Frequently Asked Questions
Learn how PELRA evaluates your professional experience and converts it into academic credit equivalents.
General
PELRA (Prior Experiential Learning Rating Agency) is a web-based tool that converts your professional work experience into academic credit equivalents. It uses a research-backed scoring formula to evaluate your roles and map them to university-level credit hours.
PELRA is for working professionals who want to understand how their career experience translates into academic credit. This is useful for adults returning to education, professionals seeking advanced degrees, or anyone curious about the academic value of their work history.
No. PELRA does not require an account or login. You simply start an assessment, add your roles, and receive your results. You can optionally provide your email when completing the assessment to retrieve your results later.
A typical assessment takes 3–5 minutes depending on how many roles you add. Each role requires basic information like job title, years of experience, and a few scoring selections.
Assessment Process
The assessment follows three simple steps:
- Add your roles — Enter your professional work experience with job titles, dates, and responsibilities.
- Get assessed — For each role, answer questions about depth of knowledge, relevance, and evidence quality.
- Receive your results — Get a detailed breakdown of your academic credit equivalents.
For each role you will provide:
- Job title and employment type (full-time or part-time)
- Start and end dates
- Discipline area (e.g., Technology, Business, Education)
- Bloom's Taxonomy levels for cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains
- Evidence quality tier
Yes. You can add as many roles as you like to a single assessment. Each role is scored independently, and the results are summed to produce your total PELRA score.
Yes. If you provided your email when completing a paid assessment, you can look up your past results from the homepage by entering the same email address.
Results & Credits
Your PELRA score represents the number of academic credit equivalents your professional experience maps to. For example, a score of 15.0 means your work experience is equivalent to approximately 15 credit hours of university-level coursework.