Develop Credential Quality Guidelines and Processes
Noteworthy that the recommendations for quality prioritize 1) The granularity of documenting learning outcomes; and 2) that credentials use standards that can be independently verified and validated.
Standardization of these concepts would allow for validators to sift through credential wallets anddistinguish which credentials are most relevant in a specific use case. Critical to linking up such trustinformation is a more prominent role for dedicated trust providers in the credential ecosystem.These organizations include accreditation boards and regulators of professions, as well as otherssuch as ranking boards and private quality assurance agencies who publish quality standards foreducational organizations and maintain lists of which organizations match the criteria
What constitutes TRUST?
Multiple initiatives have tried to make various kinds of social recommendations by issuingcredentials. However, up to this point they have worked better in closed social networks rather thanas open credentials due to the ability of social networks to tie a recommendation with the profile(and identity) of the recommender. There are also several nascent initiatives to create open linkeddata around which skills, credentials and issuers are valued by employers.
Clearly, the LinkedIn recommendations use case is an example of one of these initiatives. It has not succeeded in creating strong social signals anchored in trust models. We are wise to consider what's missing from efforts like this. An even greater concern however, and one that I believe is an essential if we are to realize the transformative potential of digital credentials, is how to design social signals built on trust models that help all people. In a world long-governed by "it's not what you know, it's who you know," the social signals and trust models are overweighted in favor of people with connections to other people, organizations and brands that are all to some degree legacies of exclusionary and inequitable systems. We are likely to build new systems that perpetuate the same problems if we do not intentionally design them to function otherwise. For people (especially those from historically underserved populations) worthy of the recommendations but lacking in social connections, how do they access social recommendations built on trust models?