alternative credential programming and financialmodels are highly decentralized across an institution – so much so that it may bedifficult for an institution to have a good grasp of its entire portfolio. Adding alternativecredentials to an institution’s strategic priorities will firm up program and business modelplanning and execution
Inconsistent processes for establishing programs, funding programs, and pricing programs
First is the strategic priority within their institution. Ifalternative credentials have been embraced by senior leadership and included in thestrategic plan, they are more likely to have the necessary resources allocated to them
Executive sponsorship => resources allocated.
It’s not available to everyone, but a senior leadership who is vocal about lifelong learning can give you greater access to open doors, and people will take it more seriously. Time is never wasted with senior leadership and demonstrating the long-term interest for the institution, communities and companies we serve.
Executive sponsorship is a $0, very valuable resource.
When news broke out about Bill Cosby, folks had, and still have, a hard time dissociating his “America’s Dad” and TV persona who was like a father figure and his philanthropy work from the man who “used his enormous power, fame, and prestige” to sexually assault women
Maybe this is chance to finish 2020 blog post about the complicated nature of shifting our engagements with 2D personalities to 3D people... The questions proposed at the end are helpful in deliberate consideration (vs absolutist takes)
QR Codes can be a great way for teachers to distribute class material. Here are free sites you can use to generate QR codes
Free QR code sites
As employers continue to face hurdles in identifying and hiring qualified talent, the potential for skill- and competency-based digital credentials is likely to grow
This "WHY" for industry is well stated. Employers are highly motivated.
foster a sense of belonging and support for historically underrepresented students
When applicants who are historically underrepresented students see themselves reflected in the current student population and observe a sense of belonging, this could lead to increased applications from certain groups. And increasing the applications should lead to increasing the admissions.
outreach and recruitment programs can still target specific groups (e.g., via schools or districts that predominantly serve students of color), so long as they do not award admissions spots solely based on an individual student’s race
Be intentional AND don't discriminate.
Motlow State Convocation talk on Connections, August 2023. Full, unedited video on youtube (which doesn't show these slides so the slides help)
Americans’ views of what a college education should be tend to prioritize specific, workplace-related skills and knowledge rather than general intellectual development and personal growth. Half of Americans say that the main purpose of college should be to teach specific skills and knowledge that can be used in the workplace, while 35% think its main purpose should be to help students grow and develop personally and intellectually and 13% volunteer that these objectives are equally important.
The majority of people in the US believe workforce-relevant skills and knowledge should be a priority for college education. Regardless of whether faculty intentionally and overtly design learning to focus on these skills and knowledge, I believe that nearly all high quality offering in Higher Education implicitly include skills and knowledge with valuable transfer to the workplace. And Best Practices in digital credential design allow us to notice, name, and formally recognize though our credentials where they show up in our learning opportunities and when learners acquire them.
This survey finds that one-third of Americans who lack a four-year college degree report that they have declined to apply for a job they felt they were qualified for, because that job required a bachelor’s degree.
They may have the skills required but lack the proxy for those skills
At BYU-Pathway Worldwide, this approach has been associated with a 20% increase in student retention (Marcus, 2020). These examples demonstrate the positive impact of earning a certification or certification on persistence, retention and graduation rates for learners in baccalaureate programs.
One study examining short-term credentials embedded in associate degree programs found that these short-term credentials had positive impacts on retention and degree completion
Although there are equity concerns that are essential to consider, the Student Success piece is a compelling element to consider: In addition to supporting learners' needs for acquiring skills and providing them with credentials to communicate about their skills, the possibility of credentials supporting completion and attainment could be a valuable consideration in program design.
SHRM Foundation, in partnership with Walmart, aims to acceleratethe movement to demonstrate the value of nondegree credentialsto identify skills and talents in the workforce. Upon first releasing thisresearch report with the term “alternative credentials,” we discoveredthat the word “alternative” may suggest that employers considercandidates with these credentials as a different, lesser option.We aim to challenge that thinking and declare these credentialsas imperative to the workforce.MAKING SKILLED CREDENTIALS WORK 2
Nondegree vs "alternative"
Such efforts to protect data privacy go beyond the abilities of the technology involved to also encompass the design process. Some Indigenous communities have created codes of use that people must follow to get access to community data. And most tech platforms created by or with an Indigenous community follow that group’s specific data principles. Āhau, for example, adheres to the Te Mana Raraunga principles of Māori data sovereignty. These include giving Māori communities authority over their information and acknowledging the relationships they have with it; recognizing the obligations that come with managing data; ensuring information is used for the collective benefit of communities; practicing reciprocity in terms of respect and consent; and exercising guardianship when accessing and using data. Meanwhile Our Data Indigenous is committed to the First Nations principles of ownership, control, access and possession (OCAP). “First Nations communities are setting their own agenda in terms of what kinds of information they want to collect,” especially around health and well-being, economic development, and cultural and language revitalization, among others, Lorenz says. “Even when giving surveys, they’re practicing and honoring local protocols of community interaction.”
Colonized groups such as these indigenous people have urgency to avoid colonization of their data and are doing something about it
“Onde habilidades como criatividade, empatia e resiliência estão mencionadas no currículo do aluno?”, questiona Noah Geisel, professor e gerente do Programa de Microcredenciais da Universidade do Colorado Boulder, no primeiro painel do evento virtual ‘O admirável futuro da educação superior’, promovido pelo Semesp, que acontecerá até sexta-feira, dia 28.
This six-part series tells the ACD story of exploration, innovation, and learning
6 part playbook from Alamo
approaches to align data analytics microcredentials with undergraduate experiences;
embedded MCs
WCET
Report from 2022 WCET workshop
Northeastern University for its new primer on microcredentials written specifically for higher-ed leaders
colleges will also have to invest in a major effort to “convince graduates that part of paying it forward is to respond to surveys aimed at determining what worked for them.”
whether microcredentials have been validated or endorsed by a trusted third party; whether they include an experiential or work-based component; and/or whether they map to in-demand skills in a given industry. As I see it, if that’s what employers will be looking for from microcredentials, that’s probably what colleges ought to be putting into them
How to balance HE mission with employer practices? Can we hold that both "our role is to enlighten minds" and "our credentials are meaningfully aligned with employer-speak to help position our learners as job seekers" are valid and complimentary? Or does the latter undermine the former?
check out the companion primer for human-resources or talent officials, which provides advice for evaluating the microcredentials that job applicants might present
link to Northeastern report
microcredentials need not be an alternative to college, but rather as a way to introduce or augment existing academic programs
Degrees are NOT dead. This will very possibly increase the value of degrees.
gauge the value of the microcredentials they offer, a step I suspect many have not yet been brave enough to take. That calls for tracking how often learners claim their awarded microcredential and share it to a professional networking site like LinkedIn, and for collecting feedback on why they did or didn’t. Another suggestion from the primer: track the number of microcredential learners who go on to enroll in a degree program
Interesting data to collect. Relates to the Equity report from Credential Engine: https://credentialengine.org/credential-transparency/equity/
Approximately one-third of employers consider badges during the application process and there are several reasons why.
On the job seeker side: “LinkedIn reports that more than 44% of users added certificates to their profiles in the last two years.”
And on the hiring side, two of the reasons offered for why 1/3 of employers consider digital credentials during the application process: “First, many employers are more interested in the skills job candidates have acquired rather than the coursework they have completed.
Second, considering badges during the interview process allows organizations to assess candidates from a wider range of backgrounds, not just those who have earned a traditional bachelor’s degree. Emphasizing the value of skills and broadening the types of credentials that are accepted (including badges) can help organizations build more inclusive workplaces.”
Makes the case for why trusted skills assertions can be the future of better connecting talented humans with opportunities they deserve
SHRM research
Digital Micro-Credential Efficacy and Impact on Learner Confidence
to publish clear, reliable,and verifiable data
This is a competitive for Higher Ed. Reliable and verifiable data that consumers trust.
The full value of credentials (e.g., labor market value,interest alignment, range of occupations to which thecredential can lead, stackability and transfer options, etc.
Value is not solely about $
As data practices become intentionally anchored in equity,there must be a willingness to hold entities accountableto make adjustments if data trends show consistentshortcomings and unintended consequences. Equitabledata practices cannot be maintained without clear guidingprinciples and the identification of critical data points.Such principles allow for appropriate and effective use ofthese data to support students’ discovery and successfulnavigation of pathways and transfer to achieve optimal andequitable outcomes.
Equitable data practices are about humans achieving optimal and equitable outcomes.
TRANSFER AND CREDIT MOBILITY
Learner mobility depends on learning record mobility.
SECURE, DIGITALSTUDENT RECORDS
Access to student records is an equity issue. It's now been said. Out loud. Regardless of how essential that revenue is, maintaining barriers to accessing student records amounts to institutional efforts to perpetuate inequities.
EARNINGS INFORMATION
There is a difference between reporting on earnings information and using earning information to declare credential quality.
SUPPORTS
Including student support data in transparent credential metadata. Wow.
Finally, those entities purchasing and using such tools,services, platforms and resources, such as schools,education systems and districts, city, county and stateagencies, colleges and universities, workforce boards,and community-based organizations, should include thefollowing principles as requirements or considerations intheir procurement, evaluation, and reevaluation processes
including equity in high stakes decisions makes equity high stakes.
We now have the capacity to ensurethat all possible pathways – andthe essential information about allthe providers, credentials, skills,assessments, quality indicators,outcome measures, transfer values,and links to job skills critical tounderstanding and building thosepathways – can be made fully open,transparent and interoperable sothat a new generation of tools tocustom pathways to meet everyone’sindividual need
There is a lot in this little paragraph, and a big point to not miss is the call out of "individual need." There will be dashboards and other tools that purport to serve learners/earners with comprehensive data about the possible pathways that are open to their successful futures. A harmful that we can anticipate many falling into however, will be generalized data that fails to leverage "nearest neighbor" practices that provide users with data based on the outcomes experienced by people with shared characteristics to their own. For example, if a specific pathway has great outcomes that are disproportionately enjoyed by White males under 45 who already work in that industry, then the generalized data may be misleading to a career-changing Black woman in her early 60s who is investigating the next steps in her journey..
Structural belonging refers to institutional conditions, policies, practices, and cultural norms that demonstrate that one is accepted, supported, respected, valued by, and important to a community. Fostering structural belonging, thus, requires dismantling and transforming inequitable institutional structures that devalue, dehumanize, disrespect and “other” minoritized students, especially those who are multiply marginalized.
A welcome sign does not = belonging. At an institutional level, there is a responsibility to demonstrate the conditions necessary for people to trust that ours is a safe place to seek belonging.
Thus, equity-minded campus leaders should make assertive efforts to center the voices and experiential knowledge of REM students in their assessment and transformation of institutional structures, policies, practices, and processes.
Colleagues from non-majority backgrounds will bring background knowledge, experiences and insights to structures, policies, and practices that people like me never could.
However, the graduation certificate is still paper-based and does not fit employers’ digitized recruitment processes. Digitizing the graduation certificate is overdue to align with the digitized processes of employers and universities. However, there is only a few research on that issue. This paper aims to conduct a systematic literature analysis. Therefore, we investigated 147 articles in the context of research on digital credentials.
Consumption issue: the outgoing recognition is valued by the sender but not in a format that is appreciated by the receiver. The problem with putting highlights on a laser discs is that it requires someone to have a laser disc player.
Market Scan: Skills Validation Methods doc by Education Design Lab and XCredit Skills Validation Network
National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report documents an increase in learners with college credits but no credential and finds they are returning to college at lower rates than in the past.
Highlights the importance of Learner Mobility
Talent Playbook
Unified Credential Framework
WGU Framework
It is also important to note that this positive evidence for low-income certificate-earners stands in con-trast to findings for other historically underserved groups; studies indicate that individuals of color and older individuals go on to stack credentials at lower rates and see smaller earnings gains relative to White individuals and younger individuals (Bohn and McConville, 2018; Bohn, Jackson and McConville, 2019; Daugherty et al., 2020; Daugherty and Anderson, 2021). Although we suspect many low-income individuals are also individuals of color, the findings suggest that there are inequities within stackable credential pipelines that might be more strongly tied to race, ethnicity, and age than to socioeconomic status. It is also possible that many low-income individuals never complete a first certificate and thus do not enter a stackable credential pathway
Important note on Equity: The positive findings for credential-stacking among low-income individuals stand in contrast to findings for other historically underserved populations, such as older learners and individuals of color, which show some evidence indicating lower rates of stacking and lower returns from stacking relative to younger individuals and White individuals.
Criteria
Specific earning criteria offers transparency.
Complete Solo Teaching Requirement / Final which requires 10 hours of classes as solo instructor.
"Complete" speaks to measurables that may not be transparently aligned with the competencies. This criteria statement however does specify that the completion means the earner has done 10 hours of solo instruction. That's helpful. Even better would be if those 10 solo classes were supported with assessment beyond just showing up. The alignment to external standards is also a model example.
Proposed effective human resources initiatives based on workforce analytic
Solid earning criteria. Linking to rubric or something measurable would be even better.
Defining the LER
Once the awarding and registration systems are in place, institutions should also integrate with a modern CRM solution to attract and manage student interest, support, and personalized communications to increase enrollment and engagement. The CRM needs to support career services and other experiential learning departments as the school looks to build outside relationships with organizations and industry partners to provide real-world learning experiences and assessment opportunities for students
CRM focus that goes beyond the academic unit to include others. Also think about Alumni Affairs, Foundation, and lifelong learning.
How are you going to maintain quality? Who will teach the program? Who will oversee it? How will you assess the success?
Assessment questions
And micro degrees or certificates give quick recognition of learning and skills achieved that are sometimes lacking in more traditional programs
Not just the content. Also the narrative. Recognition is huge.
Interoperable LERs support learners’mobility by functioning in local, regional,state, national, and global talentmarketplaces
MOBILITY
Interoperability: The ability of systems to worktogether, exchange, and make use of informationfrom other systems. In education, interoperability isthe ability of a system to exchange education andworkforce information with and use information fromother systems without special effort on the part of theuser. This means all individuals, including learners andemployers, have appropriate access to educationand workforce information, allowing them to makeinformed decisions in the workplace
Interoperability is rooted in access and equity
learners will seek to use their data to interact withemployment and education systems, including career navigation and job searches,that will allow them to continue to build skills and a career
This is a huge concept to strive to embed in the narrative: a major reason WHY this is the right thing to do is that we can help implement systems that allow formal recognition of people's assets to function as tools that empower people in way that allow them increased agency in accessing their successful futures and economic mobility.
LERs are reshaping not only what is recorded about alearner’s knowledge, skills, and capabilities, but also how learners can access and usetheir data to pursue employment and further education without barriers.
Learners using accessing and using their data is the revolutionary piece here.
“Our relationship with Community College of Aurora exemplifies the best in finding workforce solutions. Together we dug into the details to develop curriculum and training experiences that prepare students to meet the requirements for specific job responsibilities in behavioral health.”
co-design with the employers who will consume credentials
microcredentials create more affordable academic options that lead to economic mobility and high returns on investment for students
only about a third of the need for mental health professionals in Colorado is currently met, driving demand for additional qualified behavioral health workers. By offering microcredential pathways in patient navigation, peer support specialist, behavioral health associate, and behavioral health+, these new credentials are designed to address Colorado’s mental health workforce shortage by preparing people for these roles in less than one year
Market need + Short prep time for learners = meeting needs of job seekers and employers.
whether built as credit-bearing or non-credit pathways, microcredentials are by no means a substitute for the intensiveness or comprehensiveness of traditional higher education pathways.
Yes! It's a false dichotomy to pit MCs vs traditional credentials. They are different and can be complimentary.
Powered by open standards and protocols, these components will work together tocreate a dynamic, machine-actionable alternative to existing resume and CV options
Machine-readable is key.
However, this only applies to newly issued records and does notaddress the vast amount of learner and worker experiences that already exist. Typicalemployment and continuing education artifacts like resumes and cover letters are commonlyused in traditional workflow processes but these exclude the vast amount of learning andemployment validation that will elevate and capture skills and experience to serve individualswho need this tool the most.
Huge risk if LERs only serve new recognitions and fail to include existing recognitions simply bc they pre-date the technology. This will disproportionately harm historically underserved and marginalized people.
If non-degree or alternative credentials were stackable, overhalf (56%) of respondents said this would increase theirorganization’s interest in non-degree or alternative credentials.Stackable credentials would greatly increase interest for 24%
75% would have increased interest if the credentials are stackable. For a group that also claims to not know what these things really are, tough to know how much to read into this. On it's face, it's powerful encouragement for incremental credentialing.
Respondents most often agree or strongly agree that non-degree or alternative credentials have helped their organizationfill existing skills gaps (74%) and that they are helping to improvethe quality of their workforce (73%)
While data is kind of all over the place, this seems like a reliable response. Regardless of how well they understand non-degree credentials and how much meaning is mixed in other areas of the survey, it's straightforward that a super majority see MCs filling skills gaps and improving the quality of their workforce.
Despite that the original St. Patrick’s Day was an effort to celebrate Irish culture, daily discrimination still wore on Irish communities. Moreover, Anglo American society pushed the Irish to assimilate into mainstream culture—in other words, to become more American than Irish. This assimilation occurred twofold: not only did Irish Americans suppress their own heritage, but many sought to turn the discrimination they faced against others, such as toward Black Americans and other immigrant groups. To escape oppression, they would oppress others
Assimilation as a cycle: changing our own ways of doing in order to fit in doesn't just help us to "escape oppression" because part of fitting in means adopting ways of doing that include acting out oppression.
St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday of rather nonlinear origins, as it developed gradually over time
Pre-internet, pre-television, pre-telephone, and pre-radio, proliferation of cultural practices more closely resembled generational genetic adaptations than the viral spread we are used to witnessing with proliferation today. And because our practices are responses to the world around us, the changes in the world leads to changes in the practices. In the case of St. Patrick's Day, casual observation reveals that the meaning of the celebration has been a moving target for centuries, and that What we recognize, Why we recognize, and How we recognize have all been evolving and somewhat decentralized elements of cultural practice. (For example, recognition of discrimination endured by Irish-American immigrants figures prominently in today's practices even though the holiday was already hundreds of years old when the first of these people crossed the Atlantic.]
Elevating and calculating the value of postsecondary credential completion to the individual will play a central role in the new plan
"value" is a big concept. We certainly need to move toward serving (l)earners with more comprehensive and transparent data about the economic value of credentials. I believe it will be a miss to not also address more holistic value propositions that may also communicate important data to credentials seekers.
More timely disaggregated data connected to workforce outcomes will enablemore effective interventions. Better data will also enable transparency for learnersabout what they can expect from an educational pathway—from the skills andcompetencies they will acquire to the career outcomes those competencies lead to
Skills + competency data => transparent credentials
Invest in academic and career advising
This is so key. We know that quality advising is a big factor in predicting high quality outcomes. What we don't acknowledge and perhaps is not universally known is that advising is not adequately professionalized. In many settings advisor roles are entry-level; they offer low salaries and minimally invest in professional learning. They are often viewed as the "first foot in the door" at an institution that will allow people to then apply for other more desirable jobs as an internal candidate. The incentive structures all work against fostering ecosystems of advising that meet our learners' needs
Expand the state’s credit for prior learning toolbox, with a particularfocus on industry credential-to-course credit
Credential-to-Course Credit
Produce a consumer information tool.States should get data about credentials into the hands of consumers and other stakeholdersin a format that is easy to understand. Consumer information tools ensure that individuals canunderstand the likely outcomes of a particular credential before enrolling.
Equity! This is a consumer protection issue.
Required: Transparent evidence of thecompetencies mastered by credential holders
Clear, measurable criteria that is assessed
Information about credentials should be valid, reliable,and transparent. Without sound, transparent informationindividuals and others do not know if credentials are en-abling individuals to achieve their goals
Transparent Credentials
Often, however, employers aren’t connected to—or even aware of—the worker-serving organizations in their community, and they are therefore unaware of the resources those organizations offer
Ecosystem approaches are essential.
use prescreening assessments (such as work samples) that are based on specific skills rather than credentials that may or may not reflect a candidate’s ability to perform the activities of the job.
If employers move toward prescreening assessments, it stands to reason that certain trusted credentials will have the currency of being accepted in lieu of the assessments.
Employers can first create a robust skills framework for all positions by defining the required skills rather than preferred competencies, changing norms to shift away use of credentials as a proxy for skills, and connecting with community organizations that provide workforce support to reach potential candidates.
Be transparent in what is needed rather than mask with things that are wants, and avoid imperfect proxies for the skills that are needed.
that having visible skills-based pathways is helpful in their work as they assist workers in their communities through interventions such as job coaching and career development
Pathways aren't enough; people need Visible Pathways.
participants cited sourcing, validating skills, and scaling skills-based practices across the organization as three of the most common challenges they faced when implementing a skills-based approach
Sourcing and validating skills is a big challenge. This is why credential transparency may become an equity issue: In addition to equipping learners with essential knowledge and competencies, credentials have a responsibility to serve as trusted communication devices between employers and job seekers.
Employers in the Accelerator program signaled their openness and excitement for creating these upward pathways for workers
Universities can gain competitive advantages by proactively approaching employers to identify the employee populations for increased retention, understand workers' goals and needs, and co-design the learning and skills development components of the pathways.
Hiring for skills is five times more predictive of job performance than hiring for education and more than two times more predictive than hiring for work experience.
Citation is from 1984, so they need more recent data, but it still makes an important point.
For example, a case study conducted by the alliance showed how a medium-sized healthcare provider created its own skills-based talent solution to address scarcity. The organization needed nursing assistants with the right skills and qualifications but weren’t getting the right applicants. They decided to train from the ground up, with two key changes: they removed role experience requirements from job postings, and they partnered with a local technical college to create an end-to-end clinical-training program. As a result, 200 new nursing assistants underwent this clinical training.
One example of a crucial role Higher Ed institutions can play as co-designers.
New to v3.0: In 2.0, an endorsement is its own type of assertion. In 3.0, an endorsement is its own type of credential.
Does this mean that previously, endorsements were assertions contained within credentials, but that now they are new standalone credentials that are sort of digitally stapled onto the VC that has already been issued? Presumably this allows endorsements to be added to badges while ensuring no modifications have been made to the original credential?
Once the students have successfully completed the course, Dr. Cara assesses each student's assignments and participation and selects which skills and competencies were met and at what level. The selection of skills and competencies triggers an issuing of a skill assertion for each one and includes the assessment results in the evidence and results.
Skills assertions and the importance of evidence to enhance trust
A Skill Assertion is an AchievementCredential asserting a subject holds an Achievement that is used by multiple issuers to recognize the same skill. The content of the Achievement, often with achievementType "Competency", is not specific to a learning opportunity or assessment offered by one specific provider only, but is designed to be generic to allow for assessment by any issuer. Verifiers of AchievementCredentials who are looking for a holder to demonstrate a specific Achievement SHOULD ensure that they trust the issuer of a credential to make this claim, because a credential may be considered valid as issued by any issuer, including self-issuance by the subject
So, is an AchievementCredential the package (eg a badge)? Or is it an element contained within?
In previous versions of Open Badges, the creator of an Achievement (known as a "BadgeClass") was the only entity that could issue it, but in v3.0, the door opens to many issuers recognizing the same achievement based on their own assessment. This practice of shared achievements enables skill assertions, where multiple issuers use a shared achievement definition to recognize achievement of a skill with each issuer doing their own assessment. In addition, further recording of related skills, competencies, standards, and other associations are enabled by the alignment of an Achievement
Big deal: credentials with disparate names, from disparate issuers, nonetheless asserting a shared achievement definition. For example, competencies in my Spanish 4 class assert Intermediate-Low language proficiency, but a teacher whose class is more advanced than mine even though it's also called Spanish 4 could assert Intermediate-Mid proficiency while their Spanish 3 assertions is for Intermediate-Low.
Economists explain that markets work bestwith “perfect information.” And visibilityfeeds this market by translating and sharingskills. But the price of transparency in themodern age is invaded privacy, as well as biasinherent in automated products and services
DEGREES AS CREDENTIALSDON’T GO AWAY
They are redefined as the skills that make up the degree, and learners can achieve mastery by other means. What does change is the emphasis on proficiency. Being able to demonstrate and validate skills proficiency will provide much more information to employers and (l)earners.
same groups that are going to makethe scale happen can also perpetuate theinequities. We have to be asking the rightquestions with the right stakeholders toensure that we are not recreating anotherinequitable system that marginalizes thepeople we are trying to support
Holly Custard of Strada
Employer associations drive consistent skills languageacross job postings in their sectors
L)earners can make themselves visible toemployers around the country and around theglobe by “opting in” to digital sector recruitingnetworks for internships, gigs, and full-time jobs
What equity looks like
Universally accepted assessments ordemonstration opportunities, particularlyfor softer skills, could help learners andworkers validate any type of skill withoutbeing told that they will have to “go backand get a degree” before being consideredfor professional track careers
Universally accepted assessments can also add trust to college and university credentials. There is merit to the notion that higher ed institutions have a conflict of interest when it comes to serving as both learning provider and validator of that learning.
Skills visibility is about making the skills a (l)earner hasacquired open, transparent, and accessible to the(l)earner, providing agency to showcase their curated skillsand competencies to employers in the marketplace
Employers are investing in their own capacity andlooking for innovative partnerships to skill-up theirworkforce and diversify their talent pipelines.Companies like Microsoft and Google are trying tospeed up the pipeline by offering tens of thousands ofscholarships for their ready-made certificates inhard-to-fill roles. The World Economic Forum estimatesthat 50% of all employees will need to reskill by 2025
There's urgency driving employer/industry efforts in this space. It's not simply trying to replace higher ed or signal lack of trust in higher ed or to go into competition with higher ed. While these things may all be in play, the reality is that the current make up of post-secondary education in the United States lacks the capacity to meet the coming needs.
We are now tantalizingly close to a worldwhere my skills are telegraphed digitally to any employer around the nation,or even the world, looking for that skills cocktail. And it works the other way:all employers looking for certain skills can feed into a real-time skills tickertape, signaling to learners and the learning providers that serve them whatcombination of skills will yield employment
Equity: When we close economic, resource, and opportunity gaps acrossthe learn-to-work ecosystem, and in turn, outcomes are not predictablebased on someone’s identities
Context-specific definition of "equity"
Glossary
In particular, the "Trusted Issuer List"
Making it easier to interpret the content of a credential to be an accurate description of anindividual’s skills, competencies and abilities will require significant investment in tools andprocesses for verification and validation. This might include open-source software libraries linkedto major semantic standards for display and verification of credentials, directories of such softwareand the creation of networks of validators who are able to validate different types of credentials
Huge need that speaks both to Trust and Common Language.
Studies/pilots which can prove that, e.g., hiring accuracy has improved thanks to data-richcredentials, hiring costs are decreased thanks to accepting such credentials or fraud andcompliance costs are reduced are not available to back up arguments promoting digitalcredentialing. This makes it difficult for management to quantify cost-savings or potential return oninvestment from adopting or demanding these tools
Research opportunities
Funders could use the ecosystem map to identify specific challenges. Technology companies coulduse it to decide which standards to integrate into their products (on both issuing and verificationsides). The map could also describe the progressive rollout of new types of credentials andcredential-linked services
The WHY of a credentials ecosystem map
Most panelists agree that HRMS/ATS, employers, credential-issuers and users do not sufficientlycollaborate with each other. Furthermore, no current grouping within any organization seems to beappropriate to nurture such cross-sectoral collaboration at the required level to bring about large-scale adoption in the short term
What needs to happen to make sure we aren't still having same conversations in 5 years that we were already having 5 years ago.
Credential criteria that should be included in quality standards:● Degree and granularity to which an organization documents student or employeelearning outcomes● Degree to which organizations provide users ownership of this data by issuing them asverifiable credentials● Degree to which issued credentials use standards that can be verified and validated byemployers and other actors
Credential quality and assessment.
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?
documentation of employees’experiences tends to be reduced to an employment history, letters of recommendations andreference checks—none of which typically contain much skill-related data
Job titles/experiences are imperfect proxies for skills attainment/demonstration.
while it is strongly in demand fromindustry, there is little evidence of employers prioritizing or issuing the detailed documentation ofon-the-job experiences that such hiring requires, even for their own currently employed staff
Even those who want to do it aren't eating their own cereal by documenting existing workers' skills.
credentials need to be enhanced with additional data aboutindividual courses/modules a person has studied, together with the learning outcomes(skills/knowledge) obtained in each of those modules and other documentation of ability.Credentials should also be used to connect to evidence of achievement such as architecturalportfolios or coding projects. Wherever possible, credentials should refer to occupational standardsor sectoral competence frameworks to increase the ability to interpret them in a specific context
Transparency is an equity issue. Adding common language and richer data on skills and competencies to credentials means: * More data about courses/module * Learning outcomes from those modules * Connect to evidence of achievement * Refer to occupational standards/competency frameworks
While it is true that merely digitizing university credentials does not provide massive value toemployers, it is also equally true that the absence of large-scale market adoption of credential-issuing software is holding back support by HR management software
In other words, quality matters but right now ubiquity matters more so let's scale up and deal with quality later. Risk is that low quality erodes trust but I wonder if that concern is over weighted at the moment.
rather than an integrated sector, these groups are rather organizedaround a set of semi-permeable cells—each of which is more or less self-referring with limited (butnot non-existent) communication with other cells
For this to all work, it requires a broad ecosystem to buy in to its ubiquity. However many of the key constituencies are operating in their own silos, functioning independent of other stakeholders who's co-dependence is essential.
we as a community need to do more to build trust across the organizations thatare involved in these processes and build on each other's work
Noteworthy: in work that is rooted in trust, the organizations leading the efforts actually want for some trust building among themselves.
belongs to a ‘credentials first’ approach, whereby a person submits digital credentials into an onlinewallet that aggregates their skills data. The credentials can contain detailed information about allthe person’s accomplishments and shared selectively with employers. A resume, if used at all,would serve more as an index and explanatory note for the information being presented, then asthe prime source for that information.
THE FUTURE (maybe)
many common resume-builders de-emphasize the role of credentials in theapplication process. They focus on enabling a user to create a summary of their knowledge andskills in a single format, while credentials are relegated to documents which can prove thesestatements, rather than acting as the primary source of the statement. Resumes also provide astandardized format for users to surface the most important parts of their experience
Fascinating: Moving credentials FROM supporting statements about assertions TO the primary source statement for the assertions. Also, the issue here is a set of relative standards that are designed not for job seekers or hiring managers but for logistics and making things easier for other stakeholders.
using this information to match candidates to jobs would requiresome way of comparing different degrees from different universities, and evaluating the weight togive different letters of recommendation from employers
It is certain that rich metadata in digital credentials will lead to informing machine learning that is aimed at comparing, judging and assigning value to different credentials (and organizations, programs, and even instructors). This could have positive impacts such as helping individuals be better informed consumers about opportunities and outcomes. It can also be used in more harmful ways.
Many HRMS providers point to AI approaches for processing unstructured data as the bestcurrently available approach to dealing with validation. Currently these approaches suffer frominsufficient accuracy. Improving them requires development of large and high-quality referencedatasets to better train the models.
Historical labor data will be full of bias. AI approaches must correct for bias in training sets, lest we build very sophisticated and intelligent systems that excel at perpetuating the bias they were taught.
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?
How can skills data be used to inform and enable micro credentialing 11 views 2 hours ago
Webinar on youtube. Added time-stamped annotations in the comments.
that envisions credential transparency and open data as tools to unlock the learn-and-earn ecosystem nationwide and help every learner make more informed decisions about the credentials they might pursue
WHY this stuff matters. It's a responsibility to our learners (eg consumers)
Credential Engine Learning and Employment RecordsAction Guide
14 page playbook on LERs
Editorial Style Guide
CU Boulder style guide
I said I was going to give the students a quiz, during the third week of class, on “everything we had learned so far.” They should use the taxonomy of cheating and the university’s own policy to cheat on this quiz. Nothing was off-limits unless it was dangerous or illegal. Other than that, have at it, I told them. All the students had to do was complete the quiz and then write a one-page reflection that explained: 1) the ways in which they cheated, 2) what, if anything, they learned from it and 3) how they felt about the experience
From the article: What Happened When I Made My Students Cheat
publishedassessment procedures,
Transparency about the assessment procedure for determining if an learner has earned a credential adds trust to the credential.
many credential standards are designed primarily for the needs of credential-issuers,typically educational institutions.
Cautionary Tale: design for our users! LERs that don't center Earners and Consumers as users run the risk of not being used by constituents who are essential to enduring adoption.
While employers generally do want more data to make informed hiring decisions, many academiccredentials contain lots of information that is not necessarily relevant to employment use cases,such as information about student and course codes, assessment weighting information, credittransfer information and others, while sometimes omitting more useful data such as licensinginformation, links to occupational profiles, etc
Do HEs have responsibility to communicate formal academic recognition in ways that are relevant to employers? Is this a consumer protection issue? Or, is this an assault on The Purpose of Education?
employers are not currently issuing the type of data-richcredentials to their employees that they would ideally like to see job applicants present. Whilemost of our panel acknowledges that certain employers may consider such data proprietary,most indicate this is not a major factor preventing the issue of more and better credentials inworkplaces. The problem is rather rooted in business processes that are not necessarilydesigned to track personal development except as a factor of overall output
Counterintuitive: employers are not overly concerned about skills assertions for current employees being part of open ecosystems.
Alternative issuers tend to offer shorter, targeted learning experiences, which are specificallydesigned to address skill gaps. This by default makes their credentials more granular than thoseissued by traditional academic institutions. That said, research shows that a large percentage ofalternative credentials are designed with the same limitations as traditional ones—they containonly short descriptions of the title of a learning program, with little additional metadata or evidenceof the learning achievement provided
Fascinating: alternative issuers have a built-in advantage yet take the path of emulating traditional issuers' processes. This gifts time to traditional issuers to adapt and erase that advantage by including more granular metadata. Will they?
he degree is not a proxyfor talent, if anything, it just sets up barriers for those ... facing systemic inequalities .... [M]yobservation is that I think employers take that path because [it is] the path of least resistance,that they have always done it that way, and that is the way that they measure it.”
"The degree is not a proxy for talent"
many applicants for aposition will not have direct experience of the work in their target profession. Nor will they havegained a title that is explicitly targeted toward that new position. To be able to assess these kinds ofapplicants, employers want insight into which specific skills and experiences of a presenter may betransferable to new contexts. This includes skills a candidate may have gained outside of formaleducation, for example through professional development programs, on-the-job training,volunteering experience or experiences in their other professions
A big part of the WHY that too many issuers do not address. Authoring metadata with the consumer in mind will give our Earners a competitive advantage.
. Should these software systems start accepting digital credentials, thenemployers will be accepting them by default. Our panel indicates that the most direct route for thisto happen is for employers to request the feature from their vendors
We have an incentive problem. HRMSs will only have a business case to accelerate digital credentials adoption when employers who are their clients demand the feature.
Issuing experiential credentials earned at a company as portable digital credentials is currentlyextremely rare.
Notice the friction we have with language: "credential" is used interchangeably to describe the things being credentialed, as well as the vehicle used to display those things. This is avoided with degree vs diploma: the degree is the credential and the diploma is the vehicle to display the credential. Both things described in this sentence can be called credentials, however they are not the same thing and our language will create confusion. Interested to see how this is handled in the future.
This includes candidates whose experience has been in a different industry, andwho may not use the appropriate terminology when describing their own skills or even be awarethat they would qualify for jobs in a separate industry even though they have all the skills required
Helping earners appropriately articulate their own skills is an equity issue.
Practically all panelists see this ability to better understand their current job applicants as thenumber-one use case for digital credentials. They identify a trend of employers wanting to movebeyond summaries of data encapsulated in resumes to gain access to additional rich metadataabout a person’s experiences. Given the effort it would take to sift through this type of datamanually, this implies providing the ability to match individuals to the jobs required
It makes sense that this same language applies to the future of Admissions.
Most of the panelists stated the main potential value of digital credentials is helping companiesaddress the challenges created by this shift in workforce recruitment and training.
Make no mistake: this stuff is going to thrive because of the value proposition to industry. That said, designing systems that center humans, prioritize equity and access, and excel at connecting people with opportunities need not be mutually exclusive of employer needs to find labor.
Additionally, credential-holders,consumer groups and unions have very little knowledge about the advantages of digitalcredentials, which further weaken the voice of this stakeholder
Equity opportunity: scaffolds to support people with what to do with credentials after they've earned them
They also need to communicate their potential, i.e., what they are able to learn, as well as toreceive guidance on how to realize their potential
Fascinating idea of systems not only serving to inform learners/earners about where they can go and how to get there, but to also be a reliable signal about their potential to advisors, councilors, social workers, navigators, parents, recruiters and others
They also do not have access to enterprise-class HR systems/software due to a lack of volume whichwould justify the cost and/or complexity of implementation
while larger employers account for 2/3 of jobs, the other third are handled by employers with less sophisticated tools. What must digital credentials do in order to serve job seekers in this space?
Analysis and assessment of the content of the document within the context of its intendeduse case—by humans and/or assisted by AI● The resulting determination if an applicant might be suitable for a particular job or task
Very important steps in credential life cycles that too few stakeholders are discussing and, possibly, even aware of.
r the purposes of this study, digital credentials are defined as claims which are issued in a formatthat is both human and machine-readable. A key research question is whether these credentialsbring enough value to employers over other legacy technologies including paper-based credentials,digital reproductions or digital documents that are not machine-readable
Defining digital credentials and validating whether consumers will care.
This mightinclude developing open-source software libraries linked to major semantic standards forlearning outcomes, publishing directories of such software, or the creation of networks ofvalidators who are able to validate different types of credentials
This seems like a very big deal. It also could be a source of large scale harm if not done well. Doing this well will require intentionality and awareness of the harmful outcomes to protect against.
and the publication of these as linked opendata, will strongly increase semantic understanding of credentials
This is big gap that is not getting much attention: plenty of these frameworks exist but not yet published in machine readable ways to baked into a badge class to indicate alignment.
The priority needs to be increasing the number of relevant digital credentialsin the market
In other words, "raise the tide."
Digital credentials can store more granular information about learning outcomes orachievements, which is needed to make informed assessments of competence. Traditionalcredentials such as degrees, diplomas or letters of recommendation, even in digital form,lack this data. In order to transition to skills-based hiring processes, more detailedinformation, some of which institutions already track and store internally, will need to beincluded into the credentials
This captures an important feature that too many issuers fail to take advantage of: the ability for digital credentials to serve as more reliable, more detailed narrators than legacy credentials. Also, note the inclusion of "letters of recommendation" as credentials.
Adoption of digital Verifiable Credentials by employers is directly related to the way they areintegrated into Human-Resource Management Systems (HRMS
Impossible to understate the importance of HRMS in this ecosystem. None of this can meaningfully exist at scale without their participation.
employers see potential value in using digital credentials for a number of differentreasons. These include using digital credentials to better match candidates to jobs by analyzingtheir skills, broadening the talent funnel by data-mining credential databases, ensuring theauthenticity of credentials, and using credentials to manage the talent pathways in theirorganizations
reminder that stakeholders are not monolithic and neither is any given stakeholder's incentive structure. Yes, keep it simple when mapping out stakeholder ecosystem. And, include multiple incentives when relevant.
Nacirema
An exercise in reflecting on the differences between how others view us and how we view ourselves.
The result is a pervasive lack of knowledge needed to safely navigate digital environments. According to the Fletcher School at Tufts University, only 40% of American adults can answer basic questions on topics including phishing, privacy and cookies. Confronting those deficiencies head on over the next year will necessitate including underserved and undereducated communities in the design process.
This is a literacy problem akin to a nation-wide fire hazard.
“You have to assume that things can go wrong,” shared Waymo’s head of cybersecurity, Stacy Janes. “You can’t just design for this success case – you have to design for the worst case.”
Future proofing by asking "what if we're wrong?"
Encouraging endorsements in the workflow of self-assertions. Brilliant.
Recognition of prior learning — as discussed above, this is a way to translate knowledge, skills, and experience gained on the job into credentials that can be used more widely. This depends on an authority (the ‘Issuer’) assessing a portfolio of evidence about a person (the ‘Subject’), who will then also be able to use the VC as proof of their claim (i.e. also be the ‘Holder’).
In the United States, ACE could be a well-positioned authority to participate in this issuing.
Even in these cases, however, the aim of the activity is to assess whether an individual has met the criteria for admission to a course or institution. What VCs allow is for recognition to be turned into a credential, and therefore used as ‘currency’ not just to be ‘spent’ at that institution, but potentially anywhere.
Something else that I think Doug is hinting at here is that in many cases today, the PLA credit is contingent upon the learner enrolling. For example, Josephina can get credit for her prior learning/experience and that credit will be transcripted only after they have enrolled and the drop/add date has passed, because institutions recognizing that prior credit is contingent upon the learner paying for new credits.
One thing to note about VCs is that they don’t have to have a visual representation in the form of an image
Interesting note. I don't have any problem with this, especially given the challenges that so many struggle to overcome with including images that are accessible to people with vision impairments.
Each of LSE's new MicroBachelors® programs includes four university-level courses from leading LSE faculty. Learners who successfully complete a MicroBachelors® program from LSE and are admitted into select online undergraduate degree programs from the University of London, with academic direction provided by LSE
Will this be a new trend for admissions? Is demonstrating success with a school's curriculum a strong indicator of a learner's readiness/preparedness to be matriculated at their institution? And, if so, might more granular versions of this play a prominent role in the future of HE admissions? And, while there are reasons to see such approaches being in service of access and equity, what concerns are we wise to consider to protect against implementations that might be harmful to equity efforts?
Web3 will not replace traditional infrastructures, but Web3 technologies will augment and enhance traditional infrastructures with mechanisms for balancing privacy with rich functionality when it comes to learner and employee data: consent-and-control; interoperability; machine verifiability; and selective, progressive disclosure
Noteworthy change management strategy. Suggesting that new tools will supplement legacy tools is not very controversial. It's tempting to see the potential of new things and suggest they should replace the old things, and yet a consequence of that is going to be key stakeholders defaulting to a defensive posture because they are being threatened.
imagine a future where educators are able to trace the impact they have had on learners' journeys. Educators can identify which teaching methods worked best for which learners and which approaches were most effective at enabling the learners to translate that learning into practice
There is some transformative potential here for these insights to be valuable for Educators as well as to serve as data points that help Learners. be more informed consumers (especially when the data allows for "twinning" that allows for Learners to approximate anticipated outcomes based on historical outcomes for people who share characteristics with them). At the same time, a clear hurdle separating the aspirations from the reality is the priority of the ownership. It seems that for all the exciting potential, getting there necessarily triggers a dynamic of multiple stakeholders having legitimate assertions of ownership over the data, meaning that compromises must be made, and that we may quickly begin to see qualifications to the notion of learner ownership that are a far cry from any absolute, binary interpretation. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if it is in fact a thing, it's something to be acknowledged and centered so as to avoid appearing (or being) disingenuous brokers of the conversation.
Don Presant keynote
The NFT certificates were “minted” and distributed via the blockchain, through the Polygon network, to the 22 students who completed the most recent Coursera session, Lenz said.
Thoughtful use case to run the prototype effort on something that is appropriate: learn about technology, get credentialed using the technology. Any other content and it could be perceived as a gimmick. Also, worth noting that they are using a public chain; I suspect that many early products in the credentialing space talking up "blockchain" are not on distributed ledgers but rather something spun up cheap on AWS or the like.
Additional NFT certificates of completion are being created for students who completed Duke Engineering’s blockchain course sequence in earlier sessions
Makes sense to credential legacy earners; as long as the competencies didn't change, it seems inequitable to deny previous learners the same recognition as new learners.
the man's eight videos posted to TikTok last Thursday and Friday generated much attention. Combined, the posts garnered more than 2 million views and were recirculated on YouTube and Instagram by large-scale content creators reaching exponentially more people
When parody is consumed as news, and the fake news spreads.
whether a digital badge is used as a container to represent successful completion of a degree program or as a module in a course with a single competency, this taxonomy supports both the classification and description of that achievement in a common language with consistent meaning both inside and outside academia—and anywhere else along the lifelong learning continuum where badges are earned and awarded.
Why badges matter! The ability to communicate about competencies with shared meaning. Recognitions that are specific to a given learning environment (getting 90% on a Green Belt Quiz in a professor's class, for example) may be powerful and meaningful within that specific setting, but given the opportunities to establish context around the achievement that is broadly consumable by stakeholders unrelated to that setting, it is self-limiting (and a disservice to learners!) to shelter the recognition to the closed system.
EDUCAUSE Inclusive Language Guide
To ensure an equitable and inclusive participation, Workcred invited executive directors and directors of certification that represented certification bodies based on selected criteria—whether their certification(s) could be aligned at the cognitive content level of a bachelor’s degree, whether the organization participates in Workcred’s Credentialing Body Advisory Council, and if they are accredited by a third-party.4 For purposes of this project, accreditation served as a proxy for the industry value of the certification. Select employers in industries related to the focus of a convening were also invited to participate.
Trust: in investigating how to embed credentials that will be trusted, leaders convened participants whose affiliations might add trust to the effort. Meta. Also, interesting detail in the Change Management approach.
Appendix F: Questions Universities Can Ask Certification Bodies to Assess Quality of Certifications
These questions (I believe) are coming from a place of validating certifications. Experts publish these as helpful guides to understand if and to what degree certifications are trustworthy. In other words, are they worth the paper they're printed on? In the case of micro-credentials, most questions are likely overkill for the proposal process, etc. Given the central role and importance of TRUST however, perhaps providing a version of these questions to stakeholders seeking to propose micro-credentials could be beneficial in pushing their thinking, or at least centering these themes in their thinking.
“Public research universities are committed to improving the workforce outcomes of their students and to addressing the workforce needs of local economies. This approach can ensure students that their credentials will have value to the labor market, and it can ensure employers that graduates have the skills required to perform in the workplace.”
For some, this is reasonable and rationale. It's the point of the whole enterprise. Yet for others, this take is controversial, as it may threaten the ideals and/or visions of the purpose of Public Education. These stakeholders may ask, "Is it the job of public education to serve industry's needs by preparing proper cogs for the workforce wheels?" At the same time, others may wonder, "Is public education willfully performing a disservice to our students if our credentials are not valued by employers?"
These are important questions to ask, and to answer.
provide bachelor’s degree students with an opportunity to demonstrate and apply what they have learned in their academic programs.
This Show Me quality is potential for all learners, not just bachelor's degree students, and in the case of open badges, the demonstration of application is a literal opportunity as learning artifacts serving as evidence of meeting criteria may be included in metadata.
achieving a more comprehensive education
and receiving Recognition of that comprehensive achievement.
A study released today from the nonprofit Burning Glass Institute found that among new hires at leading firms such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Google, the share of positions in job postings requiring a bachelor’s degree remains extremely high. “There are a whole bunch of tech companies that continue to be pretty reliant on degrees,”
Skills-based is growing in adoption. And degrees still matter.
tutorials
chrome extension for tutorials, accessibility
The Flatirons pathway also includes “electives,” such as the CliftonStrengths Assessment, CU Boulder’s own Conference on World Affairs, as well as capstone projects that ask users to apply what they’ve learned to example scenarios. Those capstone projects have an added purpose — they mirror a common component of higher education
Good example of bundling
ICoBC Quality Criteria for Badges and Micro-Credentials
Clear framework for quality criteria
t be issued for unevaluated learning accomplishments, such as the mere completion of a series of tasks, attendance at events, or for learning that has not been assessed, as competency and learning accomplishment evaluation is very important.
Criteria must be measurable and assessable.
To the prospective student, our old semester tuition-based models may not compare well to $39 a month for six months to gain a credential that 150 major companies are considering the benchmark for entry-level employment.
HE can't compete with this apples-to-apples. Some will compete by ignoring the competition and relying on their own brands. Others will ignore this to their own detriment. I suspect there's a huge upside for institutions that seek to offer supplemental value-add in ways that leverage HE's competitive advantages so that (some) Learners see advantage to pursuing the Google credentials with/through a university because of a superior experience to meeting their needs.
He said the new AI tutor platform collects “competency skills graphs” made by educators, then uses AI to generate learning activities, such as short-answer or multiple-choice questions, which students can access on an app. The platform also includes applications that can chat with students, provide coaching for reading comprehension and writing, and advise them on academic course plans based on their prior knowledge, career goals and interest
I saw an AI Tutor demo as ASU+GSV in 2021 and it was still early stage. Today, the features highlighted here are yet to be manifested in powerful ways that are worth utilizing, however, I do believe the aspirations are likely to be realized, and in ways beyond what the product managers are even hyping. (For example, I suspect AI Tutor will one day be able to provide students feedback in the voice/tone of their specific instructor.)
The Google Career Certificates Employer Consortium consists of over 150 U.S. companies like Deloitte, Infosys, Snap Inc., Target, Verizon, and of course, Google. These companies span multiple sectors and are committed to considering Google Career Certificate graduates for entry-level jobs. Upon completion of a Google Career Certificate, you will gain access to an exclusive job platform where you can easily apply to opportunities from employers with open jobs. https://grow.google/certificates/it-support/#?modal_active=none
The consortium consists of 150 companies in December, 2021. This will increase. Significant community college reaction is (wisely?) sensing an opportunity instead of a threat. They are collaborating and indications are they will benefit across multiple verticals. I'm excited to see how this plays out in 4-year spaces of Higher Ed:
More points were awarded to candidates with master’s degrees and more years of experience in similar fields. While this approach seemed to provide a neutral method for evaluating candidates based on qualifications, it soon became apparent that the process, with its reliance on education and experience to the exclusion of other important qualities, was deeply flawed and created barriers to hiring talented, diverse candidates
Historical inequity is fueled by historical practices. "The way we've always done it" can feel perfectly innocuous while at the same time actually be massively harmful. We know things aren't right, inquiry into what is wrong is our path to a more just world.
It’s very hard for a person to learn about these emotes and what they mean when they have been accumulating in the culture for so long. A person just starting to watch Twitch would have a harder time understanding the chat than a person who knows all the metaphors
You are describing some powerful stuff about encoded texts and practices that signal membership or affiliation.
The game was a broker for my historical learning of that time period. Videogames especially helped with my English vocabulary. I saw myself being better and better in English talking to people from all around the world while playing World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. When I understood English, I started turning to other media like YouTube and Twitch. I watched many different English videos and learned different things.
Great example! This also demonstrates transmedia navigation, interest-driven learning and hints at affinity groups.
I don’t learn on purpose
This is a perfect point for you to dive into analysis...what does it mean that you learn without trying and how does that connect to concepts in the class like those you defined above?
two crucial disruptions: instantaneous access to information,and persistent access to distributed networks of experti
What examples can we think of these two disruptions in our own lives and learning?
Learning Ecologies Interview
Learning ecologies
Do a work check. Is this person getting access to the same quality of work as their peers? If not, then fix it. Do a mentoring check. Does this person have one or more people who can speak to their work product and advocate for them? If not, then find that person for them. Do a compensation check. Does this person’s work output match the compensation they are provided as compared to others at their level? If not, then fix it
The mentoring piece is HUGE. An added self-assessment for management teams could be not just making sure all people have access to mentoring, but also establishing a goal around having mentors who are representative of perspective mentees. I think of Brené Brown's interview with Melinda Gates in which she shared that through her college internship at IBM, she'd gained a mentor who was also her recruiter AND a woman. This mentor who was recruiting her for IBM actually pushed her to go work for Microsoft because of the better advancement opportunities she would have there as a woman. That conversation literally impacted human history and it might not have happened if the mentor wasn't like her.
managers’ own discomfort with race ends up harming employees of color, even when the manager thinks they’re doing the right thing. For example, they might manage a woman of color who needs some coaching on her work, but the manager doesn’t feel the same rapport with her that they feel with their white employees and/or they feel awkward coaching someone of another race on problems with her work … and so they let work issues go that they really should be addressing … and so that employee doesn’t get the same coaching and support that her white colleagues get … and as a result, she ends up not performing well and doesn’t advance. Sometimes she even loses her job
Catering to own discomfort/inconvenience is harmful to those who are already underserved.
Let’s say you have a group of people in a room and every one of those people has the physical ability to see. The room is dark. You want to turn on the light so they can see. You turn on a light. Here’s what equity work is like. Some eyes will hurt when you turn the light on, and they will need to be coached or trained to adapt. Some will blink and adjust quickly. Some have been waiting anxiously for light. And some eyes will stay closed and never open and then will write you emails about how angry they are that you turned a light on.
Great analogy for institutional DEI work AND could be helpful for people needing to conceptualize Equity.
say something more meaningful than, “It makes our workplace stronger.” Why do you care? Why should your managers care? Why should your employees care? And why should your employees of color believe you when you say this matters to our company?
Platitudes around our why can hinder efforts because they deprive us of concrete vision around which benchmarks can be set and progress can be monitored.
Develop and simulate credential hub pilot software connectors to demonstrate system integration with an SIS/HRIS, LMS, Assessment and Student Life software platform
Noteworthy to see Student Life software included
The academic institutions tend to resort to previous work processes for constructing academic credentials and the late-stage sharing of these deliverables for feedback, rather than engaging business members in the process of development. This limits the necessary structural and delivery alternatives that might be necessary to truly align to the industry needs
The way we've always done things vs the alternative ways we could be doing them...
The CLR is designed as the "holder" for all of the learner–worker's achievements to organize, manage, and share at their discretion
Key: while CLR serves to store a bunch of things in one place, the magic is more in empowering learners with regard to managing and sharing
Future Relationships
Noteworthy that stakeholders pump the brakes on seeing this scale. I wonder about sample size and resources...if there more more cohort participants and if the work was fully funded, would the tune change or is the skepticism more on the merits of the work?
All education partners indicated they spent more time than initially anticipated on the project. It was estimated that approximately 100 hours were spent by one institution by one individual in one atypical case. Another institution described a series of meetings over many months that included many individuals. In the latter case, a steering committee with about 25 people met twice a month for the first two months, which then transitioned to a small group meeting of 3 people every few weeks for the last two months.
This can take time
Interestingly, the employers were aware of the need to avoid including specific technologies or competencies that were narrowly identifying the company's niche skills. By generating broader competency statements, they were also creating more sustainable position descriptions that could guide the company into the future, beyond the current specific technology or minute skill needs
This is really huge to keep in mind if/when co-creating with specific industry partner. They are best served by sustainable credentials that are not specific to their brand.
he competency framework development process was similar to the curricular design process; however, the operating philosophy was still compelled by the academic program rather than backward designed from the job role/employer need
This is surprising (given tone of report before this) but is really important for faculty. This is about Learners and Learning, not preparing more and better cogs for the wheel.
Many employers are looking to either hire those with cybersecurity credentials that are layered on top of other degrees or certifications or advance incumbent employees with years of experience. In the case of one employer, it was indicated that they were looking for individuals with 10+ years of experience. One employer noted that the Wellspring Project provides the opportunity to develop internal organizational career paths, supported with tuition reimbursement
This is more of aligned with the CE approach
upskilling, re-skilling, or entry hiring of employees to fill skill voids that result from the introduction of new technologies,
I wonder about including a MC Proposal consideration that asks: Is this serving learners through upskilling, re-skilling, acquisition of new, emerging skills?
Project Management
Never to be underestimated.
Education Design Lab offered a “T-Profile” training session, a tool utilized to prioritize the highest priority 21st-century skills within a particular job role and provide a common education-employer language for discussing these skills.
Would this work within a school...eg inter-departmental or even crossing from undergrad to grad?
COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS
Worth taking note of the existing industry/association standards that partners leaned on; they didn't have to reinvent the wheel.
Despite an encouragement to include employers in these initial and follow-up calls, all calls consisted solely of individuals or teams from the educational institution
Is it challenging to get partners to the table during early stage work?
With a global digital transformation underway, the “distance economy” (McKinsey, 2020) further impacts the need for rapid skills-based credentials such as industry certifications, certificates and micro-credentials, and machine-readable learner records that can be linked through standards-based interoperability to optimize talent identification in the marketplace
The source is a vendor but even given their bias, the point is an important one.
The learn-to-work skills ecosystem continues to burgeon with projects addressing different aspects of the talent supply chain
I wonder if framing like this (distinctly not learner-centered) will create friction?
Use of common, preferred skills terminology when applicable can positively increase the understanding of skill descriptions
Wondering: what to do when common terms show up in disparate places? eg "Leadership"
The work of creating and aligning competency and skills frameworks can be tedious and time-consuming.
Until this is done, there will be scattered frameworks being developed piecemeal. The cost of pivoting from locally developed frameworks to standardized ones will be expensive in many ways. How might the flexibility called for above be brought to this design opportunity, and build tools that can incorporate pre-existing definitions created at local levels?