2016-2021 AMP Implementation Updates (February 2018)

• Prior Learning
• Alternative Credentialing
• Guided Pathways and Meta Majors
• Prior Learning Assessment
• Alternative Placement
• Noncredit to Credit Pathways
• Three Core Strategies Underpin this Multi-year Project
• Guided Pathways and Meta Majors
• Committee Membership
• Features of The Plan(s) - Implementation
• Implementation Timeline
• Potential Conflicts and Challenges
• Assessment of Success

Prior Learning:

The Prior Learning Implementation Committee launched in fall, 2017. For its first year, the Committee is charged with expanding access to prior learning and investigating MC’s current success in serving non-traditional students through the administration and analysis of the Adult Learner 3600 survey. The timeline that includes a semester-by-semester presentation of the goals for the Prior Learning Implementation Committee is provided in Table 2.

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Alternative Credentialing:

During the first year of the project, a steering committee and core team, made up of deans and leaders from the discipline areas and Academic Affairs, reviewed relevant literature, models, and practices on an ongoing basis. The committee issued a bid and procured the technical assistance services from the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW) and organized two on-site trainings for core team members. Over the summer, the core team, composed of credit and workforce faculty members from target disciplines, received training on identifying and writing course competencies based on course outcomes. With ongoing support from CSW, they have begun to map these competencies to the framework. During the end of the summer and beginning of fall, faculty will begin to map entry-level job descriptions that align to their disciplines to the framework; these will be then be aligned to the course competencies. Faculty will share their work with their discipline colleagues during the fall and continue to meet jointly to analyze their findings and plan for next steps. At the same time, the steering committee members have participated in College groups and meetings that clearly inform and support this project. These activities include reviewing student management system tools that will help collect data on transitions from noncredit to  credit, and participating on a workgroup on badging, one of the alternative credentials that the Capitol One project group will incorporate. At the recommendation of CSW, the committee is planning a grant-funded trip to Columbus Community College in Ohio, a Right Signals project participant, Achieving the Dream school, and power user of the CSW Credentials Framework, to learn how they are using the Framework.

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Guided Pathways and Meta Majors

The College began the discussion of Guided Pathways and Meta Majors in the summer of 2016; however, multiple student success initiatives and fluid changes to curriculum limited the amount of work that could be done. With these in place, a college wide conversation about Guided Pathways and Meta Majors can begin. This conversation was re-introduced at the Summer Academic Affairs retreat, and during the Fall 2017 opening meeting.

For the nontraditional student obtaining an academic credential is a significant challenge. The retention, transfer, and graduation rates at community colleges nationally, and at MC locally, reflect the difficulty of balancing work, personal responsibilities, and successfully pursuing an academic credential or degree. According to Patricia Steele and Wendy Erisman, the challenges confronting non-traditional students include: 

• One in six American adults—approximately 30-35 million individuals—were at one time enrolled in college but did not complete a degree or certificate.
• When adults return to college after stopping out, they may still find it difficult to complete a degree, and available data suggest a pattern of adult students who have tried repeatedly to complete their education.

The Academic Master Plan (AMP) includes two goals designed to reduce the barriers facing non-traditional students: awarding more credit for prior learning, and creating alternative credentials. Both of these goals recognize and incorporate learning that occurs outside the traditional classroom. By awarding credit for what students have already learned, and providing alternative noncredit to credit pathways, MC will be able to help more students persist, transfer and graduate.

This White Paper focuses on two areas in the AMP that integrate alternative pathways into academic pathways. Alternative pathways are defined as an alternative means of obtaining educational qualifications, other than the traditional means of gaining access to or completing the required study to obtain the educational qualifications. The two areas that are the focus of alternative credentialing in the AMP are:

• Implement Alternative and Customized Assessment and Placement: Assessment of Prior Learning, multiple measures for developmental placement, expanded credit by exam and,
• Design Alternative and Customized Credentialing and Pathways: Competency Based Education, stackable credentials, badges, Technical Professional Skills (TPS) degrees, and multiple exit points from developmental studies.

The AMP includes these goals because alternative pathways have a positive impact on student retention, transfer, time-to-degree, cost-to-degree, and graduation. Further, these options address the changing educational and business landscape where industry-recognized credentials are considered legitimate alternatives to a degree and lead to successful career paths that may or may not include either a two- or four-year degree. In addition, offering students alternative pathways provides evidence of career readiness and helps to prepare students for the workforce by including coursework achievements and demonstrable competencies, which will help differentiate them in a competitive job marketplace. 

According to David Schejbal, “[t]he proliferation of non-degree credits is driven by more than a fluid workforce. The entire nature of work has changed. As Richard Florida explains in his 2011 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, we now are working in a knowledge economy. It’s important for people to possess knowledge and be able to use it in creative ways if they want to become upwardly mobile—and remain employed” (2017, 1). The need for demonstrated skills, in addition to or instead of a college degree, reinforces the importance of alternative credentialing to help students demonstrate their mastery of competencies in a highly competitive, mobile marketplace where multiple careers over the course of a worker’s lifetime will be the norm.

Similar to David Schejbal, Goldie Blumenstyk also discusses the changing landscape where industry and non-academic credentials are often considered more valuable than a degree. Elon University and the community colleges of Colorado and North Carolina, for example, are utilizing badges to  demonstrate student mastery in areas where a degree does not demonstrate to future employers the extent of a student’s capabilities (2015, 1). Colorado Community Colleges issue badges that they state are “a web-based, verifiable representation of a skill, mastery of a set of skills and/or recognition of expertise.” As an example, students in Colorado may obtain a welding or machining badge while pursuing their two-year degree. In North Carolina, teacher candidates may earn badges for demonstrating expertise in global education competencies to increase their employability and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

The pursuit of a consistent, systematic, and readily understandable approach to awarding credit for prior learning is another goal of the Plan. The College has always had prior learning; however, the complex process is not well understood by or publicized to students, faculty or staff. While the benefits of prior learning, such as reducing the cost of a degree, reducing the time to degree, and increasing retention, transfer, and graduation rates are well understood by the College community (CAEL, 2010; Foster, J., & Gielczyk, A, 2015), developing a systematic institutional capability to accept these credits presents a challenge both for the student and the institution. Montgomery College has plans to develop clear access to information on prior learning, and expanding the options to obtain prior learning credit such as awarding credit for military experience, and credentials as industry certifications.

Guided Pathways, originally explained in “Redesigning America’s Community Colleges,” are another success initiative being implemented at the College. According to the Community College Research Center, “Across the US, a growing number of community colleges are rethinking their academic programs and student support services in fundamental ways to improve student learning and success.” (CCRC, 2017; Jenkins, D., Lahr, H. & Fink, J.)

The pathways formulate a college-wide approach to helping students enter, understand, and complete degree pathways that help them maximize their time and cost. MC is exploring current and future college programs that, when reformulated, will demonstrate that the college is already well on its way to implementing Guided Pathways. A significant part of Guided Pathways is the use of Meta majors, a social construct that links similar academic programs together for purposes of onboarding, advising, career planning, and social interactions.

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PRIOR LEARNING ASSESSMENT

The next steps in achieving the goals for the Academic Master Plan for prior learning assessment and alternative credentialing were a set of strategies designed to guide implementation. The strategies for prior learning and alternative credentialing include, “Appointing a credit-noncredit workgroup to recommend appropriate steps for expanding student access to Assessment of Prior Learning and proficiency credit, incorporating multiple placement and assessment opportunities for students with training, education, and experience outside of traditional credit programs. The benchmarks for this goal are: Proficiency credit options exist for top 20 enrolled credit-bearing courses and all courses included in Career and Technical Education (CTE) articulation agreements by 2021; increased number of students earning credit by exam by 300% by 2021.”

Prior learning at the college is underutilized, as demonstrated in Table 1. The small number can be attributed to a variety of factors, including lack of publicity about the program, limited number of credits awarded for various types of awards, and inconsistent academic evaluations. The AMP strategy looks to change this downward trend. (See Table 1: Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) Usage by Student, 2012–2015)

Table 1: Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) Usage by Student, 2012 – 2015

 

During the 2016/17 academic year, the leaders for these AMP goals met regularly to identify and appoint a representative group to develop recommendations for appropriate steps to expand student access to prior learning and proficiency credit. Membership includes individuals who served on the group that developed the strategies for the AMP, if they chose to continue, and additional members who have credentials in the prior learning and/or proficiency credit areas. Faculty appointees and the group membership, as a whole, was reviewed and approved by faculty governance. The schedule of meetings is currently under development and the meetings will begin in fall, 2017 to develop appropriate steps for expanding student access to prior learning and proficiency credit. 

Also, the leaders for this AMP strategy held an information session with a Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) representative for faculty and staff involved with prior learning. The workshop provided background and training on prior learning assessment and how to expand options for prior learning at Montgomery College. The half day workshop provided the attendees with information on the benefits of prior learning, a set of guidelines for implementing prior learning more systematically, and strategies to increase access to prior learning for students who are eligible. The College also hosted representatives from the American Council on Education Military Program; this regional workshop covered the program’s process to recruit faculty members to evaluate credit, how to review and determine equivalencies to the recommendations, and creative ways to apply the credit to a student’s program of study. Both trainings were part of an effort to increase Collegewide understanding of the benefits of prior learning and help faculty who will be working on developing systematic access to prior learning additional information on how to do develop more options for prior learning effectively.

Funding has been provided to administer the CAEL Adult Learner 3600 survey in fall, 2017. The Adult Learner 3600 survey assists institutions to identify and prioritize their efforts for working with adult students, including the use of prior learning expansion. Through two surveys, one of MC’s adult students and the other of the college community, CAEL will provide a report that will examine the successes and gaps in effectively serving these students. The implementation committee will then make recommendations, based on the findings, to improve the quality and type of services offered to this unique population.

Additional strategies to ensure prior learning credit is more readily accessible to increase the number of students who will benefit from it include:

• Transitioning the evaluation of all Credit for Prior Learning credit from Enrollment Management to Academic Affairs. This change will ensure that determining test and credit equivalencies is faculty driven, that the exams align with program and course learning outcomes, that placement is assessed on a routine basis, and that the equivalencies are updated with curriculum changes.
• In the fall semester, 2017, all nationally recognized exams (e.g., AP, CLEP, IB, DSST, Cambridge Exams) will be re-evaluated using the CurricuLog program to ensure accurate evaluations, and make it easier to award credits.
• In spring, 2018, the use of CurricuLog will expand further to include evaluating military credit. This process will take multiple semesters to complete. 
• Implementation of portfolio credit will be part of the charge for the CPL implementation team. They will identify processes that will assist the College to develop a systematic approach to award portfolio credit. 
• A consolidated website is being launched, replacing four separate CPL sites. This site includes transfer credit, international transfer credit, exam credit, military credit, career/technical education programs (with MCPS), apprenticeships and certifications, and portfolio credit. The site is  maintained by SVPAA. The new site will be more easily accessible, and easier to use, thereby allowing the College to better promote the opportunities to students.

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ALTERNATIVE PLACEMENT

The AMP implementation strategies for alternative placement are:

• Standardize multiple measures for developmental course placement including assessments currently in place, measures currently in pilot stage, and new placement strategies based on degree pathways, alternative assessments, high school test scores, and/or targeted student need. The benchmarks for this goal are: Reduction of number of students placed into developmental courses by 40% by 2021.

Alternative placement is a major initiative at MC and is currently expanding through our partnership with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). The alternative placement program (APP) was implemented in 2016 and has already demonstrated that alternative placement is possible and successful. Placement for MCPS students is based on a final grade of “B” or higher in MC/MCPS approved coursework.

APP students have performed successfully in their college coursework. Figure 1 shows that the APP English (APPE) students are succeeding at higher levels than their ENGL 101A counterparts.

• Figure 1: Alternative Placement Program English (APPE) Student Outcomes Compared to Traditionally Placed Students 
  • APPE: 83%
  • ENGL101A: 74%

As Figure 2, shows, it is also the case that students who have been placed in college-level math courses are succeeding at or above traditionally-placed students. These data demonstrate that the APP program is succeeding. For the upcoming academic year, efforts are underway to expand the program to serve more MCPS students.

• Figure 2: Alternative Placement Program Math (APPM) Student Outcomes Compared to Traditionally Placed Students
  • APPM: 72%
  • MATH: 70%

In addition, Developmental English and Reading courses have been redesigned from standalone courses to Integrated English, Reading, and Writing (IERW) courses to reduce students’ time in developmental courses while still ensuring students have the skills they need to be successful and persist. The first IERW courses offered in fall 2017. With the redesign, the IERW course sequence has been reduced from four to two developmental courses and the number of credits has been reduced from the previous 18 to 11 maximum. In addition, students can exit from developmental to credit-level courses in one semester, thereby reducing both the cost and time to degree significantly. 

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NONCREDIT TO CREDIT PATHWAYS

The goal of implementing alternative pathways and stackable credentials also began during the 2016/17 academic year. The strategies in the AMP are: 

• Identify and articulate pathways for stackable credentials and stackable competencies that allow for incremental completion of both noncredit programs and credit-bearing certificates and degrees; these pathways should offer (and recognize) a wide variety of credentialing options and lead students to multiple points of completion and success. [Benchmark: Increase in number of students receiving multiple credentials within a rolling ten-year period by 200% by 2021; availability of stackable credentialing in 50% of programs and disciplines college wide by 2021.]
• Customize developmental studies pathways by exploring accelerated programs and interdisciplinary delivery and by creating multiple exit points determined by student strengths, needs, or program goals. [Benchmarks: Reduction of number of students attempting the same developmental studies course more than three semesters without exiting (by passing or changing pathways) by 50% by 2021; increase by 20% the number of students completing college level math or English courses after beginning in developmental studies. 

In the fall of 2016, the College was awarded a grant from the Capitol One Foundation to begin working on the alignment of credit and workforce programs using a stackable/alternative credentialing methodology. The resulting credentials will more explicitly link coursework between the College’s workforce and credit programs and externally by articulating employability skills that enhance the value of MC students as potential employees. Up to four target discipline areas will serve as “test sites” for the methodology: Business/Management/Entrepreneurship, Early Childhood Education, Data Science, and Biotechnology. A key component of the project will be to explore existing models and modify them to meet our unique institutional contexts.

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THREE CORE STRATEGIES UNDERPIN THIS MULTI-YEAR PROJECT

• Representatives from workforce development and credit units jointly will engage with employers to map employability skills against existing credit and workforce development courses. This collaborative approach to employer engagement will enable us to share the breadth of our service capacity and to interact more deeply with local business partners.
• Workforce development and credit units will work collaboratively to rethink and repackage existing curricula for each target discipline into a pathway to ways to included credentials that stack. Used in the American Association for Community Colleges Right Signals project, the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce/Lumina Foundation “Credentials Framework” will provide a systematic way to define combinations of skills that result in labor market credentials, College awarded badges, or updated letters of recognition.
• To complete the link from the workforce development to credit units, disciplines will utilize a joint approach to offer the first credential. This may be done by co-listing classes as both workforce and credit, and/or by having a credit faculty member teach the class as a workforce course.

During the first year of the project, a steering committee and core team, made up of deans and leaders from the discipline areas and Academic Affairs, have reviewed relevant literature, models, and practices on an ongoing basis. The committee issued a bid and procured the technical assistance services from the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW) and has organized two on-site trainings for core team members. Over the summer, the core team, composed of credit and workforce faculty members from target disciplines, received training on identifying and writing course competencies based on course outcomes. With ongoing support from CSW, they have also begun to map these competencies to the framework. During the end of the summer and beginning of fall, faculty will begin to map entry-level job descriptions that align to their disciplines to the framework; these will be then be aligned to the course competencies. Faculty will share their work with their discipline colleagues during the fall and continue to meet jointly to analyze their findings and plan for next steps. 

At the same time, the steering committee members have participated in College groups and meetings that clearly inform and support this project. These activities include reviewing  student management system tools that will help collect data on transitions from noncredit to credit, and participating on a workgroup on badging, one of the alternative credentials that the Capitol One project group will incorporate. At the recommendation of CSW, the committee is planning a grant-funded trip to Columbus Community College in Ohio, a Right Signals project participant, Achieving the Dream school, and power user of the CSW Credentials Framework, to learn how they are using the Framework.

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GUIDED PATHWAYS AND META MAJORS 

The College began the discussion of Guided Pathways and Meta Majors in the summer of 2016; however, multiple student success initiatives and fluid changes to curriculum limited the amount of work that could be done. With these in place, a college wide conversation about Guided Pathways and Meta Majors can begin. This conversation was re-introduced at the Summer Academic Affairs retreat, and during the Fall 2017 opening meeting. The four pillars of Guided Pathways, as identified by the Right Signals Project, are identified below. Following each pillar is an example of current or future activities at Montgomery College that fulfill the pillar’s objective:

• Clarify the Path: Building multiple opportunities to show students how to get through their college experience. The college has already begun this process, for example, the use of an online catalog, the new website, individualized Advising/Program Guides that show semester by semester course sequences and provide transfer or career information, building stackable credentials with credit programs and between noncredit and credit  coursework, and offering guided student interest programs such as ACES or ATPA.
• Get students on the Path: Designing multiple ways for students to get onto the right path, with a primary focus on the onboarding process. This includes college updates to alternative placement, remedial education, the availability of scholarships, and improvements in outreach and marketing.
• Help students stay on the Path: Enhancing access to student success initiatives, and focusing on student persistence, while removing barriers. For example, highly successful program and course success strategies such as DFW, implementing improvements to course scheduling, creating purposeful social engagement opportunities through student life, and the investment in a new Student Information System, including a degree audit function, all help students get to their final education goals.
• Ensure students are learning: Validating that students are being taught skills and knowledge that will prepare them for the next step. The academic affairs restructuring, for example, ensures that students have a common experience learning experience, that the knowledge and skills for transfer or employment are embedded in classroom and co-curricular programming, and that the college is identifying outcomes and assessing coursework. The StAMP will further ensure the seven truths for the common student experience, enhance access to career exploration, and provide additional co-curricular opportunities.

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COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP

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FEATURES OF THE PLAN(S) - IMPLEMENTATION

The next steps in implementing Guided Pathways will be the formation of a committee, consisting of representatives from all areas of the college. This group will be charged with identifying, branding, enhancing, and assessing the college’s progress in this space.

Concurrently, a committee will be meeting to work on the development of Meta Majors. These “career clusters” or “areas of interest” pair similar degrees into a social construct that helps students understand their career objectives while exposing them to college offerings. Similar to the way General Studies has set up its Core programs, Meta Majors are groups of degrees, with similar gateway courses or career objectives, that guide students through their first two semesters at the college, in an attempt to ensure that students take courses that are applicable to their chosen field of study, that transfer if necessary, and that allow them to build a sense of community. MC’s Meta Majors will include both remedial education pathways and WDCE programs, both of which have already been identified as clear paths for degree exploration and completion. 

MC will begin developing the Meta Major structure during the Fall 2017 semester, using MSDE Career Clusters, Department of Labor O*Net categories, and examples from CCBC, Austin Community College, the Florida Community College System, and others as starting points. This project will be faculty-driven.

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IMPLEMENTATION TIMELINE

Progress on all four of these initiatives are detailed in Table 2 (PDF, )   which provides the timeline for completion of the implementation activities that will support successful completion of the AMP goals.

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POTENTIAL CONFLICTS AND CHALLENGES 

The two goals in the AMP are designed to reduce time and cost to obtain a degree. In addition, the initiatives are designed to retain more students because they will earn more credits toward their degree at the beginning, which motivates students to persist. Further, these initiatives are also designed to provide students with skills that increase their competitiveness in the marketplace while they pursue their academic goals and complete an academic credential. At the same time, several issues exist that pose a challenge to achieving these goals. These potential barriers and challenges include:

Credit by Examination:

• In many instances, examinations to award credit do not exist. Faculty will need to to develop these examinations, verify their content validity, and  determine how many credits to award. It is time consuming to develop the examinations and maintain them. The lack of standardized examinations for every course at the College presents a challenge for expanding credit-by-examination.
• The available courses that accept credit-by-examination have to be regularly reviewed and updated. Maintaining all the courses and keeping them current in the Catalog is another challenge to increase the number of students receiving credit-by-examination.
• Students who sit for an examination are not always successful. In many cases, students will attempt an examination but will not receive a passing score. Ensuring students are prepared for the examination is a challenge

 

Credit for Prior Learning:

• In many instances, Montgomery College awards credit for prior learning. However, those credits are sometimes not transferable to MC’s four-year partners. The College will need to work closely with four-year partner institutions to ensure students receive transfer credit for their prior learning.
• It is not always possible to test students’ knowledge through an examination. Instead, a  portfolio may need to be developed to demonstrate student learning outside the classroom. At the current time, MC does not have a consistent course or workshop where students develop and demonstrate learning through portfolio development. The portfolio creation process is also time consuming for students, usually requires a faculty mentor to
  help in the creation process, and has to be assessed by a faculty member also.  

Alternative Credentialing:

• Accepting noncredit credentials requires establishing direct equivalencies between the credential competencies and the academic program competencies.
• Changing the pathway into a for-credit program requires approval by the curriculum committee and the academic regulations committee. Obtaining permission for these alternative pathways is time consuming and cannot be achieved quickly.

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ASSESSMENT OF SUCCESS

Significant progress has been made towards meeting these milestones. The outcomes set forth in the AMP:

• Proficiency credit options exist for top 20 enrolled credit-bearing courses,
• All courses included in Career and Technical Education (CTE) articulation agreements by 2021 and,
• MC will increase the number of students earning credit by exam by 300% by 2021.

These outcomes provide the basis for evaluating the work of the two implementation committees. Each year the committees will evaluate their progress toward achieving these goals and continue to develop initiatives to ensure MC meets or exceeds its goals to increase access to prior learning and expand options for alternative credentialing.

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REFERENCES

American Associate of Community Colleges, The Pathways Project, http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/pathways/Pages/default.aspx (accessed August 11, 2017).

Blumenstyk, G. (2015). When a degree is just the beginning: Today’s employers want more, say providers of alternative credentials. The Chronicle of Higher Education, (3), 4.

Bull, B. (2015). Why colleges should support alternative credentials. The Chronicle of Higher Education, (3), 33.

Corporation for a Skilled Workforce and Lumina Foundation. Beta Credentials Framework at http://connectingcredentials.org/framework/.

Council for Adult and Experiential Learning. Fueling the Race to post-secondary success: A 48 institution study of prior learning assessment and adult student outcomes. http://getcollegecredit.com/assets/pdf/PLA_Fueling-the-Race.pdf (Accessed August 7, 2017).

Fink, J., Jenkins, D. & Lhar, H. (2017) Implementing Guides Pathways: Early Insights from the AACC Pathways Colleges. Foster, J., & Gielczyk, A. (2015). Accelerated learning opportunities and prior learning assessment. Techniques, (4), 20. 

Schejbal, D. (2017). Collecting credentials: The new market for just-in-time education. Bized, (2), 22-26.

Steele, P. & Erisman, W. (2016, May, 25). Addressing the College Attainment Gap for Working Adults with Prior College Credit, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 48:2, 46-53, DOI: 10.1080/00091383.2016.1167566

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