I am writing this report from Dublin, Ireland, in advance of the 5th VPL Biennale, a project I have been volunteering on for the past year. Hosted by Ireland, Canada, and the US, this biennale is an international conference with 377 delegates and speakers from Mongolia, Kenya, Iceland, Spain, and South Africa, to name just a few.

The program for this conference is immense! There are 45 concurrent sessions, 4 rounds of lightning talks, 4 table discussions, and 6 plenary and panels squeezed into two very full days. Click here for a full list of speakers and session descriptions.

For those who, like me, may not have had an opportunity to attend an international conference, part of my job at the conference will be to help support the creation of post-event learning and disseminate session learnings through recorded sessions, social media posts, and a series of BCPLAN podcasts. I have brought along one of my daughters, Rachel, to help make this happen. Many of the topics discussed will be particularly relevant to those of you who work with clients requiring validation of their prior learning, making this event especially valuable for your practice.

I am here because of my position as co-president of the BC Prior Learning Action Network, of which ASPECT is a founding member. Understanding how all these networks, particularly micro-credentials, which are a subset of prior learning accreditation and recognition (PLAR), fit together is crucial for our advocacy work. By providing international perspectives on solving local challenges, we can better understand broader workforce development practices.

I'm grateful for this opportunity and eagerly anticipate experiencing the collective efforts of the planning committee over the past 18 months coming to fruition. Thank you to all for their work on this project, especially my co-president at BCPLAN, Susan Forseille, and my colleague at CAPLA, Andy Brown, who make up the rest of the Canadian contingent. With their help, we are taking BCPLAN and ASPECT to the international stage. Very exciting indeed!



Check out the VPL Biennale website for access to videos and papers from the 4th VPL Biennale in Iceland.

Janet Morris-Reade, CEO
ASPECT