CPL crosswalks span intersections, and at Ball State University, those intersections are bustling with opportunity. The CAEL institutional member is setting a gold star example for keeping options open for adult learners and workers, linking the university’s industry-recognized digital badges to degree pathways.
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All that traffic is directed from the university’s Division of Lifetime Learning, which is forging articulation MOUs with the university’s seven academic colleges to offer students real-time workforce advantages at no loss of longer-term degree aspirations.
Assistant Vice Provost Amy Barsha and Sharon Morrissey, director, strategic initiatives, helped launch the division three years ago. In addition to overseeing digital badges, the Division of Lifetime Learning manages CPL programs—a confluence that offers many advantages.
Barsha and Morrissey, along with Dr. Nell Hill, who leads student success efforts around CPL for the division, partner with the Digital Credentials Institute, a division of Madison College, and Credly, a leading digital credential service provider.
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The collaboration with Credly and the Digital Credentials Institute has greatly supported the success of CPL at Ball State. “They developed our badge schema and helped us with our design and taxonomy for the badges,” said Morrissey. “They continue to support us in delivering a seamless badging program offering and are always available to answer questions as they arise.”
Ball State is continually expanding badge options. The Division of Lifetime Learning has completed seven articulation agreements that allow students to parlay a digital badge into college credit. An eighth is in progress.
Selecting badging and articulation candidates is a strategic process, Morrissey explained. “We're not trying to badge everything. We're badging programs where it makes sense for career pathways, where we have partnerships, where we have critical mass in students.”
For example, Ball State partners with employers who offer education benefits. The university has badged and articulated the clinical medical assistant and medical billing and coding training that it offers through that collaboration. “We want the branding recognition, and we want students to share those badges,” said Morrissey. Nearly 300 students have successfully completed a Ball State health care badge, with additional new completers eligible to receive their badges soon.
The articulation process involves a careful department review to confirm there are valid crosswalks between the credit and noncredit courses. If there are, an MOU is completed.
Lifetime Learning by Ball State advises colleagues pursuing similar work at other institutions to assemble strategic and transparent approval committees. At some institutions, there may be a tradition of sorts in higher ed faculty resisting CPL crosswalks. But Morrissey and Hill have found that faculty members themselves have initiated MOU discussions, reaching out to the Lifetime Learning Division to see if there are alignments between their courses and noncredit offerings. Even more proactively, faculty who design digital badges may do so with articulation to credit-bearing courses already in mind.
Some articulation agreements provide straightforward credit links to specific Ball State degree programs. Others that may not fit as seamlessly can be redeemed for elective credit.
Once students complete a crosswalked badge, Ball State guides them on how to cash it in with the registrar’s office for credit. Even if they don’t have immediate plans to pursue a degree, students can return anytime in the future to seamlessly redeem their badge for credit.
For badges that aren’t crosswalked, including those issued by another institution, students can submit them through a portfolio review to request CPL. The process may not be as seamless, but Ball State strives to make it painless. Dr. Hill even developed a free course dedicated to portfolio creation to help walk students through the process.
The course was built using CAEL and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education principles, said Hill. “We've had a few people who aren’t even Ball State students take the course, and we've even had a provost from another university reach out to ask to review it.”
Digital badges and CPL are both part of Ball State’s recruiting strategy. But harnessing them in tandem is scaling their impact. “We have a lot of non-Ball State students taking our Lifetime Learning courses, so we do see this as a way to try to recruit students,” said Hill. “It’s a way for them to complete an industry-recognized credential and bank some credit before they even apply at Ball State.”
To that end, Morrissey is integrating CPL messaging throughout the Lifetime Learning Division website, including campaign and CPL lead forms. Nearly 1,000 prospective students have engaged with the lead-generating promotion.
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The CPL awareness campaign isn’t pointed exclusively outward. “I've met with advisors and student financial services all over campus to remind them we have this option for students that helps them save money,” said Hill.
The intersection of CPL and industry-recognized credentials also resonates with state policy priorities. In its Model Credit for Prior Learning Policy Guidance, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education urges institutions to consider digital badging in their policies. The guidance calls for more CPL crosswalks and finds that industry certifications are “sufficient evidence” for proffering CPL. (Note: The Indiana Commission for Higher Education is a CAEL institutional member, and CAEL helped develop its CPL policy guidance.).
Morrissey sees great potential in co-branding badges with the state and employer partners, especially ones articulated to credit. In the meantime, the department will continue building crosswalks that connect prior—and present—learning to future success.