Overview

The Opportunity and Imperative

Adult learners now make up a sizable portion of students in higher education, and these individuals often bring with them a wealth of education and employment experiences. Today, information on these experiences is scattered across multiple systems from a learner’s various education institutions, training providers, employers, and other private systems. Currently, it can be very difficult to “connect the dots” across education and workforce systems. Learners, educational institutions, and researchers are left only able to see the “tip of the iceberg” of a learner’s full learning, experience, and achievement.

This can be particularly true for low-income, first-generation learners and learners from low-income backgrounds, learners who are more likely to enroll in college older, work full-time while in college and attend college part-tim e. Considering that research shows that learners of color have much lower rates of completing college and are more likely to be unemployed or under-employed, it’s imperative to do more to support adult learners and empower them with the data they need to achieve their aspirations.

The Learner Information Framework helps institutions, employers, and adult learners work together to address the challenges around retrieving and sharing adult learners’ education and employment information across systems while safeguarding the privacy and security of those records. The result will be similar to what exists in healthcare today, where technology applications have been developed to share electronic medical records across healthcare systems, empowering patients to better manage their health care, and providers to deliver the right care based on a full picture of the patient’s medical history. This is a common-sense improvement we should strive to achieve in our education and workforce systems.

The Framework initiative builds on existing efforts within institutions and among organizations working on data standards across the country. The initiative pursues an equitable learner-centered approach to assembling information to help improve students’ educational and employment outcomes

A Collaborative Effort

The Framework initiative is a collaborative effort spanning the next two years, from initial development through demonstration projects and a transition to an eventual long-term steward of the project. The initiative is convening expert stakeholders from technology, educational, employment, and data standards communities. These experts are exploring how technology can be used to describe and connect dispersed information from various points along a learner’s education and employment journey so learners’ rich experiences and achievements can be more fully represented. This work also explores guidelines and processes for how this information should be protected and accessed by stakeholders—such as learners, employers, and academic institutions—when needed.

A series of working groups come together to perform the work of defining and demonstrating the Learner Information Framework

The core of each group includes representatives from education institutions and training providers serving as hosts for demonstration projects along with a small team of expert advisors and facilitators.
Subject matter experts are deployed across the groups covering various disciplines in data modeling and architecture, data standards, data storage and repositories, systems integration and data equity. The working groups plan to start meeting in summer of 2023.
An Advisory Council comprising education and technology thought leaders provide insight and guidance throughout this effort.

This effort is developing a framework to describe how learners’ information can be assembled using common semantics drawn primarily from existing data standards. It is also developing tools that take in learner information from multiple systems along a learner’s journey and make it available to applications in a machine-processable and interoperable format.

Target Outcomes

This effort is designed to be a brief exploratory learning and development sprint to demonstrate the feasibility of applying linked data design and technologies to high-resolution, longitudinal learner information.

In the first two years, the initiative’s target outcomes are:

Demonstrated value of the framework and proof-of-concept tools through demonstration projects using anonymized or synthetic data.
Development of one or more sample implementations of these tools that can be used as reference cases for public use.
Secured interest in and commitment to the vision from key education stakeholders and technology experts.
Engagement with a steward organization and a plan for further development in partnership with the community.

The materials and outputs of this project will be fully documented and made available as reference implementation guides to ensure that those serving learners, such as institutions of higher education, can use them well beyond the end of the project.

The Future

With more easily assembled information creating a clearer, more comprehensive picture of lifelong learning journeys, the benefits will be many:

Learners will be better positioned to navigate their journeys and reach their academic and economic goals.
Advisors and counselors can better support diverse types of learners with a deeper understanding of their prior learning and experiences.
State education agencies and researchers will be able to access more meaningful information and expend less manual effort to stitch together longitudinal records to better inform programs and policies.
Application developers will be better able to design more learner-centric programs and services in support of such efforts as recruitment, engagement, and placement.
And with more comprehensive information, educational institutions, training providers, and employers will be better positioned to work together to ensure their offerings are relevant and valuable in the marketplace their graduates will be entering.

Join Us!

Interested in joining our efforts or hearing updates on our process?