Has anyone ever looked at their transcript and thought, “I know I have excellent grades and impressive classes listed here, but I feel like someone who sees this won’t really understand what skills and abilities I have?” If so, you may be interested in a new initiative the University of Maryland University College (that title seems incredibly redundant) is taking in regards to transcripts. UMUC is experimenting with competency based learning, an idea we discussed in class and read in Selingo’s book, and have therefore decided to pilot an “extended transcript” in the upcoming fall semester.
This transcript differs from the usual one in that it lists more than just the classes you’ve taking and grades you’ve received. It actually “pulls in students’ papers, projects and other assignments and how they count as progress toward clearly defined learning outcomes.” Each learning outcome (or objective) is tailored to fit your major or field of study and contains subcategories of related skills. The transcript even tracks the student’s progress in showing proficiency in these skills. Additionally, the transcript will offer “evidence” (i.e. papers, projects etc.) to show how students have displayed mastery of each particular skill.
This new transcript can be helpful for multiple reasons. First, it gives employers or graduate schools a better idea of how competent an applicant is. This can especially benefit those students who have shown excellent mastery of learning objectives and skills. Second, as the associate vice provost and registrar at UMUC says, it shows students how classes outside their major can affect their learning objectives and potential career paths. With this foresight, students can better gauge exactly what classes will be useful for them. Hopefully, this would aid students in avoiding unnecessary (in regards to their career and general life goals) classes that will increase their tuition bill, a problem everyone should be trying to avoid, and rob them of their precious time. Third, as mentioned earlier, it allows students to customize how they want to represent themselves to potential employers.
There are some issues with this potential new system; most notably, collecting data from all campus archives could be difficult. UMUC, though, is going to remain resilient and push forward. As Thomas Green, the executive director at AACRAO (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers), puts it: “The concept here is that we don’t think there’s going to be one model that will emerge quickly. We’re just trying to accelerate the beginning of this.” Indeed, such an idea will take time to develop properly, but UMUC and other universities have taken a very important first step in helping students access transcripts that can show who they really are beyond just some classes and grade point averages.
If anyone would like to read the article discussing this matter you can find it at the following link: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/29/u-maryland-university-colleges-extended-transcript-new-type-student-record. I also recommend looking at the picture of the prototype they have shown being that it serves as a good visual aid in understanding the basic layout of the transcript.
