New Digital Credentials, Verifiable Learning Records Lead to Better Alignment with Workforce Needs

BATON ROUGE, La. – A new academic policy creating  a statewide framework for portable student records that go far beyond an academic transcript will be considered for approval during Wednesday’s Board of Regents meeting providing a more complete and verified picture of a student’s learning experience.

For more than 150 years, colleges and universities have relied on the academic transcript as the official record of the courses students complete and the grades they earn. But students today also learn through workforce training, professional experiences, internships, research, certifications, career-connected learning, and other activities that are not fully captured by a traditional transcript.

Verifiable Learning Records (VLR) are designed to supplement, not replace, the transcript by documenting those learning experiences in a portable, independently verifiable form. A VLR can show not only what a student completed, but also what the student demonstrated, applied, experienced, or achieved.

Academic Affairs Policy 2.28 would establish a statewide framework for VLRs across Louisiana’s public colleges and universities. Under the policy, a VLR would consist of individually identifiable Verified Learning Entries. Some entries may document experiences or demonstrated competencies, while others may constitute a Verified Digital Credential, such as a certification, badge, or other formally recognized achievement.

“The traditional transcript tells us an important part of a student’s story, but not the whole story,” said Commissioner of Higher Education Dr. Kim Hunter Reed. “Students develop valuable knowledge, skills and capabilities through experiences that do not currently appear on a transcript. Verifiable Learning Records give students a way to carry that evidence with them and make more of their learning visible to employers, institutions and other partners.”

“Employers need more than a list of courses to understand the knowledge and capabilities a student brings to the workplace,” said Louisiana Works Secretary Susie Schowen. “Verifiable Learning Records can help translate what skills students can learn through internships, workforce training, industry certifications, and other experiences into information employers can recognize and trust. That creates a stronger connection between education and the opportunities available to students after graduation.”

To ensure that VLRs are meaningful across institutions and useful to employers, the proposed policy is accompanied by statewide metadata and interoperability standards. Those standards establish common expectations for how Verified Learning Entries are described, verified, linked to supporting evidence, and made portable across systems.

The standards also create a common framework for recognizing progressively deeper levels of learner achievement, from engagement and skills attainment to competency demonstration and proficiency validation.

“A record is only useful if someone receiving it understands what it represents and can trust the evidence behind it,” said Deputy Commissioner for Academic Affairs and Innovation Dr. Tristan Denley. “These standards give Louisiana a common language for describing verified learning while still allowing institutions the flexibility to decide how that learning is designed, assessed and delivered.”

The framework, which was requested by some student leaders and developed in collaboration with the public postsecondary systems, is designed to recognize verified learning from a wide range of settings, including coursework, workforce and technical education, industry certifications, military learning, competency-based learning, research, leadership, career-connected learning, work-integrated learning, , and other validated educational and professional experiences.

With passage of this policy Louisiana would join a small but growing number of states developing statewide systems to make verified learning, skills and experiences more portable and useful to students and employers.

The Verifiable Learning Records policy and other academic affairs items will be considered for approval on Wednesday, October 21, during the Board of Regents’ October meeting at Southern University and A&M College.