About College Credit for Work or Life Experience

College Credit FastTrack helps current and prospective students gain credit for prior learning experience. CCAC students and applicants can create and submit an e-portfolio, which enables you to document and compile your prior learning for evaluation of credit. College Credit FastTrack helps you find the right course to petition for credit, puts you in contact with an advisor at CCAC, and assists you with building your e-portfolio and sending it to an assessor for review.

Credit can be awarded for learning acquired as a result of:

  • Employment
  • Training programs
  • Military service
  • Independent study
  • Community service
  • Completing free online courses

Learn more about the process of developing your e-portfolio, which will serve to document the evidence that you have mastered the learning outcomes for a credit course at CCAC through life and work experience.

How to Earn College Credit for Work or Life Experience

Submit Your CCAC Application

At CCAC, we will process petitions for portfolio review for current or former CCAC students. If you have not attended CCAC, you are welcome to submit an admissions application to the college. Once you have applied, the portfolio review process can continue. If a portfolio is approved for college credit, it will be entered into our student information system as pending and will be posted to the CCAC transcript once you have completed your first course at CCAC.

Learn About How FastTrack Works

Make sure you have reviewed the "How It Works" page on the College Credit FastTrack website. Don't forget to watch the video tutorial and download the Portfolio Guidelines. Please review the CCAC Portfolio Instructions for additional guidance on submitting your portfolio.

Go to the FastTrack Website

Visit the FastTrack website to create an account and let us know about your relevant experience and the course(s) for which you are interested in evaluating for college credit. Courses that are NOT eligible for portfolio review include courses below the 100 level, all DVS and SDS courses, ENG 100, and courses that involve practicums, clinicals and labs that require hands-on experience supervised by college faculty. Once you've done that, work through the following steps to ensure you are prepared for the portfolio process. Once you submit a petition on the FastTrack website, you will be assigned a Prior Learning Assessment advisor to answer questions and help guide you through the portfolio process.

Build Your Portfolio

Your next step is to build your portfolio. You should begin that process by retrieving the CCAC syllabus for the course(s) for which you are seeking credit. You will find course syllabi here. The syllabus outlines the learning objectives for the course for which you want credit. Your portfolio will need to describe and present evidence of your past learning that meets the course objectives outlined in the syllabus.

 

Before You Submit Your Portfolio

You should be aware that CCAC will award college credit to current or former CCAC students or to prospective students who plan to attend CCAC within the next two years. If a portfolio is approved for college credit, it will be entered into the college's student information system as pending, and will be posted to your CCAC transcript once you have completed your first course toward a degree or certificate at CCAC.

Please note that the cost of submitting a portfolio is $150.00 per course. You will be paying this nonrefundable fee AFTER you decide to move forward with this process and BEFORE you actually submit the portfolio online.

Once you have submitted your portfolio, the evaluation process may take up to two months to complete. When the portfolio is assessed by CCAC faculty, the decision of the faculty is final.