Learning outside of the classroom.

A study by the Lumina Foundation revealed that students who participate in PLA programs are more likely to persist and graduate. PLA provides many benefits to students because it may:

• Lessen time required to complete a degree and helps lower tuition costs.
• Eliminate redundancies associated with reviewing material you have already mastered.
• Allow you to demonstrate learning for which there is no standardized exam.
• Be ideal if you perform better on written assignments than tests.

You are eligible to participate in the PLA program if you meet these requirements:

Undergraduate Students

• Be a fully matriculated student (completed the APUS application and orientation process, possess a student ID number, registered for a course in your current program, and are not on program hold or disenrolled)
• Have received a completed Transfer Credit Evaluation (TCE) from the APUS Transfer Credit Department if the student has credit to transfer or potential credit via training evaluation
• Have a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 2.0 for courses taken to date and are not on academic probation (actively taking course/s)
• Not yet applied for graduation or registered in a capstone or end-of-program option (thesis, portfolio, project, capstone, etc.)
• Not pursuing a degree program in which programmatic accreditation restricts prior learning credit

Note: Independent study courses and the senior seminar are not eligible for PLA.

Graduate Students

• Be a fully matriculated student (completed the APUS application and orientation process, possess a student ID number, registered for a course in your current program, and are not on program hold or disenrolled)
• Have received a completed Transfer Credit Evaluation (TCE) from the APUS Transfer Credit Department if the student has credit to transfer or potential credit via training evaluation
• Have a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 for courses taken to date and are not on academic probation (actively taking course/s)
• Not yet applied for graduation or registered in a capstone or end-of-program option (thesis, portfolio, project, capstone, etc.)
• Not pursuing a degree program in which programmatic accreditation restricts prior learning credit

To be awarded credit for prior learning, you must be able to demonstrate that you have met the learning objectives required in a university academic course. This is done by creating a portfolio.

Your prior learning portfolio is a collection of materials or artifacts compiled to demonstrate previous college-level learning relevant to your academic degree plan. A portfolio consists of multiple required components. Each component plays a role in demonstrating mastery of course objectives. The components that make up a portfolio include:

• The Educational Goal Statement – This gives you the opportunity to examine your personal motivation in the context of learning and application of knowledge. This document provides prior learning evaluators with insight and helps them provide appropriate feedback to facilitate life-long learning.
• The Autobiography – The autobiography focuses on your professional and personal learning endeavors since high school. In writing the autobiography, you will analyze your past experiences in terms of critical incidents that led to learning. This part of the portfolio helps the evaluator understand when, how, and why the learning has occurred.
• The Resume – A resume allows you to highlight more detail about your responsibilities and accomplishments that have supported learning. The resume provides the evaluator with a timeline and demonstrates the progression of learning.
• The Narrative – This component is unique for every portfolio because the focus is on the learning objectives for a specific course. You must address each course objective found on the course syllabus, and demonstrate that you have mastered the objectives to the same extent as students who have completed the course. The narrative may be lengthy depending on the course.
• Documentation – You will need to supply documentation to support the narrative. Documentation is as individual as the learner. It may include items such as sample work products, training certificates, workplace evaluations, letters of recommendation, and/or photographs.

View your academic plan or search our course schedule to view syllabi for individual courses.

You must submit a separate portfolio for each course where you seek to petition for credit. Some components of your original portfolio may be used in multiple submissions. We strongly encourage you to work on one portfolio at a time, as this allows you to use feedback from the initial portfolio to inform the development of additional portfolios.

The undergraduate PLA workshop is free to qualified students who have met their maximum elective course requirements; however, the evaluation fee for each portfolio is $250. The workshop is designed to ensure students understand learning theory, the ways to document learning, and the process of having their learning evaluated at APUS. During the undergraduate workshop, students will create a learning portfolio that is ready for evaluation.

For the portfolio to be evaluated for credit, it must be reviewed by a subject matter expert. Therefore, once a student completes the undergraduate PLA workshop, they must plan with the PLA team ([email protected]) to submit their entire portfolio. It is important to note that this is a separate process from the final submission in the workshop to the instructor. Students may develop additional portfolios once they have completed the workshop and submit them for evaluation. The fee for additional portfolio evaluations is $250 per portfolio. Please, note students’ tuition assistance may not cover portfolio evaluation fees. 

Graduate students are required to participate in a no-cost/no-credit workshop that will assist you in the identification of individual prior learning that may be credit-worthy. You will work through a variety of exercises to analyze your experiences in terms of learning and to develop the various portfolio components.

This self-paced workshop can be completed independently in about 4 weeks. Throughout the workshop, a PLA team member provides feedback on assignments and portfolio components. You will complete the portfolio by the end of the workshop, though final editing of it might take a bit longer. The fee to submit a graduate level portfolio for review is $325, which is about 2/3 less than the cost of tuition for a 3-credit-hour graduate course. Note: The $325 portfolio review fee is non-refundable even if the review does not result in the award of academic credit.

Credit petitioned via PLA must be for a specific university course within your academic program, but cannot be applied toward seminar, capstone, and/or independent study courses. The university awards credit for college-level/graduate level learning that can be assessed and documented. Credit is awarded for learning, not experience. Evidence is critical for a successful portfolio. Your prior learning must be:

• Related to your current educational goals and objectives.
• College-level/graduate level and be relevant to a specific course for which the university grants academic credit.
• Transferable to situations other than that in which it was gained.
• Accompanied by the application of appropriate theories.
• Include evidence to support having achieved course learning objectives, samples include:   
  • Certifications/training certificates
  • Professional evaluations
  • Awards/commendations

PLA credits are considered "non-traditional" transfer credits. Accrediting guidelines limit the amount of non-traditional credit applied toward degree completion as follows:

• Graduate-level Certificates - no more than 9 semester hours
• Associate - no more than 30 semester hours
• Bachelor’s - no more than 60 semester hours
• Master’s - no more than 9 semester hours