Learning Mobility Lab Work

AACRAO is dedicated to addressing barriers to learning mobility through strategic activities and initiatives. These planned efforts aim to innovate systems, foster collaboration, and empower institutions to create equitable and effective learning environments. We are committed to reshaping the higher education landscape through these strategic activities, ensuring every learner can access equitable, seamless, and meaningful education opportunities.

The Learning Mobility Lab operates as both a community and a catalyst, supporting continuous improvement through coordinated campaigns, design experiments, and applied research. Its goal is to transform how institutions evaluate credit, credentials, and competencies in more transparent, equitable, and efficient ways for all learners.

We engage in research-informed advocacy to shape federal, state, and institutional policies that advance learning mobility for all learners.

We bring together institutions, partners, and experts to align on best practices, surface challenges, and co-create learner-centered solutions.

We advocate for transparent and consistent credit evaluation processes that support seamless learning progress across institutions and systems.

We define consistent frameworks and shared language that institutions can use to support equitable evaluation and documentation of learning.

We promote the recognition and validation of diverse learning achievements through emerging and alternative credentials.

We equip higher education professionals with the tools and knowledge needed to design, implement, and sustain learning mobility practices.

We support the adoption of interoperable, learner-centered technologies that improve record portability and institutional coordination.

We strengthen connections between education and employment systems to help learners translate their achievements into career opportunities.

Learning Mobility book cover

Learning Mobility: Empowering Educational Journeys Beyond Traditional Pathways

This book is the first comprehensive exploration of learning mobility in U.S. higher education. It emerges from a dynamic collaboration among scholars, practitioners, and policy experts who are reimagining recognition, validation, and credentialing practices to better reflect the realities of today’s learners. With AACRAO’s longstanding commitment to innovation in academic records, credentials, and student success, we proudly offer this resource free to our members as a catalyst for institutional transformation.

As learners navigate increasingly complex, non-linear educational journeys that often span multiple institutions, life experiences, and learning environments, traditional models of credit recognition fall short. Learning Mobility offers a compelling alternative: one that centers learners, values their full range of knowledge and experience, and builds efficient pathways through higher education. We invite you to explore the insights and strategies presented in this volume and join us in creating a more effective, future-ready educational system.

Learning Mobility Lab

The Learning Mobility Lab is AACRAO’s year-round innovation platform, created to accelerate meaningful progress on the most urgent challenges in learning mobility. It brings together cross-sector leaders, including institutional practitioners, policymakers, technologists, funders, and learners, to test new ideas, share actionable data, and scale breakthrough solutions that improve how learning is documented, recognized, and applied across pathways.

Two signature components define the Lab’s annual cycle of action:

The Assembly

Held in person each year, The Assembly is the Learning Mobility Lab’s flagship event and the next evolution of AACRAO’s Technology and Transfer conferences. Guided by the work of AACRAO’s Tech and Transfer advisory group and shaped by member feedback, The Assembly is far more than a traditional conference. It is a space for the community to convene, align on national progress, showcase innovations, and co-design the future of learning mobility. At The Assembly, collaboration drives action, turning ideas into real systems change.

The AACRAO National Learning Mobility Challenge

Each year, the Lab launches a bold, unifying campaign to focus the community’s efforts on a critical issue. In 2025–2026, the inaugural AACRAO National Learning Mobility Challenge tackles the persistent barriers that delay or complicate transfer decisions, encouraging institutions to mobilize and partners to design and implement strategies that improve Transfer Time-To-Decision. This initiative will combine technical assistance, shared metrics, and peer learning to drive measurable change across institutions and systems.

Together

The Assembly and the Learning Mobility Challenge form the backbone of a year-round movement, one that’s reimagining how learners move, grow, and succeed.