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Welcome to Transparency, Credential Engine’s monthly newsletter. As we enter the back half of 2024, we want to thank our readers for their continued support of Transparency and Credential Engine’s mission of transparency in the credential marketplace.
Keep reading to learn about funding opportunities, new partnerships, opportunities to get involved in Credential Engine’s work, and more. Thank you and stay cool this summer!
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In this third installment of our four-part newsletter series on the Credential Lifecycle, we’ll explore the Learning and Education Phase, where individuals acquire new knowledge and are awarded credentials. This phase is pivotal in equipping learners with the skills needed to further their education and careers and to ensure that those achievements are accurately documented and recognized.
The Learning and Education Phase encompasses the activities and systems involved in guiding learners through their educational journeys. This phase includes three stages: tracking learning progress, learner completion, and issuing credentials. By leveraging the linked open data structure of the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) across these stages, educational providers can ensure that the learning process is transparent, structured, and aligned with industry standards.
Let’s take a closer look at how the use of CTDL adds value in each stage:
Stage 4: Track Learning Progress
CTDL enhances the tracking of learning progress by providing a standardized language for defining, measuring, and communicating key educational information including competencies, assessments, rubrics, and progression levels. Educational institutions can use CTDL to integrate and share metadata across various IT systems, such as Learning Management Systems (LMS), assessment tools, and Student Information Systems (SIS), to develop a coherent and supportive learning environment that fosters student success and institutional excellence.
Learners, educators, advisors, institutional researchers, and administrators all benefit from clarity and consistency in the description and communication of learning progress. Linked open data may be used to develop dashboards that provide real-time tracking, to power learning analytics that guide curricular and instructional improvements, and to tailor support and advising services that address students’ needs.
Stage 5: Learner Completes
CTDL provides a robust framework for articulating the requirements for credential completion. This includes documenting prerequisites, assessments, and conditions for completion. By using CTDL, institutions can ensure that credential requirements are transparent, accessible, and consistently applied. The globally unique Credential Transparency Identifier (CTID) plays a crucial role in linking learners' progress data to specific completion requirements, facilitating a streamlined and error-free validation process.
When institutions develop business processes that use CTDL to articulate the requirements for earning credentials, they create a scalable operational foundation for integrations with curriculum management tools, SISs, LMSs, and data warehouses. By clearly and transparently understanding all credential requirements in advance, learners, instructors, and counselors can strategically plan for success.
Stage 6: Issue Credential
CTDL enhances the issuance of credentials by providing a clear and comprehensive description of each credential's properties. This includes the type of credential, assessments, competencies, issuing organization, and other essential details. All types of educational and occupational credentials are supported by CTDL.
By embedding the CTID in digitally issued credentials, institutions ensure that those credentials are both human-readable and machine-actionable. Integrated applications supporting all stages of the credential lifecycle can then use the CTID to access comprehensive CTDL information so that stakeholders understand the full meaning of those accomplishments.
CTDL enables credential earners to collect, control, and share complete educational, professional, and employment information through tools like Learning and Employment Records (LERs). When competencies and skills are documented and shared via this linked open metadata, individuals may discover aligned jobs, work roles, occupations, and additional educational pathways to support their career advancement.
Call to Action
The Learning and Education phase is essential for providing individuals with the necessary skills for their careers and for ensuring their accomplishments are properly recorded and acknowledged. By leveraging CTDL and the Credential Registry, providers can enhance the transparency, structure, and alignment of the learning process with industry standards and market needs while supporting individuals to persist in their educational journeys and providing them with detailed, shareable proof of their achievements.
Next month we will explore the Job Placement and Advancement phase, where employers align jobs and work roles with knowledge, skills, and abilities, use credentials to source and hire well-qualified candidates, and continuously upskill their workforce. In the meantime, for more information on how CTDL and the Credential Registry can add value to your offerings, visit our Credential Transparency Toolkit for role and use case specific resources to empower your credentialing journey.
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New Funding Opportunities Focus on Opportunities for Success, Jobs Skills, and Pathways: Over the next two years, Credential Engine will offer targeted funding to focus on expanding education and employment information available as linked open data in the Credential Registry to empower all stakeholders with clear, consistent information and to fuel the development of tools and services that use this information to help people make better decisions. To support this work, Credential Engine received a two-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to work with a select group of partners to make opportunities for success, job skills, and pathways available as linked open data. Additionally, Credential Engine received funding to help support current publishing partners to expand publishing on credentials of value, transfer information, and outcomes data about Eligible Training Providers and other credential collections. Learn more about these opportunities here.
New Partnership Between Digital Credentials Consortium and Credential Engine Focuses on Streamlining Verification of Credential Issuers: Supported by recent funding, the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC) and Credential Engine have partnered to address the current complications of being able to verify that an issuer of a credential is actually who they say they are. This project will develop a working example of an issuer registry utilizing the Credential Registry as one of multiple interoperable issuer registries providing assurance of issuer identity. This collaboration will advance the digital credential marketplace by exploring the implementation, governance, hosting, maintenance, and sustainability of issuer registries.
This project will include open community input, including an advisory group and a pilot exploring use-case driven implementation, hosting, and governance. Stay tuned for upcoming opportunities to participate. Contact us at [email protected] to learn more about this project.
Invitation To Participate - Qualifications Frameworks as Data Global Task Group: Credential Engine is hosting a targeted task group focused on representing qualifications frameworks as linked, open data. In today’s interconnected world, transparently and accurately representing qualifications and credentials across borders is vital for mobility. Qualifications frameworks provide a structured approach to defining and comparing different types and levels of credentials. They are essential for understanding the equivalence of education and training qualifications across different systems and jurisdictions, thereby enabling more opportunities for learners and workers.
By participating in the Qualifications Frameworks as Data Global Task Group, you can play a vital role in improving how linked, open, and interoperable data meets the evolving needs of credentialing ecosystems. Together, the task group will define the charter, generate use cases, define a CTDL data model, and propose new terms to describe a wide range of qualification frameworks and their relationships to credentialing organizations, credentials, learning programs, assessments, quality assurance actions, and other relevant entities. If you are interested in participating in this task group, register today.
To learn more about this opportunity, click here.
Parchment Award Utilizes CTDL for the Benefit of Users: Through integration with the Credential Registry, Parchment issuers can enhance their credentials with the rich metadata information published in the Credential Registry, allowing Parchment Award users to easily access the benefits of CTDL information in the digital diplomas, certificates, and badges they issue to learners. By simply adding an earned credential’s CTID, the Parchment Award displays comprehensive and pertinent information for the earner and all of the audiences with whom they choose to share their accomplishments. This connection between the digital credential and the metadata in the Credential Registry allows digital credentials to do what paper credentials cannot - making digital credentials data-rich and interactive. Learn more about the Parchment Award here.
To view other solutions that utilize CTDL to empower people, click here. If you are interested in highlighting your solution that uses the CTDL, contact us at [email protected].
AcademyOne, Inc. and Credential Engine Announce Strategic Partnership: AcademyOne, a leading EdTech provider specializing in credit for prior learning and transfer and articulation solutions in higher education, and Credential Engine have entered into a strategic partnership. This collaboration aims to advance credential transparency by mapping AcademyOne’s database to the CTDL and publishing it to the Credential Registry. This partnership will provide greater accessibility for all stakeholders by leveraging AcademyOne’s expertise and extensive database. Learn more about this partnership here.
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Updates on Publishing: Credential Engine has been proud to partner with the Community College of Denver to provide information on its credentials, competencies, and courses as linked open data, adhering to the CTDL. This data, displayed in the Credential Finder, shows the linkages between each credential and its related courses and competencies. Now discoverable and interoperable, this data can be integrated into learner-facing tools and resources to help learners find the best pathways and careers for them.
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Contribute to CTDL Education and Employment Outcomes Metrics Terms Proposal: Credential Engine is enhancing data transparency for education and employment outcomes metrics to ensure that everyone—from educators and employers to policymakers and learners—has access to clear, actionable data for making informed decisions about learning and career pathways. Over the past few months, the Credential Engine team has worked with an open Task Group to enhance Education and Employment Outcomes Metrics (EEOM) Terms in the CTDL, and we are now offering an opportunity to provide input on these changes. The updates to the CTDL EEOM terms are part of an organized process to enhance the CTDL Linked Open Data. Credential Engine’s plan includes updating the CTDL and implementing these changes within the Credential Registry Publishing System. Learn more about this work by watching the proposal webinar here.
If you are interested in sharing feedback, you can do so through the following methods:
Exciting News: First Phase of the Global Micro-Credential Schema Mapping Project Completed: We are thrilled to announce the successful completion of the first phase of the Global Micro-Credential Schema Mapping Project. This initiative marks a pivotal step towards creating a unified framework for defining micro-credentials, ensuring greater interoperability and recognition across different systems worldwide. Our detailed report on these initial efforts will be available soon.
Building on the momentum from our earlier introduction of this project, we have made significant progress in aligning various schemas for defining micro-credentials. By harmonizing the data standards and schemas, we can enhance the transferability and recognition of micro-credentials, providing clarity in an increasingly complex credentialing landscape. The upcoming report will cover various aspects, including the benefits of a micro-credential crosswalk, the Data Ecosystem Schema Mapping Tool (DESM), the mapping process, and reflections on the mappings. These insights lay the groundwork to further this valuable work, providing benefits such as aiding policymakers, supporting credit recognition for international admissions, and fostering global mobility. To explore the initial mappings, visit Credential Engine’s Data Ecosystem Schema Mapper Tool. Stay tuned to discover how this project can transform the global micro-credential ecosystem.
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2024 CU Boulder Badge Summit
Boulder, CO, August 5-7th: At this year’s Badge Summit, the focus is to explore micro-credentials, access, and equity. Credential Engine will be presenting at the “SuperFast, SuperFun Connecting Your Badges to Meaningful Data” session where we will dive into how you can publish your Badges to the Credential Registry so that the CTDL contextualizes them with meaningful data about skills, jobs, pathways, and more. Additionally, Credential Engine will be presenting at the T3 Innovation Network Mid-Year Meeting where we will have a session on the Credential Registry Data Ecosystem Schema Mapper Tool and the Competency Explorer. We hope to see you there!
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