Student Veterans Portfolio Option

Overview and Purpose

Miami University’s Office of Liberal Education offers the opportunity for Student Veterans to complete a Prior Learning Assessment Portfolio toward waiving specific Miami Plan requirements.

If you were deployed overseas and believe that your time abroad contributed to a deepening of your understanding of your own culture as well as the cultures of people with whom you interacted, you may qualify for the portfolio option. So too, if you underwent extensive training or spent extended time in a new culture, you may qualify.

Even if you did not serve abroad, if you were involved in humanitarian or community service in the United States, you may be able to petition for successful completion of the Miami Plan Experiential Learning requirement.

Waiver Equivalencies

• Global Inquiry (3 – 6 hours)
• Intercultural Consciousness (3 hours)
• Experiential Learning 

Definition

As an AAC&U high-impact practice (HIP), “Portfolios are both a product—an archive of learning artifacts—and a process that supports student learning. Building an ePortfolio leads students to naturally make valuable connections between various courses, assignments, and cocurricular activities through reflection of their past work.”  Through the Portfolio Option, Student Veterans translate learning experiences while deployed into educational outcomes to be assessed for prior learning credit.

Process

1. Contact the Office of Liberal Education (miamiplan@MiamiOH.edu) and Interim Director of the Office of Liberal Education, Dr. Elizabeth Hoover (hooverea@MiamiOH.edu) prior to beginning the portfolio. At this meeting, working together, we will discuss what parts of the prior learning experience are relevant to the related Miami Plan course outcomes.

2. You will then begin to provide examples and evidence of prior learning in the portfolio and explore the depth and breadth of learning required for the Miami Plan requirements you are seeking to waive.

3. The Office of Liberal Education will evaluate your portfolio to determine if it meets the required accepted standards and determine its Miami Plan equivalency or equivalencies.