Deciding whether to pursue college credit through Prior Learning Assessment takes some thought.  Carefully consider the following three questions. If you can answer them easily, you may want to think about PLA to request credit for knowledge you’ve gained through experience, outside of traditional classroom learning.

PLA Self-Assessment

1. What?

What knowledge have I gained through my experience? Can I easily describe what I have learned from my experience, self-study, and/or work training so that I could explain what I know to others?

2. How?

How did/how would I use this knowledge in different situations?

3. Why?

Why did I use the knowledge in this way – because of past experiences and my evaluation of their outcomes, and/or because I can project a future outcome based on my experience?

As you can see, PLA requires identifying, thinking about, and articulating what you learned, so please take time to consider the above questions for each area of knowledge you may want to pursue to request credit through PLA.

Examples to Help you Decide

Customer Service

Student 1 could easily describe what she learned about customer service: figuring out what a customer really needs, communicating with professionalism and empathy, de-escalating a situation, identifying possible solutions to a customer issue, what generally constitutes good and bad customer service using industry standards. She could explain how and why she applied this knowledge differently in different situations.  And she could explain why she might approach one of these situations differently in the future.

Student 2 had a harder time describing what she learned about customer service; she kept coming back to  the fact that she had been in the field for 10 years, had been successful in her job, received two promotions, and was now functioning as a customer service supervisor. She thought about how she used her knowledge in different situations, and realized that she always followed company protocol. When she thought about why, she realized “that’s what I was told to do when I was hired.”

Student 1 has the potential for pursuing credit through PLA; Student 2 may not, unless she considers and describes her knowledge more deeply and broadly.

Equine Studies

Student 3 worked on a family horse farm for many years.  She never considered that this experience might have resulted in knowledge that could be pursued for college credit.  However, when she considered the What? How? and Why? questions, she realized that she had gained college-level knowledge from her experience.  She could easily describe what she learned and had, in fact, taught others about different feeds and nutrition, identifying and remedying health issues, breeding, stable and ranch management, history of different breeds, and theraputic horsemanship. She could explain how she identified different equine health issues and why she used certain remedies, and she could additionally explain how and why for other topics within this area of expertise.  She realized that she had the potential for pursuing credit through PLA.

Important Notes

If you’re considering Empire’s PLA course (EDPL 2005 Prior Learning Assessment), you need to be able to answer the three self-assessment questions easily for three different knowledge areas, as the course work involves creating three individualized PLA requests.

This is a quick, initial self-assessment; there’s fuller PLA information on other pages of this text.