By the LER Accelerator Coalition
In March, institutions from across the country gathered on the campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, for the LER Accelerator Cohort Convening. Community colleges, regional universities, research institutions, and statewide systems came together for two days of peer learning, honest conversation, and the kind of collective sense-making that only happens when a community is truly in it together.
What emerged from those two days was something worth sharing broadly.
The ground has shifted for learning mobility, and that's good news
UMBC Provost Manfred van Dulmen opened the convening by naming what many in the field are feeling: we are in a genuine era of transformation in higher education. Federal and state policy momentum, skills-based hiring, AI-mediated talent systems, and emerging workforce marketplaces are reshaping the landscape at speed.
What's significant, noted Mike Simmons of AACRAO, is that the world has come to us. The learning mobility work LER Accelerator institutions have been doing on learner records, credential innovation, data infrastructure, and skills frameworks is precisely what policymakers, employers, and workforce systems are now asking for. These institutions didn't chase a trend. They built something real, and the moment has caught up. While state and federal policy momentum validates this work, it also serves as a call to action: the cohort is increasingly focused on connecting institutional efforts to state-level workforce task forces to ensure that policy goals effectively reach individual campuses.
Themes from the cohort: What institutions are navigating
Across plenary sessions and peer exchanges, several themes surfaced consistently, reflecting both the progress institutions have made and the complexity of the work still ahead.
Shared language as a foundation. Teams across the cohort emphasized that building a common vocabulary remains an essential collective task. Navigating different internal and external terminologies, across departments, systems, and with employers, is a prerequisite for successful implementation, not an afterthought.
Scaling beyond single champions. Moving LER work from dedicated advocates to durable institutional governance requires deep cultural change. Strategies shared by cohort members included leveraging accreditation cycles, aligning LER documentation with tenure and promotion processes, and using demonstrated student demand to drive faculty engagement.
Intentional infrastructure. Progress across the cohort is largely being driven by custom integrations and intentional data stewardship, not out-of-the-box vendor solutions. Addressing persistent silos between credit and non-credit systems remains one of the most common challenges, alongside the broader shift toward shared skills taxonomies and competency frameworks that translate academic achievement into language employers actually use. Projects are increasingly prioritizing open data standards, such as those advanced by 1EdTech, to ensure credentials are portable and recognizable across platforms.
Learner-centered mindsets. Perhaps most fundamentally, cohort institutions are defining success by a shift in institutional culture, one where faculty view career development as a high-impact practice, and where "what is right for the learner" becomes the animating question behind every decision. Examples from the convening included CU Boulder's work to make skills visible for historically underserved and frontline workers through multilingual, user-centered tools, and UMGC's development of an institution-wide "Evidence of Learning" framework that moves beyond siloed credential artifacts toward a unified approach.
LER as a process, not a product
When people encounter the term "LER," they often look for an artifact: a credential, a piece of software, something concrete to hand someone. What this cohort is building is something more fundamental: a process. A way of thinking about how learning is recognized, verified, and made usable for learners, for employers, for institutions, and for systems.
That distinction is more important than ever, and it was visible in the quality of conversation throughout both days. The convening reinforced that while the path to durable, learner-centered records is complex, starting anywhere and building toward a shared vision remains the most effective way forward.
Looking ahead
The LER Accelerator itself is evolving. The work is moving to accelerate learning mobility more broadly to fully reflect what this initiative has always been about: moving learning, of various types, for various people, across various systems.
While 2025–2026 was a planning year, institutions are already setting success metrics and building the governance, infrastructure, and partnerships needed for future pilots and full-scale implementation. The timing matters. As LER infrastructure takes shape across federal and state systems, postsecondary institutions are being asked to move from concept to execution, often without clear implementation guidance, shared standards, or tested institutional models. The work of this cohort is critical to closing that gap. These institutions are doing the hard work of translating policy signals and technical standards into practical, campus-ready approaches grounded in integrity.
By documenting what works and what does not, the cohort is helping ensure that LER adoption in higher education is intentional rather than reactive, coordinated rather than fragmented, and learner-centered rather than vendor-driven. In doing so, the LER Accelerator is establishing a growing body of practice that institutions across the country can build upon, strengthening higher education's role as a trusted steward of learner records as these systems scale nationally.
Learn more about the LER Accelerator initiative.
For additional guidance on developing collaborative, equitable, secure, and interoperable credentialing systems, explore the LER Accelerator Resource Hub and other key resources housed in the Learn & Work Ecosystem Library. New cohort-based resources and guidance coming soon.
About the LER Accelerator
The LER Accelerator is a national initiative supporting colleges and universities in the design and implementation of Learning and Employment Records, comprehensive, verifiable records of what students know and can do, spanning credit and non-credit learning, co-curricular experiences, and workforce-relevant skills. Led by AACRAO and a coalition of 12 associations, the project tapped a cohort of 22 trailblazing institutions to plan, pilot, and advance this work on their campuses. The March convening at UMBC marked a significant milestone for the 2025–26 planning cohort: two full days to step back, connect with peers, and chart a path forward together.