Credit for What They Know: Community Service, PLA, and Adult Degree Completion

May 22, 2014Presenter: Gabi Zolla, COO, Council for Adult and Experiential Learning

23rd Annual Conference of the Community College National Center for Community Engagement

Credit for What They Know: Community Service, PLA, and Adult Degree Completion

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Service Learning and CAEL

If a Course +

= College Credit

Can Additional Learning from

= More College Credit

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College Credentials Matter• A worker with a four-year

degree on average will earn one million dollars more

• College graduate unemployment at 6.8% vs. non-college graduate at 24%

• By 2018, 63% of jobs will require some college or above

Anthony Carnevale, Stephen Rose and Ban Cheah, The College Payoff: Education, Lifetime Earnings, Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown Public Policy Institute, August, 2011.Anthony Carnevale, Tamara Jayasundera, and Ban Cheah, The College Advantage: Weathering the Economic Storm, Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown Public Policy Institute, August, 2012.Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements through 2018, Georgetown University, Center for Education and the Workforce, June 2010

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Disruptive Innovation“allows a whole new population of consumers at the bottom of a market access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.”

- Clayton Christensen’s website

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Is Higher Education Affordable?“Right now, if you are a high-income, low performing student, you have an 80 percent chance of going to college. If you are a low-income student, but high-performing with a B or better average, you only have a 20 percent chance of going to college. That's inexcusable.”

Senator Tom HarkinMarch 27, 2014

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What is Expected of Higher Ed

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“Knowledge Proliferation”

Prior Learning AssessmentPrior Learning Assessment (PLA) is a process for evaluating knowledge and skills in order to award college credit for learning from:

• On-the-job

learning

• Corporate

training

• Independent

study, such as MOOCs

• Military service

• Volunteer

service

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Change is Good

Graduation and Completion with PLA Credit • Baccalau

reate students are 2½ times more likely to persist to graduation.

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Wasting MoneyDebt

problem is even more

tragic when students

already know the subject matter and

have to take the course

anyway.

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Why Learning Portfolios?

Like an artist's portfolio, a

student puts together a

portfolio online that documents

their learning.

Why LearningCounts.org• www.LearningCounts.or

g

• On-line PLA service • Free PLA Credit

Predictor• Complimentary student

guidance on all forms of PLA

• Courses to teach students how to discover and document their own college-level learning and build portfolios online

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Students Say It Helps…

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How We Are Partnering

• LearningCounts/Public Allies Portal

• Building Advising Capacity

• Enrolling into Courses about Portfolios

• Assessing Public Allies Curricula for College-Level Credit

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Advising Needs

• Service Learning Participants

• Choose College or Program

• Use of LearningCounts

• Address basic needs develop a support

system

• Build and maintain confidence

• Prior negative experiences with

learning

• General career planning

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Questions?Gabi [email protected]