\n<\/p>\n
Credit for prior learning is one strategy colleges and states can employ to expedite adult learners\u2019 progress toward their degrees and promote student success. Past research also shows that students who take advantage of CPL opportunities have higher employment rates and increased earnings after graduation. <\/p>\n
But administering CPL can be a challenge, in part because of different departments\u2019 and academic disciplines\u2019 understanding and evaluation of prior experience. <\/p>\n
In the most recent episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with Colleen Sorensen, Utah Valley University\u2019s director of CPL and student assessment services, about new state legislation requiring credit for prior learning opportunities for students and how her office supports instructors and learners navigating CPL. <\/p>\n
An edited version of the podcast appears below.<\/em> <\/p>\n Colleen Sorensen, director of credit for prior learning and student assessment services<\/p>\n Colleen Sorensen, Utah Valley University<\/p>\n Q: Can you introduce yourself, your work and your institution to our audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>My name is Colleen Sorensen. I\u2019ve been at Utah Valley University located in Orem, Utah, for about 31 years. We\u2019re a pretty large institution; we\u2019re actually the largest in the state of Utah. Our enrollment in fall 2024 was 46,809 students. Now, of that, about 45,000 were undergraduates, just under 1,000 were graduate students, and we actually have a pretty large number of concurrent enrollment students. About 16,000 of our students are working towards adding some college-level work while they\u2019re still in high school, and we\u2019re open enrollment. All of that together makes for a really interesting blend of individuals, from first-generation to returning students to nontraditional who all come together at Utah Valley. <\/p>\n I have the lucky pleasure of working with them in the space of credit for prior learning. I was officially made director [of CPL] in 2022; before that, I\u2019ve been over all of testing services for the institution for about the last 25\u00a0years. So I\u2019ve been a part of the credit for prior learning process with exam administration for challenge exams and CLEP and ACT and SAT and standardized assessments and professional licensure assessments. Now I\u00a0get to work also in the space of making credit for prior learning, instead of it being just a department-run system, to taking that and scaling it and modeling it across the entire institution so that all of our academic departments have access to and support to develop credit for prior learning options. <\/p>\n Q: When you talk about this expansion and scaling of credit for prior learning across the institution, can you share more about how that looks and what that\u2019s meant, in terms of where you started and now the vision moving forward?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: <\/strong>When I started in this, we had a few areas that were already doing quite a bit of work in this space. <\/p>\n One of the things we value in the state of Utah is service, and so a lot of our students will stop out from college and go serve as missionaries across the world for 18 to 24 months. <\/p>\n During that time, they\u2019re often learning a new language. Then they come back to UVU. Our language department recognized that years ago and put together a credit for prior learning process for those students to earn upwards of 16 credits of language [courses] if they can demonstrate [their skill] through a placement test and a course with a faculty member. If they pass that course, they\u2019ll get up to 16 credits of 1000- to 2000-level language. So that\u2019s been going on for a long time. <\/p>\n In 2019, there was legislation that was passed just before COVID that required all of the public higher ed institutions in the state of Utah to provide credit for prior learning options at a larger scale. So with the pandemic, that kind of put it on the back burner for a while, but in 2022 I started to pick this up as a new assignment. <\/p>\n At first, I met with different department chairs. I don\u2019t know if it was just wrong timing with the pandemic, but it felt like a lot of doors closed to it at that time. But there were a few departments that were like, \u201cOh, I was one of those nontraditional students. I would like to see more opportunities in this space.\u201d<\/p>\n And so slowly but surely, I started working with a few faculty, a few departments and started building sustainable systems of, how can we assess these students? Because each student is unique in what they bring as an adult learner. It\u2019s not just like, \u201cLet\u2019s open this one program and as long as they have step one, two, three and four, they can award credit.\u201d Each student needs to be looked at very uniquely. So I designed what I call a concierge approach to this process, where students can apply through our credit for prior learning website. We have a small team of students and part-timers and myself who are looking at what the student has provided. We\u2019re prompting them with different things and then we\u2019re reaching out within the academic community at UVU to look at possible matchups for credit for prior learning. So when we started, we only had a few departments that would engage with us, and now up to 75\u00a0percent of our academic departments are not just looking at but considering and awarding credit. <\/p>\n This year alone, we\u2019ve awarded almost 6,000 credits to CPL over 1,500 courses. In just six months, we\u2019ve saved students over $1.6\u00a0million in tuition. So that\u2019s exciting to me. <\/p>\n Q: You bring up an interesting point with this division of responsibility between your office and then the faculty and the academic role in CPL. We want to ensure that students are actually meeting those learning outcomes and that the credits that we\u2019re awarding them do reflect their experiences. But there can be some tension or a challenge point there when it comes to ensuring that there are these systems set up and making sure that every student is being recognized in the ways that reflect their abilities and their learning. <\/strong> <\/p>\n I wonder if you can talk about building that bridge between your office and these academic departments and how you opened up the conversation to make this a space that\u2019s both trusting but also institutionalized.<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> What\u2019s been really important is for me to establish [is] that I\u2019m here to support academic departments and to ensure that the CPL policy that I\u2019m the steward of is being met, but that the governance happens with the subject matter experts and the departments themselves. <\/p>\n Because the way that the school of business assesses prior learning is going to be very different than the way that dance or the botany lab assesses prior learning. I wanted to make sure that each department chair and subject matter expert understands that they\u2019re in charge of deciding what we assess, how we assess it and when we assess it. <\/p>\n Some departments only look at 4000-level coursework for CPL. Others look at 1000- [and] 2000-level coursework. It\u2019s not my job to tell them how to do that within their area. They\u2019re the ones who know. My job is to support them with [questions such as:] Do we need to bring in a national expert in your area if the department is not feeling confident in doing this yourself? Or to bring in templates for them or trainings for them of how to assess their particular type of coursework? <\/p>\n That\u2019s how I support them and then help them navigate through the whole process so that it\u2019s not left to bureaucracy, red tape of sorts, just to support them all the way through. <\/p>\n Q: CPL can be a very confusing process for the student. Can you talk about how UVU seeks to support students as they navigate the process? One, in understanding that this is available to them and that you can recognize their prior learning, but also, what that process looks like and how they might feel navigating that situation.<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: <\/strong>Some departments have things really well established on their websites. Others do not. And so that\u2019s why we have the CPL office and the CPL website. It\u2019s a basic inquiry; it just asks a few questions to the student of, what are your academic goals? What do you think you might be eligible for and how much involvement do you want from us? Do they want a phone call from one of our CPL concierge support individuals, or do they just want to be sent on their way and take care of it themselves? <\/p>\n We really allow the student to gauge that, but we\u2019re here to support them from inquiry all the way up until the credit is awarded. They can walk into our office, or they can contact us via the website and we\u2019ll help them figure out any part of the process such as, do we just need to connect two individuals together? Do we have a faculty member who might be away and so their request has been sitting in a queue for longer than feels natural or normal to a college student? Or what is the natural process that the department has established?<\/p>\n Some departments will say that they\u2019ll review inquiries during these windows of time and maybe the student didn\u2019t catch that piece of information. We\u2019ll reinforce that for the department to say, \u201cYes, you\u2019re in the queue. It\u2019s going to get reviewed during XYZ, so just hang tight and if you have any other questions, contact us again.\u201d<\/p>\n We are there to support [students] all the way through. That\u2019s the concierge aspect of it, and we found that to be really valuable, because there\u2019s a lot of moving parts when it comes to credit for prior learning and creative solutions that we might not have thought of. <\/p>\n I\u2019ll get three or four different areas together\u2014I might get an associate dean, an adviser and two subject matter experts in a room together. I\u2019m like, \u201cOK, let\u2019s look at this case. What can we do with what we know and what have we not thought of before? How do we best support the student in their academic goals while still keeping all of our academic rigor required?\u201d <\/p>\n Q: I imagine you play the role of translator sometimes, too\u2014helping the student understand what the department is asking and helping the department understand what the student wants to know\u2014which can be a really needed role. It\u2019s wonderful that you have yourself and your team to help draw those dots and connect the lines and make sure everybody\u2019s working towards the same goal.<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: <\/strong>Yes. I\u2019m setting up working with different departments on, \u201cOK, if they do a challenge exam or they do a portfolio review, can they do a second [attempt]?\u201d There are pros and cons to each, right? We want academic rigor, but also, depending on the area, it\u2019s very contextual per level of course and program. <\/p>\n So for someone who\u2019s going for a very high level of coursework [in CPL], is it a one-time [exam] or do you offer a retake, [giving them] one more time with some feedback, helping the student to be able to speak to the learning outcomes more clearly? I\u2019ve seen departments do it both ways. Some will say, \u201cNo, they should either know it or they don\u2019t, or they need to be in the classroom.\u201d <\/p>\n The academic departments will go to their board of trustees and talk about it and have a good conversation of, \u201cHow much leeway do we want to give here?\u201d Our policy states that you\u2019re allowed up to one retake or not. Sometimes it works in the benefit [of the student] to have it be an all or nothing. And again, that\u2019s very department and program specific. It\u2019s not my job to tell them what it should or shouldn\u2019t be; they know best. <\/p>\n Q: CPL can be very resource intensive, one, for the institution and the faculty or whoever is assessing the project, and sometimes <\/strong>there\u2019s a fee associated for students<\/strong>. Can you talk about the labor, the time and the resources that go into this work and how you help coordinate that? And how is the institution investing in this work?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>That is the hottest topic of conversation in this work. We\u2019re a very large institution, the course load of our faculty\u2014 Adding this on top of it can feel significant in how much time it takes. This isn\u2019t a quick grading process. To grade a portfolio, or to prepare for an oral interview or to write a challenge exam that needs to be updated on a regular basis, all of that takes faculty time. <\/p>\n At the moment, at our institution, there are small amounts of dollars involved that go back to the department who do the assessments and then the department decides whether they pool that money together or they pay out to their faculty. Often they\u2019ll have a conversation among themselves of what\u2019s the best usage of this and do a collaborative decision. Some it\u2019s to pay the faculty; for others, it\u2019s to help fund something that all of the faculty have agreed to. <\/p>\n Ideally, in our future, we would like to see more fees, smaller out of pocket, less than $100 fees, attached to credit for prior learning assessments. But we don\u2019t have full consensus yet among all of <\/strong>our leadership, and so that is still to be determined at our institution. <\/p>\n Q: Good luck with that conversation. It\u2019s always fun to enter shared governance conversations, especially when we\u2019re talking about student success and what\u2019s gonna be best for the learner at the end of the day.<\/strong> <\/p>\n As we\u2019re thinking about scaling and institutionalizing CPL across UVU, one thing I wanted to ask about is some of those processes that can be very easy. We\u2019ve talked about language requirements and how students who have come from their missions\u2014that\u2019s a pretty set process and it\u2019s pretty understood and simple to navigate for the student. Are there other processes that you\u2019re looking at or working with departments to streamline how this works and what a student can expect?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: <\/strong>There\u2019s a few things that we\u2019re doing to help this. One, we\u2019re encouraging every department to have some real estate on their home page, on their website, of CPL options so that students can look very quickly if they\u2019re shopping at two o\u2019clock in the morning and don\u2019t want to wait for a response from one of our team who tend to work more traditional hours. We want websites to be able to cater to that, as well as we want advising conversations to be able to cater to that. <\/p>\n We\u2019re even asking faculty to put CPL options on their syllabi, so that if a student sits down on day one and they\u2019re looking at this course and they\u2019re looking at the topics, they\u2019re looking at the learning outcomes, they\u2019re like, \u201cI\u00a0already know this.\u201d Wouldn\u2019t it be great to also see, \u201cAnd here\u2019s a credit for prior learning option that you could challenge this,\u201d that maybe they missed up until this point in advising or on the websites, or maybe they didn\u2019t know to contact the CPL office? The syllabus is also another place of marketing as well as [traditional] marketing, which we attempt to do quite a bit of, that could help the student to recognize that there\u2019s another option here. <\/p>\n Q: If you had to give advice to a peer working in a similar role at a different institution, are there any lessons you\u2019ve learned or insights you would want to pass on in this work and the ways that you\u2019ve been advancing this university goal?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: <\/strong>Start small, but strategically. Like find a department or a faculty champion who has a clear use case, like a common industry certification or a workforce training pathway and then support them with some tools, some templates, some training. Don\u2019t just tell them, \u201cYou got to figure this out.\u201d <\/p>\n Center it on the student experience. Talk with your students, learn what they wish could have happened, because there\u2019s so much that can be done, or that might already be being done. It\u2019s just that this department may not understand what that department is doing. <\/p>\n Something that we did this year for the first time is we hosted a faculty summer institute. It\u2019s a three-week commitment, but it\u2019s one day of being together in person. Faculty had to apply for this, and there were four areas of focus\u2014you needed to have a tangible asset at the end of this. One was to develop a CPL pathway. Another was to embed a credential into a program. Another was experiential learning, and the fourth was a continuing education credit process for those who have finished up and now they just want to add on. <\/p>\n We did offer a stipend to these individuals who were approved to come to this training. We spent the morning in education\u2014we brought in Nan Travers, director of the Center for Leadership in Credential Learning from SUNY Empire State College, who is considered the fairy godmother of all credentialing. She was fabulous\u2014to teach and train our faculty. Then we brought in a statewide person to discuss workforce alignment. Then we had a luncheon and we strategically placed all of the faculty into their area of focus. So seated at my table were faculty all focused on generating a credit for prior learning pathway. We had botany, biotech, psychology, computer science and business accounting. They\u2019re all coming in from different schools within the institution. <\/p>\n We sat together at lunch and then we had an afternoon of working on the projects. So Nan was there, as the expert; she would come around to the tables and discuss things and answer questions. But these faculty got to interact with each other, with people outside of their standard focus, and they loved it. They said, at the end of the day, \u201cI never get to do this. I never get to talk with faculty outside of my own area of focus.\u201d They were passing phone numbers to each other. They were sharing their models and thinking and helping tweak each other\u2019s. <\/p>\n It was such a fun, collaborative experience. And we have 11 new CPL pathways that came out of that one day, and then we gave them another three weeks to work on it. We plan to continue to do that summer after summer. We need funding from our administration to help pay the faculty to do that, but I will advocate to do that again and again. It was so successful. <\/p>\n Q: It\u2019s almost like a CPL incubator, like how they have the student entrepreneurship programs, but for faculty to think about ways to be entrepreneurial in their own field.<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: <\/strong>Yeah and, you know, they said, \u201cThank you for thinking about me and my needs as the faculty member,\u201d really taking care to be able to answer their questions and help them get over those mental blocks that they were experiencing of, \u201cI don\u2019t know how to address this or this or this.\u201d We took care of all of that that day. <\/p>\n Q: It\u2019s nice to just do it all in one day sometimes, too, right? It\u2019s not an email chain. It\u2019s not a series of meetings\u2014like, we can all just sit in the same room and figure it out all in one go.<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> One thing we\u2019re known for in Utah is we like soda with mix-ins. So we had a little beverage bar for them to go get drinks whenever they wanted, with a cute little mix-in to keep them energized and caffeinated all afternoon. <\/p>\n Q: That\u2019s so fun. So as you\u2019re thinking about this work, what are your goals for the upcoming year? Where do you want this program to go?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: <\/strong>Yeah. There\u2019s a couple things. One, I would like to get us from 75\u00a0percent of departments tapping into CPL to over 90\u00a0percent, for starters. <\/p>\n We\u2019ve been hosting at UVU for the last three years a statewide conference. We brought in all the other USHE [Utah System of Higher Education] schools to just share best practices in credit for prior learning and ask things such as: How do we make this work? How do we track the data? How do we compare things and be more inclusive as a whole structure within the state of Utah and have less competition between schools? How do we be more collaborative in this process? So continuing to expand that conference is one thing. <\/p>\n I\u2019m partnering with another school, Salt Lake Community College, starting this fall to do a once-a-month lunch and learn hourlong best practices over the phone. Covering, \u201cHey, what\u2019s keeping you up at night? What are your headaches? How have you solved this?\u201d Just allowing everyone to learn together, because we\u2019re all pretty new, since this legislative mandate in 2019, of really bringing this into fruition. And how do we not reinvent the wheel, but just learn from each other? <\/p>\n Those are a few things, as well as, UVU launched a campuswide adult learner initiative in 2022, and it\u2019s strategically housed within the provost suite. It\u2019s focused on reimagining adult education over all. We\u2019re focusing on student support and faculty support, as well as credit for prior learning. As I said earlier, kind of getting into the mind of the adult learner. I\u2019d really like to see more conversation in the coming year, and my goal is to have conversations around this\u2014could we do shorter-term classwork, or more hybrid classwork, where students are on campus? Because we find there\u2019s great value in face-to-face, what if we\u2019re only bringing them to campus once a week and we\u2019re hybrid twice a week for courses? Can we offer more adult learner\u2013friendly pedagogy? What does that look like and how can we accomplish that? So, I\u2019d like to spend more time in that space in the coming year and really listening to students of what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not working. <\/p>\n Get more content like this directly to your inbox<\/em>. Subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success here<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Credit for prior learning is one strategy colleges and states can employ to expedite adult learners\u2019 progress toward their degrees and promote student success. Past research also shows that students who take advantage of CPL opportunities have higher employment rates and increased earnings after graduation. 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