Written by Melissa Leighty, Education Content Specialist at Learnlife
For generations, schools have relied on a familiar formula: subjects, grades, transcripts, and high-stakes exams. These measures still carry weight in many systems and decisions. But they no longer tell the full story of who a young person is — or what they are capable of becoming.
At Learnlife, we created the Learning Vitae to answer a simple but powerful question:
How do you make real learning visible?
The result is a living portfolio that captures not just what learners complete — but how they grow, what they build, how they collaborate, and how they learn through challenges.
What Is the Learning Vitae?
The Learning Vitae is a competency-based learning portfolio that documents a learner’s development over time.
Rather than listing only subjects and grades, it brings together:
- The competencies a learner is developing (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, self-direction, adaptability and more)
- The real-world projects and artefacts where those competencies are applied
- Feedback from mentors, peers and partners
- The learner’s own reflections on challenge, progress and growth
In simple terms, it answers the three questions universities and employers now care most about: What can this learner actually do? How do they grow through challenge? Who are they becoming?
While some worry that this approach prioritises “skills” at the expense of academic knowledge, this is a common misconception.
As Susie Bell, Executive Director of Programs at the Mastery Transcript Consortium, explains:
“You can’t critically think from nothing. You have to have a knowledge base. It’s the use of the knowledge that matters.”
In competency-based assessment, subject knowledge doesn’t disappear. Instead, it is strengthened through application. Learners are expected to use what they know to analyse, create, explain, and make decisions in meaningful contexts.
Rather than memorising content for short-term recall, they learn to transfer it — across disciplines, projects, and real-life situations.
Where a traditional report card offers a snapshot of performance at a single moment in time, the Learning Vitae tells a longitudinal story of learning: how understanding deepens, how skills mature, and how learners grow into capable, reflective, and adaptable young adults.
Why Learnlife Built the Learning Vitae
The Learning Vitae is deeply aligned with the philosophy articulated by Learnlife's Director of Innovation Devin Carberry and author of The Future Will Not Be Taught.
As Devin writes: “If we want an end to exams, we need to prove that there are more authentic, more humane ways for learners to demonstrate what they have learned.”
The Learning Vitae is Learnlife’s concrete answer to that challenge. Instead of compressing years of growth into a single exam moment, it makes learning visible as a human process — shaped by effort, missteps, revision, collaboration and reflection.
How the Learning Vitae Works in Practice
The Learning Vitae grows alongside the learner.
When a learner finishes a project, they don’t simply “finish and move on.” Instead, each project becomes part of their ongoing story.
With the support of their learning guides, learners identify which key skills and competencies the project is helping them develop. They upload examples of their real work — such as designs, videos, writing, code, research, and presentations — so that progress is visible, not just described.
They receive regular feedback from mentors and peers, helping them understand what they are doing well and where they can grow. They also write short reflections, explaining what they learned, what challenged them, and what they would approach differently next time.
Over time, this process builds a detailed, meaningful record of learning. Rather than a series of disconnected grades or reports, the Learning Vitae shows how a learner thinks, works, improves, and matures. Across months and years, it becomes a living portfolio that grows with them — capturing not just what they have achieved, but who they are becoming as a learner.
For example, imagine a learner who is working on a research project about renewable energy.
They begin by exploring different energy sources and reading articles, reports, and case studies. With guidance from their mentor, they clarify their research question and identify the key skills they are developing, such as critical thinking, analysis, and clear communication.
As the project develops, they upload their notes, early drafts, data, and presentations into their Learning Vitae. They receive regular feedback on their understanding, structure, and use of evidence, helping them strengthen their work. They reflect on what they found difficult, how their thinking changed, and how they improved their arguments over time — and they can return to these entries at any point to revise, expand, or refine them as their thinking deepens. All of this is saved in the Learning Vitae, giving parents and learners a clear, multi-perspective view of how learning develops over time. Further, it allows the learner to return to it again and again to refine, strengthen, and deepen the work.
By the end of the project, the Learning Vitae doesn’t just show a final report or grade. It shows how the learner learned: how they researched, evaluated sources, revised their work, and built deeper understanding.
Later, when applying to university or other opportunities, they can point to this work as clear evidence of academic rigour, independence, and intellectual growth.
That is what makes the Learning Vitae so powerful. It captures not only what learners know, but how they come to know it — and how they grow as thinkers over time.
Why This Kind of Portfolio Works
Portfolio-based assessment is not experimental. It is one of the fastest-growing approaches in higher education and professional learning.
Research consistently shows that when learners build portfolios instead of relying solely on exams, they engage more deeply and retain skills for far longer.
Universities are already using digital portfolios to support reflective learning, accreditation processes, and professional programmes. A major review published in 2024 highlighted that students assessed through sustained portfolio work develop far stronger self-regulation, reflection, and real-world application of knowledge than those assessed mainly through traditional exams.
This shift is also being driven by the changing world of work. The World Economic Forum predicts that nearly 40% of core workplace skills will change by 2030, with rising demand for analytical thinking, creative problem-solving, resilience, adaptability, self-management, and strong collaboration.
These are exactly the kinds of competencies the Learning Vitae is designed to capture — not just what a learner knows, but how they grow, think, and contribute over time.
A Valid Alternative to Grades and Exams — and a Powerful Complement to Traditional Assessment
The Learning Vitae isn’t meant to challenge grades — it simply completes the picture that grades alone can’t show.
A traditional transcript can tell you how well a young person performed on a particular day, under timed conditions, and within specific subjects. But it can’t show the equally important parts of learning: how a learner navigates complexity, how they collaborate with others, how they take on feedback, or how they bounce back from setbacks and keep going when things are uncertain.
The Learning Vitae brings these qualities to the surface. It captures the growth you’ve seen at home: the moments of courage, persistence, creativity, and maturity that rarely make their way onto a report card. It offers a fuller, more human view of what a child can do and who they are becoming as a learner.
That’s why it works so well alongside traditional assessments. In many contexts, it’s now recognised as meaningful evidence of readiness, especially when exams alone don’t reflect a young person’s true capabilities.
As Devin puts it so clearly:
“Why should a multiple-choice exam or a decontextualised essay determine your fate?”
The Learning Vitae offers a better answer: a record of real learning, demonstrated over time, in ways that matter.
Why Universities Take It Seriously
University admissions are increasingly shifting toward holistic review, portfolio evidence, and competency-based evaluation. Admissions teams now look beyond grades and test scores to understand the whole learner.
They want to know not only whether a student can handle academic content, but also whether they can manage themselves, collaborate with others, think independently, and reflect on their own growth.
Admissions experts note that today’s university admissions are rarely based on grades and test scores alone. According to the College Board, holistic review practices — which evaluate a range of student experiences, reflections, and contextual evidence — are becoming the norm rather than the exception in higher education admissions.
In fact, open research on holistic admissions found that approximately 95% of higher education institutions adopt some form of holistic review, considering both academic metrics and broader evidence of learning and competencies.
Research on ePortfolios in higher education highlights that many major universities and programmes — including Pennsylvania State University, University of Miami, University of Minnesota (USA) and law programmes at Oxford Institute of Legal Practice (UK) — use ePortfolios for assessment, reflection, and documentation of student work. These cases are frequently referenced in research discussions about how ePortfolios support academic achievement and learner development.
Because the Learning Vitae functions as a high-quality digital portfolio, it fits naturally into how many universities already assess applicants — particularly in creative programmes, engineering and innovation tracks, entrepreneurship routes, social impact degrees, and interdisciplinary or foundation pathways.
It allows learners to show, not just say, that they are ready for the next stage of their education.
Why It Works Psychologically (Not Just Academically)
Another quiet strength of the Learning Vitae is the way it changes a learner’s relationship with learning and growth.
Because learning is recorded as an ongoing process — with drafts, feedback, revisions, and reflections — learners begin to see progress as something that develops over time. Learning becomes iterative, reflective, and developmental, rather than perfection-driven.
Gradually, many learners start to understand that struggle is part of learning, not a sign of failure. Feedback becomes something to use, not something to fear. Improvement matters more than appearing “right” the first time.
This nurtures exactly the mindset universities and employers say they value most: the ability to keep learning, adapting, and growing. In a world of constant change, this is not a “soft skill.” It is essential.
Beyond Grades: How Parents See Their Child’s Progress, Confidence, and Wellbeing
For many parents, the Learning Vitae changes the way learning is talked about at home.
Instead of focusing only on “What grade did you get?”, conversations begin to shift toward deeper questions: What did you build? What challenged you this term? What did you learn about yourself?
Growth becomes visible in real, concrete ways — not as a single result, but as a pattern over time. Confidence becomes grounded in evidence, because learners can point to what they have tried, revised, and improved.
Slowly, the pressure to perform gives way to a deeper sense of purpose. Learning stops being something to “get through” and starts becoming something learners genuinely own.
In the End, What the Learning Vitae Really Represents
The Learning Vitae is not just a tool. It represents a different definition of success.
It reflects a world in which learning is continuous, pathways are flexible, skills evolve faster than credentials, and young people need to carry a story of capability, not just compliance.
As Devin reminds us throughout his work, education is no longer about preparing for a single moment of assessment. It is about preparing for a lifetime of becoming.
The Learning Vitae is built for exactly that.
Curious to see how this looks in real life? Explore how learning works at Learnlife — and how we support confident, capable learners over time.
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