- Dec 2024
-
digitalpromise.org digitalpromise.org
-
How will buy-in from the workforce and higher education institutions be obtained to support the implementation of competency-based micro-credentials and learning and employment record technologies, and how will they be trained?
Value propositions! "I'll believe you about these badges and start to care if you convince me that the employers care." On the employer side, this hints at need to get over it with the real/imagined quality concerns and focus on their need to signal to opportunity seekers, "we value your credentials and want to see them."
-
employer verification
In addition, this hints at employMENT verification: this could be a light lift sort of Tier 1 entry point for organizations to be both issuing and consuming credentials. Large employers spend a lot of resources responding to requests to verify former workers' employment histories. If part of off-boarding departing workers includes VCs for official employment verification, that could lead to big savings of time and resources (as long as other employers accept the credentials), as well as accelerate hiring processes that sometimes lead to failed hires bc people find another position that starts sooner. For key HR leaders to start with badging from a place of effortlessly improving their efficiency and costs might be a better place to launch than more involved strategies that offer less immediate value propositions.
-
- Sep 2024
-
cps.northeastern.edu cps.northeastern.edu
-
Additionalawareness and use of digital credentials may also attract the attention of the traditional third-partycredential verification companies or larger wallet creators.
-
For Jake, the high school graduate applying for jobs, the application process shifts away from being agame of how to pick the perfect keywords for his resume. Instead, he is matched by the actual skillsacquired in his recent community college coursework and EdX certificate. Both Jake and the hiringmanager he will soon meet have a more equitable and accurate path through the noise of today’sonline hiring process.
Simple, elegant explanation: it moves from clumsy proxies that screen out qualified people like Jake, to powerful and sophisticated matching that connect opportunities to people like Jake who have the verified skills to deserve those opportunities.
-
This interconnected ecosystem allows for improvements that HR leaderswould most like to see: better whole-person evaluation, better leverage of candidate skills, bettercredential verification, and more reliable information on what makes a good candidate
The value proposition, as presented here, is all about the wheel being more efficient, more effective, and less expensive in identifying, hiring, and retaining cogs. What might be magical is the rare nexus of what being best for the wheel also being good for the cogs, us humans who this work is hopefully really about.
-
Examples of these sources would include an established digital walletprovider, or an exhaustive catalogue of digital credentials that are available, such as the repositoryhosted by Credential Engine. Having the curricular data source, which has a connection to the parsingcompanies, also create a connection to credential information opens up a connection, albeit anindirect one, between the non-degree credential information and the parsing activity. Instead ofreceiving just a course name from the resume parser, the intermediary can also receive a non-degreecredential identifier that is sent to the credential data source to look up and return skills information
Opportunity to go deep here. Bread crumb is to check out the issuer directory with Credential Engine, where they are inviting institutions to publish details about their credentials in a standardized format (CTDL) that will hopefully one day be consumed by connections like those hinted at here.
-
One example of a curriculum data source is OpenSyllabus.org, a non-profit that hosts acomprehensive repository of higher ed course information. OpenSyllabus.org can serve as a value-added provider that sends skill information about specific college coursework to the parsers. This willexpand the potential skill information parsers can associate with a resume, going beyond what mightbe gleaned only from reading a course or degree title. They would now have access to informationderived from more detailed course catalog descriptions or even course syllabi information. Parserswill be able to send more extensive lists of skills over to companies’ HR platforms in a structuredformat they can immediately utilize. This integration also captures the skills from a particular type ofnon-degree credential - the coursework completed by the 40 million people in the U.S. who have somecollege, but no degree.
This might catch the attention of HE people paying attention. It also hopefully connects to the participants who shared that they are not getting the information about the programs that they desire. If the data being consumed (by this vendor or others) is still rooted in describing the content of the learning and not the measurable, assessed outcomes, then it's utility is limited and, crucially, it could create trust issues that make consumer wary of all the data. On the other hand, if they can trust the high quality data, there will be a window of competitive advantage for HE institutions that choose to share the data that the consumers (largely employers) want to see.
-
The lack of reliable and consistent information about non-degree credentials presented by candidatesin the hiring process also meant that workshop participants had no information to classify candidatespost-hire. This gap made it impossible to know who among the employee base had earned whichcredentials. Without this basic profile data, HR leaders are unable to gather much-needed insight intowhat types of credentials appear to prepare candidates best for a given role or which credentialsappear to be more effective at training than others
This could play into Credential Quality Assurance work in Higher Ed.
-
Due to the relative novelty of LER wallets, both applicant adoption and employer awareness remainlimited. This lack of familiarity has resulted in minimal client demand to integrate LER wallets intohiring workflow tools. Consequently, major HRIS platforms do not currently support APIs for data flowdirectly from LER wallets.
KEY FINDING. This is one of the most important takeaways of the report, especially in regard to LERs. It's also important to note the lack of familiarity when considering other survey data about innovative credentials: if participants have limited understanding of the stuff they are being asked about, how much should we read into the data about their (possibly inaccurate) perceptions?
-
information about trainingcontent and skills was important, but only one aspect of how they determined if credentials wereof interest. They also wanted some understanding of the quality of the training. Some of the parsingcompanies have created scores that might help HR leaders understand credential quality, but theworkshop participants told us quite clearly that they didn’t like these kinds of scores. To them, scoringsystems felt very black box in nature and were generally not trusted.
Consumers want quality. They also are wary of quality assessment. Trend currently appears to align with historical defaults of using proxies instead of precise, targeted measurements (eg Using length of seat time and GPA instead of competency-based assessments)
-
Ideas for More Actionable InformationIn discussion with HR leaders helping imagine process improvement, we learned that the informationcurrently curated for digital badges was helpful, but perhaps not quite hitting the mark. Workshopparticipants told us two things about the kind of information found in Figure 9: it was overwhelming,and it missed key facts they wanted to know.In their view, the sum of information presented on badge websites is a bit dense and very focused onthe nature and content of the training
KEY FINDING: it's a problem if the context focuses on the nature of the content instead of the nature of what the credential is credentialing.
-
Briana aims to enhance efficiency by leveraging technology to better manage andverify credentials, potentially exploring solutions that simplify the integration of professional socialmedia profiles that have been linked to government-recognized credentials. Briana’s main concern,however, is that she is unclear whether the company developing the platform she uses to store HRinformation is committed to supporting these kinds of integrations
For these ecosystems to be healthy, the interconnected nodes. function in harmony. They are aware of the other nodes' desires and intentionally seek to meet those needs. A barrier to progress is technology solutions that can function to meet important needs yet do not. (Positive assumption here that the developers either don't properly understand their users' needs or don't properly understand how to capture ROI if they do design to meet those needs; not that they know the needs and choose not to address them)
-
Stage Three: Expandingthe EcosystemLeverage new demand from end-usercompanies that have access to additionalinformation to justify more integrationsbetween data sources and HR tools
Ecosystem expansion might rely on market incentives for additional parties to connect, synthesize, and operationalize data. Important to consider that this is not limited to HR vendors; it's also about their clients, as well as other vendors that may be better enabled to connect with (L)earners to market Navigation services, coaching, scholarship and lending programs, educational/training/upskilling opportunities, and more. In a future of direct admissions, there are multiple roles in this ecosystem. And, of course, there is much opportunity and value for the human (L)earners at the center of the ecosystem.
-
Once these connections are established,expand data flow to include the additionalinformation about non-degree credentialsdesired by HR leaders
KEY: data is what the Consumers desire, not necessarily what the learning providers want to describe.
-
- Jan 2024
-
www.aspeninstitute.org www.aspeninstitute.org
-
Creating Internal Value.
LERs will give employers internal heat maps of talent
-
Measuring What Matters
THIS! Been declaring for ten years how this is all about measuring the stuff that people actually care about.
-