Anne McDermott, Robert Stillwell, Neil Witt & Sophie Neville Designing an APEL Process for Your Institution Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project

Preparing an APEL claim will be a learning experience for you. It will help you to recognise areas that you may want to develop. APEL can also help you recognise that what you have learned from experience can be used in other situations. Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project Stages of applying for APEL This Section will: explain how APEL is used describe some ways that you can show what you have learned from your experiences.

Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project What kind of experiences might be useful for APEL? The Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning, known as APEL recognises that learning can happen throughout life in many different contexts. This might be through: work family life community role volunteering leisure activities life events. This type of learning can be as valuable as more traditional learning at a school, institution or university but is less easy to prove as you will have no certificate to show. This is why we have an APEL process to help you use this type of learning to gain academic credit.

Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project Relevance of your experience To make an APEL claim, the experience on which a claim for credit is based must be relevant to your intended course. For example, it would not be appropriate to claim credit for an environmental science degree based on the experience of working as a nurse. However, if that person had undertaken voluntary work with a wildlife group, that experience could be relevant to an APEL claim.

The most important thing to remember about APEL is that you will be assessed on what you have learned, not what you have done. To make a successful claim you will need to: look at the learning outcomes for the module(s) for which you are claiming APEL think about experience(s) you have had that are related to these learning outcomes; the APEL Application Form will help you to structure and record this thinking think about how those experience(s) have shaped how you approach similar situations, or helped you in new situations; perhaps it changed how you think about things more generally. The amount and level of academic credit awarded through APEL will be measured against the learning outcomes given to you by your APEL adviser. The learning that you present for your APEL claim should match these learning outcomes. Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project How to show your learning

We often learn from experiences by thinking about them afterwards as this allows us to get new insights and meanings. There are three questions that will help with this process. What? explain the experience as you saw it So what?what did you learn from the experience? Now what? how did this change how you handled a similar situation next time or how you approached a completely new situation Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project Learning from experience (1)

Think of an experience and ask yourself three basic questions about it. At first you will probably find answering the What? question easier but to show what you have learnt you must also explain So what? and Now what? This is something that becomes easier with practice. It will be important that for each experience you show: evidence that you had the experience how that experience enabled you to learn what is described in one or more of the learning outcomes If you miss out any learning outcomes your claim is likely to fail as each one is a necessary part of a module. Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project Learning from experience (2)

You can learn from any experience you have had or some event you have observed which was significant for you in some way. Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project What sort of experiences are relevant?

Part of the APEL Application Form, which your adviser will give to you (see Figure 2), asks you to write a reflective commentary that links what you have learned to your evidence and to the learning outcomes of your proposed module(s). Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project Writing about your learning (1)

Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project Writing about your learning (2) Your reflective statement is put in the third column of the form shown in Figure 1 above. Unusually in academic writing, a good statement will include lots of the use of the word ‘I’. It should be what ‘I thought...’ and what ‘I did.....’. Someone else who was there with you might have a completely different view. This is to be expected as each person’s reflections will be coloured by their previous learning and experiences. Both perspectives may be equally valid but it is your thoughts and what you learned that you should put in your commentary. Your APEL adviser will give you guidance about how to write about your experiential learning.

There are several ways in which you can evidence an APEL claim. Your adviser will have let you know how this evidence should be collected together. Often it is by compiling a portfolio of evidence. When your APEL claim is assessed, the evidence that shows that you have had these experiences will be examined. Usually your evidence will be collected together in a folder and it could include: your personal reflections on work and practice personal development plans artefacts e.g. works of art, engineering workshop pieces web links to sites, blogs, reports copies of letters or s that show what you have done audio recordings video recordings or podcasts outline of subjects covered by non-accredited training courses reports and statements from supervisors, managers, practice observers etc.. You can discuss the form that your evidence should take with your APEL adviser. Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project Providing evidence

For further information see: Accessed 15 June 2011 References Adapted from materials created by the Pineapple Project

This resource was created by the University of Plymouth, Learning from WOeRK project. This project is funded by HEFCE as part of the HEA/JISC OER release programme.Learning from WOeRK This resource is licensed under the terms of the Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license ( The name of the University of Plymouth and its logos are unregistered trade marks of the University. The University reserves all rights to these items beyond their inclusion in these CC resources. The Higher Education Academy and JISC logos are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution -non-commercial- No Derivative Works 2.0 UK England & Wales license. All reproductions must comply with the terms of that license. AuthorAnne McDermott, Robert Stillwell, Neil Witt & Sophie Neville TitleStudent Guide to APEL – Prepare your claim DescriptionA guide for students on how to prepare their APEL claim. Date Created Educational Level4/5 Keywords UKOER, LFWOER, APEL, PINEAPPLE, EMPLOYERS, APEL, STUDENTS, OER Back page originally developed by the OER phase 1 C-Change project ©University of Plymouth, 2011, some rights reserved