Credit before Birth
Story In College Setting
By Judith McLean
Background
Kajinder, a mature student of South Asian background, who had been supervising other social service workers in a Surrey, B.C. for a number of years, agreed to pilot the newly designed Prior Learning Assessment tool for the final practicum course in Open College’s Social Service Worker Certificate Program to earn her final 3 credits. Other obligations were a primary motivator for her as she planned to have a baby and wanted her certificate before her delivery date.
Within my roles as coordinator of the program and supervisor of practicums, I facilitated the development of PLA processes and tools. Collaborating with Neil Madu, a colleague from another college with over a decade of classroom teaching of Social Service Workers, I designed the Assessor Guide to Prior Learning Assessment for SSWP and a SSWP 207 PLA tool for individual, Kajinder, who had met the detailed pre-requisites (success in nine other courses and permission from her primary tutors) to complete. I piloted the first assessment in October 2000. I also helped my colleague in Student Services, Hersh Cramer set up systems to transfer information from the Credit Bank when a student successfully completed her prior learning and earned the academic credit. I collaborated with other assessors and education managers to construct policies to deal with those who might have gaps in learning and needed more time than one term to complete a course.
Advising Intervention
I described PLAR principles and concepts to Kajinder and helped her consider the impact of her choice to proceed. If she failed, or did not show sufficient, authentic or reliable evidence to complete outcomes from six global competencies, she would have to take SSWP 207, the final practicum course. She would pay twice for the same course if she did not successfully complete the PLA. In Open College, we were not permitted to issue grades for PLA. Kajinder would be granted a satisfactory, or unsatisfactory against each module of the course. A summary of this information would be delivered to the Credit Bank officer who would keep track of Kajinder’s results (for a specific time period). If she completed all 6 modules in the first submission, the Credit Bank clerk would advise staff in Student Services to change her grade from Incomplete to Pass.
In two short meetings, I coached Kajinder how to compose the PLA portfolio, clarified the types of acceptable evidence, and gave her a sample how to map the evidence. I provided helpful hints and clarity about evidence needing to be valid, authentic, sufficient and reliable. My process would be documented and distributed to college managers and then to future advisors in Student Services who would provide this service in the future.
The criteria were transparent. Kajinder agreed to test out the tool. She realized considerable saving of and time and energy by working through the modules at home and called me twice when she had questions. There were few requests for more information as she was a self-reliant mature student who had done very well in other courses.
I was not disappointed, as Kajinder completed the portfolio on time and with excellent evidence, which was thoughtfully mapped out to make my job of assessment quite easy. I called two of her references to confirm her contribution to an agency’s policy and to discuss her skills as a facilitator of a multicultural group. From an oral interview, I was able to confirm Kajinder’s competence in the essential activities for each outcome and had her co-sign that summary form. I recommended that she pass the course and forwarded the appropriate documents to the Credit Bank and then walked the forms through to Student Services, to ensure her grade was dutifully transcribed.
Lessons Learned:
With local (not distant) students, I would consider adding more variety to my assessment options. Screening the students helped a lot. I wanted a top student to pilot this work.
Something to consider:
Not all individuals for PLA will be as skilled as Kajinder. Do we give them the same opportunity to proceed if they appear less than competent? Do we demand more or less from external PLA individuals than we would from those already on the job or in our classroom? I’ve heard stories from other academic assessors, so worried about their signature on the credit given line, that they demanded more than the 60% required from in-class students.
As an academic who measured Kajinder’s on the job experience, I challenge more employers in social agencies to assess academic credit of their employees, whether from professional development on the job, or excellence in service to clients. What I did for Kajinder as an educator could have been assessed by an employer. BC social service agencies were beginning to raise the bar of standards for their workers, not only demanding more qualifications but demanding proof of competencies for transferrable situations. I predict that better partnership could be forged between the post secondary sector and the community service sector to honour the qualifications of their employees, to identify learning gaps, demand gap education from colleges and ultimately improve social services to clients.
I welcome other insights from other assessors.