PLA 103: The Unseen Benefits of Offering a Robust Prior Learning Assessment Program for Military Service Members and VeteransInstructorsDept. of Veterans Affairs VITAL Coordinator, Dr. Meade Eggleston; 443-206-9203, Angela.Eggleston@va.gov CCBC Director of Veteran Services, Christina Duncan; 443-840-1354, cduncan3@ccbcmd.edu and CCBC Department Chair of Wellness, Rob Hess443-840-4169, rhess@ccbcmd.edu

To contact the editor and for trouble shooting or to obtain clarification or materials of this presentation, please reach out to Nicole Zairi, Coordinator of Articulation, Transfer, and Prior Learning Assessment nzairi@ccbcmd.edu.

OverviewThis session will dig deeper into the less obvious benefits of having a robust Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) program at CCBC, especially for military service members and veterans. Faculty and Staff will become familiar with the cultural and career benefits behind incorporating more prior learning credits into degree programs and the positive impact it will have on CCBC as a whole and student veterans specifically.

After reviewing this learning module participants will be able to… Identify the psychological and career benefits of PLA credits for current

and former members of the military Compare military and civilian higher-education programs Explore how CCBC departments can make a difference through PLA*

*To learn the specifics details in awarding military PLA, the procedures, guidelines, and more please participate in our workshop: PLA 102 Credits for Military and Related.

Military Service Pro’s and Con’s: Employability is the ability to be employed.Service members have a clear position/job while employed by the Department of Defense. The steps for advancement are outlined and how to change jobs is also clear. In civilian context, employability is a very different issue:

• How does one make assets developed while in the military clear and measurable to civilian employers? Basic skills like reliability to intermediate level skills like job-specific skills to advanced ones like improvement of organizational performance.

• How does one deploy those assets? For example, what are the appropriate civilian jobs? How do you present yourself (i.e. acculturation to a civilian work environment)?

How does military services support an individual’s employability?Positives (Pros):

1) Basic employment skills like reliability, organization, ability to work with a team, and ability to follow directions are part of all military occupations.

2) Intermediate level skills like job-specific skills to advanced ones like improvement of organizational performance are part of advanced training. An example of intermediate skills might be a soldier training as an electrician or another trade in order to build and maintain equipment and facilities. An example of advanced skills might be training to manage and implement multi-million dollar budgets in order to complete mission-specific goals overseas.

3) Preferential hiring for federal positions.

4) Economic equality & social mobility for historically disadvantaged populations.

“Among fully-employed, 25-40 year-olds, veteran workers make 3% less than non-veteran workers. While male veterans make 9% less than non-veterans, female and black veterans experience a wage premium (2% and 7% respectively).”

At higher wage levels (e.g. those that would be most impacted by educational attainment), disparity is greatest.

Examples from Vick, B & Fontanella, G (2016). Gender, race and the veteran wage gap. Social Science Research (in press) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.005.

Military Service Contra’s (Cons)Despite many benefits of military service, there are some challenges.

1. Military Service delays entry into higher education:

Many people would be in or finished a degree from a higher education institution if not for military service, which translates into differential earnings in the civilian sector and advancement in the civilian workforce.

For example, college enrollments among black men may have been as much as 10% points lower had they served in the military at the same levels observed in the early 1980s. Of note, these discrepancies are most notable for white males, and males generally. This is the flip side of the beneficial effect on salaries for groups traditionally underserved or discriminated against in education and hiring, as discussed under pro’s.

From Vick & Fontanella (2016): “the median male veteran makes only $0.60 per hour less than the median non-veteran; however, the veteran at the 90th percentile makes $6 per hour less than the non-veteran at the same percentile.” (pg. 1). This difference translates into ~ $11,500 lower salary per year (48 wks @ 40 hrs/wk).

The higher rates of completion of High School diploma or GED speaks to ability: There is a selection process to enter the military and these individuals are typically average to above average academic performers - those individuals who are likely to seek and succeed in higher education.

2. Problems establishing equivalency:

“Veterans whose educational or occupational limitations result in their seeking compensation to survive economically certainly need help, but of a different sort. The recent expansion of training programs to help military personnel successfully transition into the civilian economy is an important step in this direction. Regulatory changes for some occupations would also aid this transition. For example, veterans who served as medics in the military must surmount additional training and educational hurdles to obtain employment in the civilian sector as emergency medical technicians even though their military training fully qualifies them for these jobs (C-SPAN Congressional Hearings, July 25, 2012 (C-Span, 2012)).

Their military certification should be deemed equivalent to civilian certification.” (McNally, RJ & Frueh, BC (2013). Why are Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans seeking PTSD compensation at unprecedented rates?. Journal of Anxiety Disorder, 27, pg 525. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2013.07.002) https://veterans.house.gov/hearings/back-battlefield-dod-and-va-collaboration-assist-servicemembers-returning-civilian-life

Because of lack of familiarity with rigor and level of military training, civilian employers struggle to translate education & experience. If a more familiar non-military resume is available, the potential employer may not bother to put the effort into translating or understanding the training and experience.

3. Significant cultural differences between Military and General Work Culture: Note that these are general guidelines. There are definitely individual differences and variability in expression.

Military personnel learn to expect clear delineation of roles, duties and advancement. In a work environment, veterans are trained to expect specific directions for next steps and to prioritize completing assigned tasks – demonstrating a higher value on interdependence – versus to expect general guidelines and then to generate and organize the steps to accomplish goal oneself – demonstrating a higher value on independence.

Military training tends to focus on group’s needs and the group’s mission/goals versus the civilian workplace focusing on individual needs and work environment in conjunction with employer goals. Veterans will tend to pay less attention to and have less patience for the role of individual differences in workplace.

Military training focuses on prioritizing and using direct, efficient communication, versus communication that equally addresses human work relationships and actual goal/task related content. Military style can often appear aggressive in civilian context because of this cultural difference.

Over time, there is a fairly consistent 2-4% discrepancy in employment rates, with veterans being less likely to be employed than non-veterans.

Why do the Differences Matter?Definitions: Unemployment (not employed); underemployment (involuntarily PT; job insecurity; lower than skills)

Things to consider:

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act requires re-employment after period of service for selected reserve (i.e. Reserves or National Guard). However, employers can choose to eliminate positions once held by selected reserve members rather than adhere to the strict requirements of the law.

Also, these findings do not take into account the additional stressors of deployments and their physical and psychiatric (e.g. increased rates musculoskeletal problems, increased rates of anxiety and depression).

1. Unemployment and underemployment is unhealthy for adults: Increased anxiety & depression; those who became unemployed had over

twice the risk of increased depressive symptoms and of becoming clinically depressed as those who continued employed.

Workers who move from adequate employment into underemployment experience increases in depression (Dooley & Prause, 1999).

Chronic disease includes problems like cardiovascular problems – high BP, heart disease - & diabetes

2. Appropriate employment is good for adults’ health.

Increase of health behaviors, such as more exercise and increased healthy food choices

3. Meaningful work is the key to a successful transition. Veterans are adults who are making a significant career change. They have

been involved in intensive training and work to complete certain tasks in a certain environment. When they choose to leave the military, they are not

just switching jobs, they are switching careers. Another issue to consider is that some of these career switches for military are somewhat involuntary: there is a culture of, “if you are not going to advance, you need to clear the job for someone else”. The veteran now needs to figure out how to start something else, with all the non-work duties of equivalent person who has not delayed entry into civilian work force (e.g. spouse, children) plus, in many cases, additional health concerns that a non-veteran of the same age is unlikely to have (e.g. hearing loss, musculoskeletal problems like early onset arthritis, PTSD).

Overcoming “Why?” and Getting to “How”

The American Council on Education (ACE)Next, we will look at the rigor and quality behind the American Council on Education, also known as ACE’s, assessment of military learning.

There are three elements to their assessments:

1. Who comprises the ACE Evaluation Team2. What ACE Evaluates, and3. What the Academic Review Taskforce is and their purpose.

Additionally, we will look at academic versus military instruction. We will compare and contrast both learning communities in order to ascertain how each are

valuable methods of gaining experience and knowledge in any field of expertise.

Rigor & QualityFirst let’s look at the ACE Evaluation Team and who is eligible to participate as a Faculty Evaluator:

You are eligible to participate as an assessor on an ACE Evaluation Team if

you are a full-time or adjunct professor if you are currently teaching college-level courses at an accredited institution

recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) if you have been teaching for at least five years

If you would like to become a Faculty Evaluator, you can apply at http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Becoming-a-Faculty-Evaluator.aspx. You will be paid a stipend for the duration of the assessment, which usually lasts three days.

What ACE EvaluatesACE conducts both onsite and virtual reviews. During an assessment, ACE reviews both military training (courses) and experiences (occupations) and recommends equivalent college credits for students who have successfully completed them.

ACE’s credit recommendations appear in the Military Guide and on military transcripts, known as the Joint Services Transcript or the Community College of the Air Force transcript. The Military Guide has more than 25,000 exhibits (22,000 courses/3,300 occupations) covering recommendations made from 1954 to the present.

Furthermore, an ACE course or occupation evaluation is a rigorous, hands-on process. The review team works together to assess and validate the course or occupation on a number of relevant factors in order to come to a consensus on the credit recommendation, including:

Course or Occupation Content Alignment of Assessments to Measurable Learning Outcomes Depth and Breadth of Material

Evaluation Methods (test, papers, presentation, etc.) Level of Difficulty and Rigor Applicability to Post-secondary Programs

The 2014 Taskforce OutcomesACE is diligent about ensuring that their recommendations for military credits are both timely and valid by periodically convening an Academic Review Taskforce. The most recent Taskforce met in 2014 with the charge to review the policies and procedures governing the ACE College Credit Recommendation Service (military and non-military) and to recommend any changes or improvement based upon the following three goals:

Provide quality control by external evaluators, Offer greater transparency to ACE's processes, and Increase the understanding and acceptance of ACE credit

recommendations.

The letter you see above is the end result of that process. In the letter, the Academic Review Taskforce noted the following:

“The ACE course evaluation process currently exercises a high level of rigor that can be said to be at least comparable to how most institutions evaluate the quality of their own new courses.”

“The ACE evaluation process has been a leader in its focus on student learning outcomes as a cornerstone of its review process and should continue

to emphasize this approach.”

“The faculty-driven review model elevates the quality of the final recommendations and supports potential acceptance by institutions of ACE credit recommendations as transfer credit.”

“ACE is adept at creating teams of evaluators, faculty, teaching experts, and occasionally non-faculty content specialists that are matched to the content and format of the specific course being evaluated.”

Academic versus Military InstructionSimilaritiesThere are many similarities between academic and military instruction. For instance quite a bit of military instruction occurs in a classroom setting, just as in academia. Often courses are structured in much the same way as an academic course. The student is given a syllabus, or outline, of the course; the course expectations and objectives are clearly stated up front; course assignments can range from papers, to speeches, and even hands on projects; and are graded in much the same way as in academia; through examinations, quizzes, and demonstrations of learning. Rubrics are highly encouraged by the military as a standard way to assess all students equitably on any given task. Those rubrics are typically given to the student along with the course outline and objectives. Just as in any academic setting if a student fails, they can attempt the course again; however, they will also be reprimanded and run the risk of seriously limiting their advancement in the service, a major difference from academic failure in the civilian environment.

DifferencesAdditionally, there are some other marked differences between academic and military training. First, the military also assesses achievements in a service member’s job, or military occupational specialty (MOS), which is normally not a part of evaluations given in academia. Both classroom assessments, as we learned above, and MOS assessments have a measurable bearing upon how quickly and how far a service member may advance in rank and in duty position in the service.

MOS assessments can be accomplished through counseling and mentorship over a period of time. If a service member is found to be falling behind in

accomplishing the mission of their duty position, their supervisor will counsel them and attempt to steer them in the right direction. However if by the service member’s annual review they still have not made satisfactory progress, the supervisor will counsel them concerning remediation measures, and ultimately if they do not improve, they may be relieved of duty, reassigned, reclassified or dismissed from service depending upon the level of failure.

Greatest of these differences: academic learning and on-the-job learning are linked.The greatest difference, however, is the fact that a service member’s rank and duty position dictate what schools and training they will receive. Everyone will receive training in the basics of their particular branch of the military in bootcamp, much of which is physical in nature; however, there is quite a bit of classroom instruction as well.

As a service member moves up in rank, they are expected to attend the requisite school for that rank in order to be promoted to the next rank. Additionally, each MOS also has requisite schooling and on-the-job training that must be completed in order to move to positions of greater responsibility. In the military, rank and duty positions are linked very closely with academic learning.

CCBC Departmental Example - Faculty Perspective My “Why”Rob Hess, CCBC’s Department Chair of Wellness, has been very active in researching, approving, and offering military prior learning credits to his military students.

He is a member of CCBC’s Articulation, Transfer and Prior Learning (ATPL) Team’s Military Subcommittee and is committed to this initiative.

Quote from Rob, “CCBC has a larger number of Vets than you think, I bet some of your students are Vets or Active and you don’t even know it. I have taught online to Active Military that have been deployed, and I had to give an “I” grade until they returned from deployment.

When I heard about the PLA initiative, I wanted to see what the Wellness Department could offer towards prior learning. I was also interested in giving

military family members an understanding of the training and rigor service members went through to meet rank.”

No-one said it would be easy, but rewarding – YES!As part of his efforts, Rob reviewed approximately 300 courses from all of the branches and was able to narrow the search to 60. He found two Officers courses that will be further investigated by the Wellness Faculty to see if they can award General Education Course credit. There are many others he found that meet an elective course credit.

However, there have been some bumps along the way. For instance, it is very difficult trying to make sense of the acronyms, especially if you’ve never been in the military or if you are researching courses from a branch other than your own.

Furthermore, often you won’t be able to find the syllabus (course exhibit) associated with the course or training. Additionally he found it difficult to determine which ranks are associated with which courses.

There are literally 25,000 courses listed in the ACE database, some of which are out of date since they haven’t been reviewed recently. Sifting through all of that information is a tedious and time-consuming job.

Although this work is very rewarding, it isn’t easy. It takes determination and true belief in the value of accepting prior learning credits. We hope you, too, will feel that offering military students prior learning credits in your department is a worthwhile endeavor, and we welcome you to the team!

If you are interested in joining the ATPL Team’s Military Subcommittee, please email nzairi@ccbcmd.edu. Nicole Zairi is the Chair of the ATPL team and will guide you through the proper training to review military transcripts and update you on any of the Team’s meetings.

Standards and Guidelines for Assessing PLA at CCBCThe Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) that has been established here at CCBC is based on the standards developed by the Center for Experiential and Adult Learning (CAEL). To learn more about our standards, and how to get started, please sign up for the PLA 101 workshop.

Help is out there for your Military Students –VITAL- A. Meade Eggleston, PH.D. is an employee of the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center whose job focuses on working with student Veterans at local

colleges and universities. This VA program is called VITAL: Veterans Integration to Academic Leadership.

Meade spends 4 days a week in the community providing counseling, referrals and outreach to student Veterans.

Mondays and Tuesdays, CCBC Catonsville Fridays, CCBC Essex Thursdays, Towson University

To learn more about the program, please follow this link: http://www.maryland.va.gov/services/Veterans_Integration_To_Academic_Leadership_VITAL.asp