The Role of Technology in Learning Mobility

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) has invested a great deal of time, effort and resources toward understanding and defining the present state of higher education in the United States. It has introduced a new phrase, Learning Mobility, to guide its members, college and university professional staff, faculty and administrators as they adjust to political, social and technological realities affecting their institutions and those they serve.

Learning Mobility is defined as "A learner-centered innovation, where systems, processes, programs, and initiatives must be designed around the needs and best interests of the learner of today and the future at every stage of their journey."

This definition is guided by four principles:

• Learner centered: placing their needs first and foremost
• Equitable opportunities: enabling social and economic advancement
• Interoperability and open standards: ensuring that educational data are easily and readily understood and exchanged
• Taken all together, learning in all its forms enhances the value of Higher Education.

This definition of Learning Mobility clearly focuses on getting individuals pursuing advanced education what they need and want. My observation from over four and a half decades at higher education institutions, is the technology in higher education - hardware and software - began by focusing on administrative tasks first. They were designed primarily to handle and process select functional activities and save its results. Secondarily the end user would be “trained” how to successfully operate it. Early on we were moving from manual paper processes to new levels of automation with machinery that was ever-evolving. Functionality and efficiency were prized over form. Believe it or not, that was what end users wanted at the time since what was being replaced was simply abysmal.

In contrast, today the satisfaction of the end user is paramount and, for higher education, its technology must be learner-centric. Stellic was founded by students and the initial software they designed was for their fellow students to perform a critical student-related administrative task - course planning. What was distinguishable at the time was the founders’ attention to the end user experience. They prized “experience” and “function” and intentionally wrote software that people would want to use. It was and is intuitive, where the users don’t have to be “trained” on how to use it.

Experience alone won’t hold the users indefinitely. Ultimately, systems, processes and the latest technology, including AI, need to provide the users with results and outcomes that they cannot reproduce themselves or those that can be achieved without the expenditure of more thought and effort than they are worth. Data needs to flow between systems, and those data need to be displayed or reported to the user in easily digestible and understandable forms. Let’s dive deeper into how technology like Stellic can support these principles.

Equitable opportunities is probably the most important principle of the four, as it encourages moving learners from where they currently are economically and socially and helping them get to where they either want to go or simply to move them forward in measurable ways.

So what is “equitable opportunities” all about? It is not a statement about lifting select cohorts of learners so that all are equal. Learning mobility conceptualizes an individual’s journey, from where they are to where they want to go through the lens of improving their individual economic and social statuses—whether to overcome deficits or simply to achieve personal goals. Every learner can enhance their personal economic and social mobility, because these states are identifiable, measurable, and actionable.

To put this another way, economic and social mobility is composed of three forms of capital: economic, social and cultural. By thinking of opportunities this way, it communicates how the individuals can strategically improve the trajectories of their lives.

• Economic capital is very easy to understand because it is easily measurable and demonstrable. One of the best ways to look at economic capital from a learner’s perspective is asking the question: “can you become better off than your parents were/are financially?” Notably, not everyone is interested in the accumulation of financial wealth but would perhaps simply settle for being comfortable, being able to do the things in life that they want to do. So, the accumulation of economic capital is nuanced and a personal consideration that can be considered sufficient to a learner’s world view or how the learner wishes to live.
• Social capital is measurable and demonstrable as well. To think of how to enhance your social capital, you might ask the questions: “how broad and extensive are your social networks, the people you know, and what is the quality of those networks as they pertain to your goals and objectives?” Human beings are social creatures, and it is through these social relationships that give them a sense of place, belonging and, ultimately, happiness. Learners can pursue social networks that can contribute to meeting their goals. Becoming acquainted with those who reflect the desired self or participate in the hoped for activities provides clues as to what changes the learner needs to make and often may lead the learner to find a place among them.
• Cultural capital is often accumulated through improving economic and social capital. The way to think about cultural capital is to think of the world being composed of multiple environments, environments that are governed by mores, expectations, responsibilities, languages and sanctions. The more the learner is exposed to and becomes comfortable with navigating these environments adeptly, the less stress or discomfort they may feel when having or requiring to move between cultural environments.

Stellic’s software platform advances equitable access to opportunity and fosters the accumulation of economic, social, and cultural capital. By transforming developmental advising, the platform equips advisors to actively encourage, monitor, and document the actions that expand learners’ mobility in pursuit of their educational and career journeys. Advisors gain unprecedented visibility into students’ plans and pathways, allowing them to engage in more meaningful, proactive guidance. Instead of being confined to prescribing curricular requirements or administrative checklists advisors are liberated to focus on the deeper work of mentorship: helping learners explore their identities, refine their aspirations, and navigate multiple pathways with confidence.

In this way, Stellic empowers advisors to become true partners in student development, fostering agency and social mobility while ensuring every learner can chart a path that is both personalized and achievable.

While the third principle of learning mobility has never been articulated until now, it has been a long-desired outcome as early as 1989 when the first thought leaders determined that they could use an industrial ANSI data standard, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to describe transcript data. At the time there was a lot of excitement toward its (TS 130) adoption, and those institutions that implemented it experienced great efficiencies. Today, millions of records still are exchanged between colleges and universities using the EDI standard.

Unfortunately, the standard has not been revised for twenty-five years, so it has not kept up with the times. Now, there is new thinking about what should be included in the academic record, who has jurisdiction over the record, and the technologies that should be deployed to make the record more accessible, intelligible, verifiable and readily deliverable to wider audiences, including employers. Therefore, two vectors are being pursued under the call for enhancing learning mobility: producing an enriched record that is replete with outcomes, competencies, skills and descriptive language that are reduced to verifiable data elements that can be readily interpreted and exchanged under the complete control of the learner.

To advance learning mobility on campuses, decision makers must take stock of what data they have, where it resides and in what form, and what data is missing. Further, attention must be given to the campus’ infrastructure: is the data accessible; can it be integrated with additional data from disparate systems; and can it be formatted and verified so it can be given to the learners to transfer or exchange in support of their objectives?

Today’s service providers are wrestling with these questions as well. Cloud-based infrastructures are being offered to make data readily accessible. They also are expanding services and their databases to enrich the traditional data that are kept on learners. Using APIs, extraction of data from its many sources holds much promise. While the PDF standard is the most common format for representing the record, AI technologies are being used to make the information contained in the record more fungible. The last mile in the pursuit to advance learning mobility is making learner data interoperable.

Stellic’s platform advances learning mobility by leveraging cloud technologies and advanced APIs to unify data from across the campus. Through best-in-class design, learner information becomes more accessible, actionable, and enriched by contributions from a wider network of campus stakeholders. Its intelligent workflows streamline coordination across offices and departments, while AI-powered tools help learners maximize their choices and exercise agency in shaping their educational journey. Institutions such as Quinnipiac University have successfully implemented Stellic to enhance student experience.

At its core, our mission is to drive enrollment retention and credential completion—key dimensions of learning mobility. By addressing the common challenges that disillusion learners—uncertainty about requirements, difficulty finding resources, and fragmented user experiences—the platform eliminates significant barriers to progress and ensures that every student can move forward with clarity and confidence.

Thomas C. Black, Strategic Partner at Stellic, Inc. and Honorary Member of AACRAO, AAU Registrars, SACRAO and CACRAO. Served four and half decades at six institutions of Higher Education, including Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Chicago, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and The American College.