Recognising Credit: Some Quick Takeaways from QAA
The Quality Assurance Agency has this summer published an accessible introduction to the principles underpinning credit recognition.
We thought it would be useful here to highlight and share half a dozen takeaways from our new guide – areas that we've found are key to an understanding of credit recognition.
Understanding credit
Credit is a way of measuring and recognising learning, used by providers as a tool to ‘build’ higher education courses, and compare learning achieved in different contexts.
It's also a way of setting a value on the learning that students have acquired. Exemptions from modules or advanced entry onto courses may be granted as a result.
Not all providers across the world operate credit-based systems, but it is common in the UK and in Europe, where it’s supported by various frameworks.
But these frameworks act as guides, and only lightly touch upon transfer. There are no national requirements or restrictions on the recognition and transfer of credit between providers. This can result in a variety of approaches across the sector, leaving students, prospective students and providers themselves unclear about what they're able to do.
Why recognise credit?
UK providers aren't forced to recognise credit. But one of the reasons why the subject of credit recognition has increased in prominence in recent years is the importance that the four nations of the UK have increasingly placed upon strategies for lifelong learning.
In England, the Department for Education currently aims to introduce the Lifelong Learning Entitlement from next year. The intention is to provide people up to the age of 60 with access to a loan for the equivalent of four years post-18 study, which can be used across the course of their lifetimes. Meanwhile, Scotland has developed an Adult learning strategy which aims create conditions for connected adult learning opportunities and ensure that there are such opportunities for adults to learn throughout their lives. In Northern Ireland, the Department for the Economy’s 10x Skills Strategy has identified the development of an Action Plan for Lifelong Learning as a key action.
And, as part of its plans to develop and promote the right to lifelong learning, the Welsh government's Strategic Priorities establish a strategy to explore opportunities for (and barriers to) achieving credit transfer across the tertiary system – and to consider how these issues may be addressed – including how to incorporate the recognition of prior learning to facilitate the movement of learners through the tertiary sector.
These strategies have stressed that the principles of student mobility and student choice need to be underpinned by mechanisms for credit transfer. Ideally, these would enable students to move between providers in order to build their academic portfolios, accommodating both their professional development needs and their life situations.
This clearly has both applications and advantages for students engaged in all modes of across the tertiary sector, and it's therefore vital that those providers who wish to do so are equipped to support a consistent set of approaches to credit recognition.
Consistent processes of credit recognition are crucial not only to promote lifelong learning ambitions, but also to support providers' broader admissions and awarding processes.
Credit recognition underpins the domestic and global mobility of students, by facilitating advanced entry, articulation agreements and progression protocols when working with partner providers both at home and transnationally.
It not only puts the individual student at the centre of the learning experience, but also enhances opportunities for access to, and success in, higher education.
Six essential principles
Although effective practices in this area are very varied, there are some fundamental principles which underpin good practice in processes of credit recognition across the sector.
Such principles advocate that credit recognition processes should be:
learner-focused, centring on the needs, abilities, and learning styles of the potential student;
flexible;
reliable;
transparent;
consistently applied;
and quality assured – being sited firmly within the provider’s standard quality processes.
Seven top tips for providers on recognising credit
Designing or reviewing credit recognition schemes should ideally involve students. Students who've been through an application for credit recognition can talk about the barriers they faced and can help make policy statements and instructions clear and transparent to other students and applicants.
You should have clear and consistent processes, policies, and regulations for recognising credit from other providers. There may be different processes for recognising prior experiential learning and for certificated learning, or they may be integrated.
Staff involved in the recognition process should be trained appropriately to provide the right support and there should be manageable timescales to aid completion.
You may want to consider restricting the award of credits only to periods of study that have been formally assessed and successfully completed, and not to allow credit transfer on the basis of compensated/condoned passes or where previous credit recognition has been granted by other providers.
You may also want to consider how an applicant's marks or grades from previous learning will count towards the classification of the final award, or whether their regulations limit recognition to credit only.
Different providers have different views on whether credit recognition schemes are centralised or run by academic departments – there’s no right or wrong approach. Centralised systems have the benefits of objectivity and consistency, whereas local systems have subject experts closer to the decision-making process. Centralised processes may need technical advice on subject content from departments to reach decisions on the relevance and content of an applicant’s credit. Departments operating their own approaches to credit recognition may need additional support from quality or admissions teams.
You should consider the costs to learners for applications (and the cost of the process for you as a provider). High application fees are likely to be a disincentive to potential applicants. Commensurately high costs to providers may be the result of overly complex and demanding assessment methods – such as requiring evidence for each individual modular learning outcome. Are there more efficient ways to assess applications?
Keeping flexible
If you design courses with credit recognition in mind, you should focus attention on enabling flexible modes of entry, study, and progression. A modular approach to course design can help, but insisting on a linear progression through modules may hinder full flexibility.
Of course, the order in which areas of study take place within a programme may change from provider to provider – and so the overall time taken to achieve an award may be unchanged even if modules are exempted.
Learning outcomes constructed in a flexible way also allow students who continue to work or learn in other settings to provide evidence of meeting ongoing learning outcomes, throughout the course of academic programmes, rather than limiting credit exemptions to the pre-admission stage.
Staying informed
Central to the success of any credit recognition system is the provision of accessible and transparent information – for applicants, students, staff and external employers whose own staff may be seeking their support in engaging in lifelong learning. Processes on the recognition of prior learning and credit transfer should be accessible and transparent as any other information published by providers.
These are some of the core areas in which clear information is key:
Be clear about the time limits of any credit that applicants are seeking recognition for. Try not to pick arbitrary limits but ones that are informed by experience and research about the duration of a subject's knowledge, skills and attributes – and you should also clear about the reasons for this – as well as if there are restrictions on the currency of knowledge required by Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies.
Be clear about the levels of credit you will accept – that is, levels which are equivalent to higher education study.
Specify minimum and maximum amounts of learning that can be recognised in regulations and programme specifications – and this information should also be made clear to applicants and to those considering making applications.
Be clear about when during the academic calendar you allow credit recognition applications – some providers allow them at any time, others may limit applications to certain periods.
You should also be clear to applicants:
how they should present evidence, which may include transcripts or syllabus information and learning outcomes;
about any additional information needed and the forms that information might take;
about how long it takes to process applications and whether any busy periods can affect these timescales;
that recognition decisions, either to grant or refuse, are not binding on any other provider;
about how any successful awards of credit will appear on the transcript ultimately issued.
Carry on talking
We very much hope that these suggestions will help to inform, support and promote ongoing conversations within and between providers about the development and review of these increasingly important processes. These pieces of advice are excerpts from QAA's new 'Quick Guide to Credit Recognition' – QAA Members can access the complete text of this guide via our website.
