Digital Learner Records

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Offices and NASPA: Association of Student Affairs Professionals partnered on a national pilot project between 2015-2017 to develop models for a more comprehensive student record. After the successful pilot, the associations moved to the second stage of this work to develop and adopt Comprehensive Learner Records (CLR) in American higher education. The National Institute for Learning Outcomes and Assessment (NILOA) joined the work as well. Work focused developing and implementing a single learner record across a large and diverse group of American colleges and universities. The CLR seek to capture, record, and communicate learning when and where it occurs in a student’s college experience. This includes learning outcomes from courses, programs, and degrees, as well as experience outside the classroom. Several emerging technologies have proven effective in showing  institutions’ learning frameworks, and some of these also provide a deeper exploration of the information and evidence of what that learning means or how it was attained and validated.

As the project progressed, it focused on increasing the adoption of CLRs among colleges and universities, defining the content of competency-based transcripts/records, integrating and using data to create CLRs, and tracking student progress toward competencies and learning outcomes. The scaling is being done by working with higher education systems and networks, as well as workshops for single institutions interested in creating and implementing a CLR. With help from C-BEN and 1EdTech, the content of CBE transcripts/records is being standardized and socialized among those institutions who offer CBE courses and programs. A report issued in September 2019 included a list of recommended standards for CBE transcripts. Data integration work has informed a white paper that highlights the challenges and potential solutions. Degree audit system processes are being documented to provide resources for institutions seeking to track student progress toward learning outcomes/competencies.

Partners: AACRAO, NASPA, 1EdTech, C-BEN, NILOA

Links to Resources: https://www.aacrao.org/signature-initiatives/comprehensive-learner-record-learning-and-employment-record