PLA Q&A: Rose Marie Reid

It all started yesterday and wraps up this morning: the PLA pre-conference workshops. More than a presentation, with opportunities for a bit more in-depth focus on participants own professional use -- and potential use -- of the prior learning assessment process, the pre-conference workshops are a must, especially for those new to PLA.

Participants had three workshops to choose from. Downstairs in the Prince Edward Room, Rose Marie Reid of Loyalist College here in Belleville, worked with her group in a session called "Introduction to Prior Learning Assessment and Portfolio Development."

FNTI: Tell us a little about yourself.

Rose Marie: I work part-time at Loyalist College in the Social Service Worker program and as a consultant to community agencies and colleges interested in training for people who want to learn to be PLA practitioners. It's a lot of project-based work. Mark (Gallupe, see next Q&A below) work on a lot of projects together. The association of land surveyors, for example, are here at the conference this week. We'll be presenting about their work on Thursday. Specifically, that project was to help internationally trained surveyors to build portfolios in order to gain membership into the Ontario association.

FNTI: You've been to the PLA conference before?

Rose Marie: This is my 15th or 16th year!

FNTI: What has your workshop entailed?

Rose Marie: It's an opportunity to explore what PLA is, how it's done, why it's done. There are social justice issues, issues about learning and education. We learn by working with people's portfolios so participants get to look at complete portfolios and see the wholistic learning, the transferable skills in them, and see how alternative forms of learning can be recognized by employers, agencies, education and the people themselves. It's a strengths-based approach so we're looking at the strengths in the portfolios.