Going Beyond the Gap: Helping Students Make Learning Visible, Valuable, and Transferable.
Students Are Learning More Than They Realize — Let’s Help Them See It
In classrooms, labs, internships, service projects, student organizations, and everyday academic experiences, students are developing far more than disciplinary knowledge. They are learning how to communicate purposefully, navigate complexity, collaborate with others, solve problems, adapt to changing circumstances, and make informed decisions.
Yet many students struggle to recognize these forms of learning while they are happening. When asked what they learned from an experience, they often describe what they did rather than how they grew, what capabilities they developed, or why the experience mattered.
The challenge is not a lack of learning. The challenge is making that learning visible.
What Research Tells Us
Research by Jackson & Bridgstock, 2021 suggests that the challenge is often not whether students are developing valuable capabilities, but whether they recognize those capabilities and can transfer and articulate them across contexts.
Students frequently engage in communication, collaboration, leadership, problem-solving, self-management, and critical thinking without fully recognizing these experiences as evidence of their growth and development.
As educators, advisors, coaches, and mentors, our role is not to "close a gap." Rather, it is to help students recognize, interpret, and communicate the learning that is already taking place.
Two Ideas That Help Students Understand Their Learning
Building on this research, we find two concepts particularly helpful when working with students: Simultaneity and Ubiquity.
Simultaneity: Students develop knowledge and future-ready capabilities at the same time.
Learning disciplinary content and developing transferable capabilities are not separate processes. They are deeply interconnected and mutually reinforcing.
When students conduct research, they are also strengthening inquiry skills.
When they work through complex assignments, they are practicing problem-solving and adaptability.
When they collaborate with others, they are developing communication, teamwork, and leadership.
The learning and the capability development occur simultaneously.
“Mastery of content and development of career competencies are not separate processes — they are simultaneous and mutually reinforcing.”
Ubiquity: Learning happens everywhere.
The capabilities students develop are not confined to a single course, assignment, internship, or role.
They emerge across a wide range of experiences and can be carried forward into new contexts.
Students build and refine capabilities through coursework, employment, volunteer work, student organizations, community engagement, athletics, caregiving responsibilities, and countless other experiences.
Recognizing this ubiquity helps students see connections across experiences and strengthens their ability to transfer learning from one context to another.
"Career competencies are not bound to one context; they grow and evolve across diverse experiences."
When students understand both simultaneity and ubiquity, they become better equipped to recognize and communicate their growth.
Meaningful experiences do not automatically become meaningful learning.
Without opportunities to pause, examine experiences, and make sense of what occurred, important learning processes, growth, and capability development often remain difficult to recognize, interpret, or carry forward.
Reflection is what transforms experience into learning.
Research suggests that students benefit from repeated opportunities to examine experiences, identify what they learned, and consider how that learning might apply in future situations and contexts. Developing the ability to recognize, transfer, and communicate learning is not a one-time achievement. It is a developmental process that unfolds over time through intentional practice and support.
Skill articulation is a developmental process that must be scaffolded across students' learning journeys.
Small Shifts, Significant Impact
The good news is that helping students make learning visible does not require a complete curricular redesign. Faculty and student-support professionals can make meaningful progress through small, intentional shifts:
#1: Make Learning Connections Explicit
Help students identify not only what they are learning, but how they are learning and how it connects to what matters to them.
#2: Embed Structured Reflection
Create opportunities for students to examine experiences, decisions, challenges, growth, and outcomes.
#3: Encourage Transfer Across Contexts
Invite students to connect learning from coursework to other academic, professional, personal, and community experiences.
#4: Model Skill Articulation
Demonstrate how experiences can be translated into meaningful stories of learning, growth, and capability development.
The Bigger Picture
When students learn to recognize, interpret, and communicate their learning, they gain more than career readiness. They develop greater self-awareness, confidence, agency, and the ability to carry learning forward into new situations and opportunities.
As educators, our role is not simply to create meaningful learning experiences. It is also to help students make meaning from those experiences.
That is how learning becomes visible, valuable, and transferable.
What's Next?
Many students have meaningful experiences to draw from, but when asked to describe what they learned, they struggle to move beyond a list of activities or accomplishments.
STARR Lite™ helps learners examine experiences in a structured way, identify the knowledge and skills they developed, recognize patterns of growth, and communicate their learning across academic, professional, and personal contexts.
By combining structured reflection, storytelling, and future-ready skill development, STARR Lite helps students transform everyday experiences into meaningful evidence of learning and growth.
Because the experience happened. The learning deserves to be seen.
About Janine Bower
Janine Bower is a Principal Learning Strategist, educator, and leader in career readiness and mentoring. With a Ph.D. in Sociology and over 20 years of experience as a professor and academic leader in higher education, Janine has collaborated with multi-national corporations and leadership development firms to design professional development programs, work-integrated learning projects, and organizational change strategies that align learning with industry and organizational needs.
Janine is dedicated to helping educators, coaches, and leaders create transformative learning experiences that connect academic success with real-world career competencies, and prepare students for success in both academia and the professional world..
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