Transfer Credit Awarded Pilot Project

In 2019, the ACAT Secretariat and thirteen pilot institutions (Alberta Learner Pathways System member institution pilot volunteers) began a pilot study and data collection on transfer credit awarded. The TCA pilot built on key findings from the 2018 Alberta Transfer Student Success research reports and literature reviews. The goal of the TCA pilot was to track how much transfer credit each provider (“To” institution) awarded to courses and offerings from other (“From”) institutions, both inside and outside Canada.

All pilot institutions provided input and guidance for the project focus/scope; system, institution, and student benefits; and data definitions, questions, caveats and challenges, and user guide. Ten of the pilot institution participants provided three academic years of data (2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19) using the TCA pilot data standard. Pilot institutions also received access to sample institution-level and aggregate data summary reports for the pilot data.

Completed in June 2020, the pilot project demonstrated that TCA data could be effectively collected, would be beneficial to collect as a starting point, and needed to consider identified data and system challenges. The foundational documents for the pilot project are linked below.

Building on the pilot project, see Transfer Credit Awarded for information regarding transfer credit awarded as an annual provincial data collection for participating Learner Pathways System member institutions, starting with data submissions for completed 2021-22 academic year data. 

For more information on the pilot project, data standards used, and lessons learned, please contact ae.lps@gov.ab.ca.