Thirteen colleges and universities nationwide participated in a pilot project involving a modernized ACE Military Guide. The initiative is part of ACE’s contract administered by the Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support (DANTES).
The institutions worked with ACE to test drive the new system of reviewing, evaluating, and awarding credit for military learning, training, and experience. With the reimagined, user-friendly design of the modernized ACE Military Guide, pilot institutions were able to experience firsthand the newly streamlined process of evaluating ACE credit recommendations to determine the right academic credit to award each military-connected student—resulting in time savings for institutions and cost savings for military student learners.
“The valuable feedback provided by our exceptional pilot institutions helped develop and enhance features to make it easier for all colleges and universities to align and apply military training and occupational experience to postsecondary institution requirements, ultimately giving military learners a head start on achieving their educational goals,” said Michele Spires, acting executive director, Learning Evaluations at ACE.
The pilot institutions were able to create individual accounts with workflows to facilitate the work to evaluate ACE credit recommendations and award credit to military learners. Beyond evaluations, key outcomes include a better integration with data systems, supporting data exchange standards, and measuring how credit recommendations are being applied at their institutions. With an ACE Military Guide Institution Account, pilot schools were successfully able to suggest credit awards that can then be forwarded to faculty for review, all while remaining in a single workflow application.
In addition, the new technology includes an upload feature for the military learner’s Joint Services Transcript (JST), side-by-side comparison between the JST and ACE credit recommendations, and information from the institution’s past credit awards. When participating academic institutions were asked to provide feedback on the modernized Military Guide, the feedback was extremely positive. One pilot shared that the “design and organization of recommendations within individual exhibits is EXCELLENT, [they make it] much easier to read and keep track of awards.”
“Through our collective modernization efforts, we have created an automated workflow that extracts data from a service member’s Joint Services Transcript and supports higher education professionals to make decisions about awarding ACE recommended credit to our military learners. More importantly, we are continuing to improve our military training evaluation process, which will enhance our ability to help our military learners achieve their educational goals,” said Doug Johnson, Military Training Evaluation program manager at DANTES.
The modernized ACE Military Guide will launch on April 1, 2021. ACE is now allowing academic institutions to take advantage of this transformative new decision support tool by signing up for an ACE Military Guide Institution Account. Account holders will have access to a wide range of advanced features to bring colleagues together, analyze never-before-available data, and streamline the work of evaluating a student’s learning for academic credit, regardless of their past level of experience with ACE or military learners. Interested academic institutions can go to ACE Military Guide today to sign up.
The 13 institutions who participated in this initiative were:
- Arkansas State University
- Lone Star College
- Normandale Community College
- North Hennepin Community College
- Northern Virginia Community College
- Oklahoma State University-OKC
- Purdue University Global
- SUNY Empire State College
- Tennessee State University
- Troy University
- University of Central Oklahoma
- University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
- Utah State University
Since 1954, the American Council on Education has been evaluating military learning and recommending academic credit on behalf of service members and veterans pursuing their educational goals across the nation. For more information visit ACE Military Guide at acenet.edu/militaryprograms.