Credit Hours and Frameworks

Air in early December is replete with deep exhales that seem to soothe. It is a time to close out one year and look forward to the other.

December’s ability to be a both/and - releasing the limitations of being just one thing - may be what, indeed, makes it the most wonderful time of the year. 

As I drank my coffee and had this thought an enduring question, and recent article, resurfaces for me.  

I speak of the #credithour often pitted against #frameworks for learning (ex. #Skills, #competencies, etc.). The, at times, vitriolic rhetoric puts any family feud around the dinner table to shame. And, that - in my opinion - is a shame.

The credit hour - like other time-based #measures such as “full-time worker” - is a function of the one irrefutable fact: time is a constant standard that no one owns and everyone experiences. Not only is it clear and easy to understand by laypeople and policy leaders, but it recognizes that a particular chunk of space in our all-too-busy lives was set aside for #learning. It is no less than an opportunity in action carved from an edifice of demands.

And, for the credit hour specifically, any well-designed #course has a #syllabus with lesson plans embedded with learning #objectives outlining certain #knowledge, #skillsand #abilities (KSAs) a student gains in each class. Unfortunately in the #highereducation space, professors imply these KSAs because they are rarely taught how to articulate them. [Something groups like the Association of College and University Educators are working on].

Similarly, the framework approach seeks to recognize that through one’s path in life individuals acquire the same KSAs that students in a course acquire. And the method for acknowledging them take the form of a framework. Advocates of this type of learning acknowledgement seek to empower #learners - often #adults with work or #military experience - by validating the value they bring in aligning it with traditional conceptions of worth.  

So, at their core, both the credit hour and frameworks acknowledge learning; whether it happened along one’s life journey or in a specialized setting.  

There is no need to defame one to advance the other.

That is my holiday wish, that this holiday season we take a collective exhale. Several deep exhales. The meditation-type of exhales that almost make you dizzy.

Perhaps within the space that is created, an awareness of “and” settles in where the tension leaves. Allowing ourselves to see value from diverse experiences. 

And who knows, the most wonderful time of the year may well create a culture of appreciation that carries us a little bit further than this month.