Online Service Planned to Help Adults Get Credit for Out-of-Classroom Learning

For years, colleges have awarded credit for out-of-classroom learning experiences like corporate training, independent study and volunteer activities. But many colleges can’t afford to train their faculty and staff to evaluate those experiences.

A new online service is intended to help translate outside learning into college credit, which should be good news for adults who want to save money on tuition and speed up their degrees.

The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning announced this week that it plans to design a virtual center that will help colleges assess prior learning, an evaluation process that can involve student portfolios or tests. The service will also offer adults guidance on getting credit for out-of-classroom education. The details of how the evaluation process will function have yet to be worked out, however, and the service is not expected to debut until the spring.

“This is a program that will help institutions that cannot at this point mount their own prior-learning assessment program,” says Judith B. Wertheim, vice president for higher-education services and administration at the council. “It will also help supplement reviews at institutions that already have a robust prior-learning assessment program.”

The project has a $175,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education and a number of college partners, including Valdosta State University and the State University of New York’s Empire State College.