we're learning very good all right well we're going to go ahead and get started it's the top of the hour and I want to welcome everyone to this first in a series of three webinars designed
to support implementation of military credit for prior learning on our campuses here in Indiana and this is part of our broader Focus on expanding the use and recognition of credit for prior learning uh to support adult Learners and so I'm I'm pleased to to
introduce to you today Dr Dallas katzer and Don busic who've been long-term partners of ours in this work and they're nationally recognized for their expertise and so with that I'm going to turn it over to to Don and Dallas okay good morning everyone um
Dallas do you want to drive or do you want me to drive um it doesn't matter I can drive okay I think you you should be able to share there you go yeah are you seeing the presentation for we are yes we are so
just to add a little bit background when we start um this is a series of three um lunch and learns around implementing a military credit for prior learning um program and guide within your each of
your institutions and we're doing it in three phases es and the reason for that is some institutions are further advanced in serving their military students versus some that may not have a program at all and need some of this um
initial phase one work so today's lunch and learn for the next 30 minutes we're going to walk you through as if you were an institution that um might be serving veterans but don't have a formalized process in how to serve um veterans and
apply credit for prior learning to the with their military training and experience uh phase two and three will be next week one's on Wednesday and one's on Friday next week whereas phase two will be the next level where yes you do have a process you do have staff
assigned but you still don't have a formalized policy um or practices and processes to um further Advance it and build capacity around that and then the phase three will do on Friday and that will be where we talk about how do you
evaluate your current practices and policies and then just further develop them so you can build more capacity and increase the usage of this framework military credit for prior learning so with that I'm going to turn it over to
Dallas and who's going to just launch us um right into the concept of NPC ncpl implementation and start with phase one and just real quick if I may of logistics if you have folks have have questions we're using a webinar format
you can use the Q&A and if you would wish to speak I believe you can raise your hand and we can unmute you and Dallas it's not in presentation mode I don't know if that was something you'd already tried to set well let me work that hang on just a second uh you know
sometimes this technology isn't always our friend so there we go and I'm G to stop sharing and we'll try it again I will open up my chat box so I can monitor that as well now it should be in presentation
mode there it is yes very good very good hi good morning everyone we're gonna talk through the uh implementation guide today because when we first started this project some time back now we had the implementation plan but yet there was still more that that you were looking
for some of the schools were looking for so we created this implementation guide to to get further down into the nuts and bolts of it we we will continue to use the implementation plan with the guide because there are useful pieces in both of them but the whole thing centers
around this framework that we have in front of us the uh what we're calling the mcpl implementation plan itself or framework so that's going to guide the discussion these are some of the things we're going to try to do is make sure that we give you a good understanding of
what the guide is and what it can do for you as Don mentioned we'll go through phase one talking about those those parts and pieces so the way the guide is developed it has the phase the stage
task and action steps these are the things that we're going to be talking about each element of the guide breaks it down this way and as you can see there this is an example from the page first page in the guide that you're going to work with the focus that is the
intent for that particular phase what are we doing here the phases that we're looking at today are to analyze and to design under the analy side of it the focus here is just to to draw Us in so
that we know where we're headed we'll talk more about the focus here in just a moment the action provides the Key activities that you're going to be doing while you're in that plan uh or in that phase and then the note boxes are just
additional documents that will help um give greater meaning on something and and the example I'm using here is the working group so what is the working group we understand what the task force is and this will allow us to
um get additional information to to help fles out what we're trying to say and then the last last two tasks and action steps those are the activities that have to be accomplished before you'll be prepared to move to the next stage so
let's jump into the first one all right uh no before we do that we're gonna talk about the uh checklist so to to sum it all up at the end of the guide by phase there's a checklist these are the activities that need to be done and you put a date in there it just give you a
clear shot on what's really happening based on on the discussion earlier on all right now we're going to talk about that first document so phase one stage one under anal Analyze This is the focus and that is that we need to make sure
that our organizations are ready now we're not going to dig way deep into this we're just going to kind of walk through the guide because each one of you are going to need to take this guide see if it answers everything or provides you enough information on what you're doing or do you need to add something
else to it but the the stage on the framework is always the same analyzed we're under that first section is your organization ready these are the things that you need to be thinking about under the focus category whether your policies
uh do we have a military Centric students already how are we engaging with that population how can we better serve them and the action under that is that the leadership of the institution your campus needs to make the determination on
building a task force and who will be part of that task force to see if this is something you want to do um some sometimes individuals uh are there's a champion that wants to run with this but it's so important that you get the
leadership Buy in from your uh campus leadership because they are instrumental on whether or not you'll be successful first of all and if there will be a pathway ahead that this will be something that will be have a good
succession and keep gone perpetually under phase one the task again identifying that task force and in that the action steps that go on is to first of all identify the task force members now it's going to refer
you back to the guide because there's some pretty clear instructions in the in the plan not the guide in the implementation plan of who should be on that task force for you folks that are key strategic leaders such as someone
from the provos office The registar Faculty representatives and in the implementation plan there's a nice worksheet that gives you some suggestions on who you might want to have in there the other challenge the other part of uh action step one a is to
identify the purposes what will the team do why are they investigating this and what does the senior leadership expect from the team to equip them to make a good decision sometimes it might be a report sometimes it may be a written
document and they're going to identify that out for you and then establish the timelines for you to complete those tasks task action step one B is the familiarization in the guide we and in the plan we suggest that you help your
task force better understand what the objective is here by doing a deep dive into what CPL is and what military CPL uh is and how military culture uh should look on a campus or
might look on a campus just being aware of what's available for our service members and how you can better serve that student population um also looking at the the current practices that you have so as you go through the stages here it should
help or the steps it should help you to make sure you've covered all of your bases you might think there's some things you want to add here feel free to do this this document is out on our Google site now and you can download it for your school it's a Word document you
can modify it manage it uh this is something that we're hoping will help you to better articulate what you're trying to do on your campus to not only your leadership but those that will be important to it uh in staff and facult
faculty so task two before you go on to task two I'd like to add the whole purpose behind this is really to understand how your institution delivers these types of services so it's it's important when you appoint the task
force it's going to be those that actually touch credit for prior learning services like Dallas said earlier what are the different roles in your institution also so we have found with other um in other states where we've
done similar work that sometimes institutions are a system where they have multiple campuses across the state and each campus is unique how they do and apply and utilize the credit for prior learning framework well it for
example this institution it would be the dean of that department program of study the health director Dean or it could be the J Ed Dean but each campus may be different but say you're ready you're looking at how does XYZ institution
deliver military credit for prior learning so it's important that you reach out and do some fact finding and who really does handle this or provide this and that would have some knowledge about it um to to so in order for you to
have healthy conversations around this is our process how can we make it better okay great Point great point and these are the key decision makers at at the institution stakeholders and decision makers are important in the
process because you want to get their Buy in so as you're doing that they charge the task force to then assess the culture and identify the data points that are important the reason for this you need
to make sure that your campus is interested in doing military CPL there I know this may be hard to believe but there are some schools that are not as interested in doing that schools or colleges um departments because they don't see where it might work for
example it would be incredibly challenging for a math department to use much uh cplo credit military CPL credit because there's just not a lot of assessment in that area so you could
even have someone from a department that maybe isn't in interested in the CPL but they need to be there to be that voice that says here's why it doesn't work in our community because we do want to accept military credit for prior learning but when we don't we want to be
able to defend why we don't so assessing the culture maybe doing some surveys or holding focus groups to to learn more about how your campus currently is and then those data points you have to establish the Baseline so that you can
make sure that you're getting a return on the work that you're doing and the task force can do this uh from a high level talking with the registar talking with the admissions folks laying that Foundation to make sure that as you're going forward you are able to show that
there is a return on the investment that you're making in both time and in resources uh don anything you want to add under the the assessing side no I think we've covered it the the main thing is is to understand to start with
is what you currently are doing today and and you know how do you how do you engage those partners and those stakeholders within your institution to grow it and to grow the capacity to better serve our military
students great yep so in stage two we're still in FA phase one but in stage two this is where we're going to do the design part and that's preparing the institution so we're going to have a couple pages on
this also the focus in preparing the institution is is for the implementation of mcpl making sure that uh We've identified all the things that we need to do leadership has bought in and given us the go-ahead to move forward with
implementing a mcpl program within our institution and one of those key things and you'll see this in the action steps is that working group now we' talked about the task force the task force is the Strategic level the working
group could be part of the task force same people or it could be a different group each campus needs to make their own determination because the important part here is that action step making sure that you have a good team to move forward with the process and not get
bogged down so let's talk about that working group a little bit more the the working group uh comes out of the task force they work for the task force and they're the operational level the boots on ground in Implement implementing the
plan the task force will hand off all the the primary responsibilities to the working group to build the program the mcpl program to implement it to uh develop those uh Pathways and and uh
processes to help your fa faculty and staff understand what goes on so the the folks that you want to have on the working group are those Folks at the operational level who can help make decisions within the Departments again it might be a Dean depending on what's
how big your school is or it could be a department shair and again we're going to go back through familiarization in Step uh action step 1B under stage two because there is an awareness that needs to to go on for the
working group the task force can help the working group get up to speed because the TA task force has already seen some of the things hey this is what a military CPL program is these are how other folks are doing it out across uh
at other institution Sim similar institutions but the working group is also going to be tasked in the next section to take that familiarization and create an awareness campaign task two is about awareness making people aware
about military credit for prior learning why it's important making the case to the rest of the institution uh the staff and the faculty on why we're going to go down this road because the thing to keep in mind the leadership through the task
force has already decided they're going to go down this path the working group is implementing the decision of the leadership and the task force so we're going to move forward on it we're going to step out smartly and in doing that the next part of
uh task two awareness is training what type of courses do you need or training opportunities do you need to create for your staff and faculty to help them grow in their understanding and application of military credit for prior learning
now we do all this upfront because if we can be successful and understanding and implementing military credit for prior learning it helps build the foundation for accepting traditional credit for prior learning in non-military
settings I would add yes I would add as part of this work group be mindful that the these individuals that serve and that will help begin designing your respective institutions program credit for prior learning for military students the framework that you're going to
utilize they become ambassadors of the program for your institution they are the spokesperson for your institution they also going to be part of that train the trainer so by pulling say an admissions counselor with faculty together the
admission counselor then has someone that to go to from that office to the programs of study departments when they are counseling academic counseling a potential military student to enroll in your institution so it takes on um uh it
takes on its own family of who a AIDS military students in utilizing credit for prior learning um getting in identifying the right program of study they need to be enrolled into and then all the way to retaining and completing them with their degree and certificate
programs of study so it be mindful admissions offices are large at many institutions with 20 employees they have recruiters they have counselors they have a whole host but so are your Departments of programs of study and then we have the registar office how
many in in the registar office will be assigned to be working with military credit for prior learning that will be actually doing the transcripting to their transcripts with this credit so to help I'm trying to to open up more about
when you're thinking about your work group who are these ambassadors for this program going to be that's actually going to work in it day in and day out um I think once you each institution aligns with a solid working group from all over the campuses you will grow a
program and you will see an increase in military students enrolling at your institution but not only enrolling they will retain and they will complete yeah that's the unique thing about this population they are persistent but they're challenging
because they don't ask for help they'll receive the help when it's offered and we want to help our campuses to know what kind of services can best fit with a group of people who really won't ask for help but they need it because it's not their world and the reason being a
military person the reason service members tend to not uh self-identify and are hard to engage for asking help is because we're trained to be self-sufficient to be able to figure out things on our own and in Academia it's
just a different animal and they don't it's it's not their area that's why the working group can be so instrumental and educating our staff creating a culture that Embraces the military community and again remember what we're trying to do
is not be military friendly we want to be more than that we want to be military engaged and this will help us to do it and Don you know your point about uh train the trainer we though this is our livelihood we want you guys to be able
to do your own training that way you have experts on your campus about military credit for prior learning and you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time somebody leaves who might be that key person you'll have experts all
around those ambassadors that and uh that can help make sure that things continue even though others move or or come into the system you'll want to look at having consistent professional
development on an annual or biannual uh looking at conferences to attend just a to stay on top of it all right and here's another point is does your institution have the military credit for prior learning is it in your institution's strategic plan Five-Year
Plan when you're the accrediting body bodies come to evaluate your institution do you have this as a key component how to better serve military students they accrediting evaluators love to see stuff like this um around specific Target
student populations but also credit for for prior learning and the reason is is they have been trained that credit for prior learning students that are awarded credit um Do complete and retain and complete and have higher completion numbers in fact they go on to further
their education to Masters and doctorates and multiple degrees so um it's it's something else that an institution can look at either at the task force level or even in the work group is it part of your institution's longrange plan to build capacity and to
grow how can you better serve your military students and if not it should be I I would agree yes so all of this is just words on paper that's why we created the checklist the checklist
should help you to be able to focus in your areas to quickly report out where and what's going on at your campus um go through the checklist give us some feedback let us know what you think how we might be able to improve it what
should be added and at the same time think about the fact that your campus is going to be different from another campus if you're a four-year Regional uh it's going to be different than our community college system they're different things that you need to think through but but stay focused because
this is only stage one stage uh phase one phase one is a preparatory getting ready to do the work when we go into phase two then we're going to actually Implement create the program and implement it and start it rocking and
rolling and then phase three is an evaluation period where we go back have we hit the results that we expected have we uh been able to engage students what's the return on investment and those are going to be the two sessions that we'll talk about next week on
Wednesday and Friday all right Don is there anything you want to add about the the checklist no um like Dallas said I I think yeah I will um like Dallas said we developed this checklist recently at the request of our work group on this
project um when we developed specifically an implementation guide specifically for the Indiana institutions and we've had input from institutions all over the state so if from that um from the guide we developed this these checklist in this workbook so
if you think there's something else that's missing that you think should be in there for your Indiana institutions please let us know um I think we're going to go into next is where you can refer back to um and find if you haven't seen the implementation guide yet um and
this workbook and um I think that's our next slide we're going to talk about the Google site repository and how you can access and as on top of that we are recording these webinars so you'll have a resource to go back to and then of course you can always reach out to Dallas and I anytime and we'll be happy
to answer any questions questions right uh you know and Don that's a great point this is something that was created because you guys asked for it we do this stuff all the time so we think about things like this but we really needed to get it on paper to
better position you to do great things in your community so it's been a fun event uh it's been challenging you know you you have to think through uh for us in the military this would be called a continuity guide that gives us that document that when somebody leaves here
you pick up this book and you figure you just should be able to figure it out from there okay so let me uh stop sharing that and I have the Google site open so give me just a second are there any questions right now
that you might have and again if you do have any feel free to put them in the Q&A or raise your hand and we will unmute you all right so one of the things that we've worked on is creating what we call a
Sandbox this is a place where we can put documents and share information to help you um are you seeing the sandbox yet yes we are very good all
right okay so in the sandbox um this tool is a Google site everyone has access to this to see it and on this document you're going or this short website you've got the plan on one side and the guide on the other
these documents can be downloaded by clicking on the little pop out box and then you can download it to your computer right please don't save it back to our Google guide I don't think you can but the Google Drive would uh change
it significantly we don't want you to do that we want to keep it for everybody well it is a it is a Google workspace only those that have access are those that have been invited therefore you know that it exists this is not for public consumption this is
where this is a safe space where everyone all the institutions within Indiana including us and uh the commission of higher ed um can provide resources um you can give us feedback we can download and upload um updated um
new implementation programs for to make an to make this military credit for prior learning stronger um so I think it was in the invitation that you received from Dr Stacy townley's to attend today's webinar I think there was also some information in that invitation how
you sign up to get access to this um but you have to be invited and then we give you access and you can see based on all the tabs above the types of resources we have have recently developed and started uploading to this repository in the future all of this within two years I
think the plan is for this to be all transposed over to the new version of the Indiana Commission of hire Ed Clearing House 2.0 but we started creating and developing um and collecting a lot of data and resources
on what is currently happening within the Indiana institutions and we needed a a repository to start placing these into so we started with the target population of the military students and we've developed this as a temporary site to
hold all of our working documents and resources that we're providing to all of you so Dallas do you want to share how this works yeah okay so not only uh do we have all the guiding documents which some of these are on the website but
they're also ones that are particular to the activities that we're doing right now with the military credit for prior learning program we also have some suggestions for uh upcoming webinars or webinars that have been done already organizations to be part of the dant one
is a great one if you want to learn more about how uh dant does the the different things that they do to support our military students dant governs the jst acce provides the
information that goes on the jst but Dante's also helps with uh dsts which are a type of Club exam uh they also have the club exams and how they can be used additionally we've had a community of practice that's been working for
quite some time all of the webinars are out here that you can go and look at and lean information from this webinar will go on there eventually so we just keep putting more and more stuff out there this allows us to to have it
readily available to you without putting it on a website which is more static okay this is a living breathing Community here so we can do a lot more very quickly uh in addition to all the stuff on this page we have the
implementation page and on the implementation page it walks you through all the different tasks and things that are going on and how you can uh continue to grow out your program there are some video that are
very good uh information to share if you have an A U video that you think would be good for the community send us a note Don Kelly Friend myself uh we are all able to quickly update things on here
and manage the these resources we're also thinking about things that need to be thought of later we have a parking lot where we put different uh thoughts and we talk about well when are we going to do this what do we want to do matter of fact you can see uh the
implementation guide was one of those things and here we are uh almost done with it because there's a lot of thought going into it and we want to collect that information also a lot of thought I want to just interrupt for a minute a lot of this came from our working group from um
the the 15 institutions that served on that working group within Indiana this is this is what more we need to help us be stronger institutions so this is where you'll see that parking lot list of items also check back routinely to
this because we're constantly updating and making changes people will email us um from those institutions and say well this said this can you go I think it would be more meaningful to those of us in Academia if it was worded this way so we're constantly modifying and updating
to make sure we build the best tools for all of you there specifically for Indiana institutions H so under the implementation resources there are a couple of tabs uh the current institutions and this is one
that's under work we would love for you to let us know how we can plug your uh information about your CPL or mcpl uh links in here and then that way it's easier for you to find what others are doing right also if decide oops go
back I want I want to add we collected this data from the Statewide survey assessment of what currently is going on with the Indiana institutions many of your institutions um did submit your survey responses back what we found is
some of your links that you did provide us where to find your current policies around military credit for prior learning those links were broken so if you don't see your link up here that's because we utilize those survey responses and we clicked on all those links and many were broken and probably
because you're in the development phase you're somewhere trying to improve upon those in preparation for the collegate purple star applications um while Minnie you did provide us with the link but the links were broken so um if you don't see your
link for your institution please shoot one over try it out first to make sure it works and then shoot it over to us and we'll load it out here I'll be happy to update those right and sometimes they were behind things like a SharePoint site which is not publicly available so
that's what you're seeing here is the public link okay if you decided as you're going through this that your organization needs to have an mcpl coordinator here's some job descriptions and what others
have done so it gives you just another way to to think through this what are the tasks and responsibilities of someone that would be a military CPL coordinator under the general area just a bunch of websites things that are good
links that will give you uh more background in and maybe help you uh do some research if you need to we're always adding there are a couple really sharp institutions out there one that I'd like to highlight is the Syracuse Institute on veteran families veterans
and military families they do some amazing stuff uh student Veterans of America psych armor I would highly recommend that as you're going through that uh phase where you're educating your faculty and staff to use psych
armor 15 things military members want you to know um just more resources for you under the local again a couple of other key documents that will help you uh
demographics where are the military connected students in your community the 15 things is right here if you want to watch that the acce institutions page and how the guide can be used a quick course on that we also have a list of
our current ambassadors who have been part of this team don do you want to talk maybe a little bit to the Ambassador team sure we garnered this information from again those Statewide assessment surveys we asked if who is your contact your key
contact point of contact at your institution and you know can we use their name within a directory so these are these are folks that do this work day in and day out around the state in various institutions we share this because it's important as new staff on
board with your institution and they are assigned to work in this um area they've got other resources and other networking staff in the state that they can reach out to to say hey how are you processing military credit for prior learning have
you done a program a study of this um and what were the outcomes so it's it's to start this networking and to build this capacity of resources around military credit for prior learning for these particular
students great thank you and then to help our ambassadors and you we've created a uh some talking points and the talking points can be used in any number of ways Don sure so this is the larger
document that when you can click on you can download it share it print it out so we've broken this out into three areas three customers that you would be talking to about the program the military credit for prior learning practices and procedures one is for the
institution benefits and role why you have this program and what it means the other one uh category is around administrative staff and faculty and then we have a full section on how to um address the benefits of this program
program to potential students and why it's important um for the military students to have access at any time to credit for prior learning um from their exper their their training their jst as well as their experiential
learning all right and then uh we did have some marketing ideas we're going to leave these out there it was mainly for the the primary team but if you see something you want to use for your campus please feel free to to do that it's it's all about networking and
working together uh the last part is the working group who is doing what and this this is our key leadership team right now and uh just really don't have much more to say than this is a fantastic group so really enjoyed working with it
yeah all right I'm gonna stop there questions or comments I just wanted to share and again for those of you on who want to have um a comment please raise your hand or type it into the Q&A for this webinar
format but again I just wanted to share that I appreciate all of the work that folks have done to bring it to this point and I'm hopeful that institutions will take advantage of this implementation guide um it's exciting stuff especially those institutions that
are thinking about applying for the collegate purple star um designation because as one of the requirements it requires a a policy and a and a plan and so if you don't have one okay we're here the 1 of November and you still have a
couple months to to benefit from this information that we're providing these checklists that we're providing to you that were recently developed by Indiana institutions um to help you do that to reach that goal um so when your application is submitted you are ready to
go well I think we've answered a lot of questions thank you both Dallas and Don and we look forward to the next phase two next two webinar yes and thank you all for joining thank you thank you bye
bye byebye