a proactive, program level makes the process more painless for faculty, staff, and students. "Rather than a standard three-credit-hour class where a person does an individualized portfolio that then is assessed by a three-person portfolio committee," Bergman said, the documented workplace learning experiences create a standardized, transparent route to experiential credit.

The approach also strengthens education benefit programs. Housing CPL opportunities under the same roof as the benefits programs themselves reduces tuition assistance expenses and expedites credential completion. Even in the absence of education benefits, workers have a clear connection between their employment and reduced education costs.

CPL collaboration also fosters a constructive culture around the practice within campus academic communities, Bergman noted. 'Hiring faculty members with subject matter expertise as curriculum analysts, like my colleague Elizabeth Krauss, is a good way to involve faculty,' he said. Such participation ensures proactive CPL pathways are properly vetted and also maintains a pragmatic nexus between classroom and corporate learning.

Efforts to promote CPL are paying off. In Bergman's home state, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) recently published an action plan to improve economic opportunity for Kentucky Adults through lifelong learning. The plan includes a call for expanding access to and implementation of credit for prior learning. "There are some really high-quality CPL practices being implemented in the state at a range of institutions, and the Council is trying to expand the standardized guiding principles behind that success into other institutions so they can implement and replicate what we're doing for other residents of the state," he said. Leaders at CPE, including Dallas Kratzer (another CAEL Ambassador), Amanda Johannsen, and Lee Nimoks, are creating a pathway for wider adoption of CPL across the state.

A key component of Bergman's work with state-level initiatives is CPL in transfer, the core topic of the CAEL working group mentioned earlier. "We're trying to link up public and private institutions so that when students transfer backward and forward CPL credits are acknowledged and not lost in the process," said Bergman. That effort includes another state organization (and yet another CAEL member), the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. "We're trying to automate ways that will allow articulation of the credit earned from CPL toward a four-year degree, so we're looking at how we can list that credit on transcripts so that the University of Louisville and other state institutions as well as private schools in Kentucky will honor it."

As Bergman and his colleagues continue to find ways to advance CPL, he thinks collaboration will remain key. "I think we're in great shape, because there are so many dedicated people on our working committee committed to this as a kind of legacy of their work," he said. "If we can create standard approaches for the articulation of CPL , we will lay the groundwork for the next generation of adult learners to reconnect with higher education, and that feels pretty profound."