Credential Engine is hiring! We are looking for an Operations Coordinator to provide support for Credential Engine, its Staff, Board, and Advisory Groups.  Credential Engine is an equal opportunity employer. Women and people of color are encouraged to apply. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the job's essential functions. Priority will be given to applications submitted by June 30th, 2022. Read the full job description here. 

Invitation to attend Credential Engine’s second open meeting of its Equity Advisory Council: Credential Engine invites you to join its Equity Advisory Council on Thursday, June 23rd at 1 pm ET to participate in the next open meeting for the Council on Credential Transparency & Equitable Pathways, Transfer, and Recognition of Learning. The goal of this Council is to identify appropriate definitions of equitable pathways, transfer, and recognition of learning so we may best describe and represent them in open, transparent credential data. The focus of this meeting is to identify what we need to know about pathways, transfer, and recognition of prior learning to understand whether they meet our definition of equity, and where such information is currently housed. The public will be asked to give input on what types of ‘inputs’ and ‘outcomes’ we need to understand and what is it about those inputs and outcomes, as it relates to equity. Interested in participating? Register today! If you can not attend this meeting, no worries! We post recordings of the open Council meetings on our YouTube channel. 

Invitation to attend Credential Engine’s Learning and Employment Record Webinar: Credential Engine invites you to join us for our "Empowering Equitable Pathways with Learning and Employment Records" webinar on Wednesday, July 13th at 1 pm ET. Learning and employment records (LERs) are digital records that document an individual’s employment and learning achievements, including in the workplace, through education and training, community activities, and/or through military service. We can empower people with control over their own data by issuing digital, verifiable credentials that enable flexible curation of equitable learning and career pathways. It is important that LERs use CTDL linked open data to make the meaning and context of the credentials clear, transparent, and easy to understand. Please join us and our presenters, Meena Naik from Jobs for the Future, Brian Tinsley and Kelly Page from Digital Promise, and Deb Everhart from Credential Engine to discuss what’s possible, what’s equitable, and how to make LERs interoperable across data systems so that learners, workers, credential issuers, employers, and our economies and communities can all benefit. Interested in participating? Register today!
 

New partnerships: Credential Engine has a growing network of partners that are committed to demonstrating their capability to utilize CTDL to its full potential and integrate with the Credential Registry. These product and service providers have recently begun to work with Credential Engine and we look forward to highlighting all of our partners' contributions to credential transparency.

• Coursedog
• CurrIQūnet
• EBSCO
• iQ4 Corporation
• Pentecom

MCTA Request for Information (RFI): The Midwest Credential Transparency Alliance (MCTA), a collaboration with the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) and Credential Engine, is soliciting information on technology products pertaining to the credentialing life-cycle. This information will be used to guide further discussions on the capabilities and tools that are available now, and that might be available in the future. Responses to this RFI should be received no later than June 30, 2022. To read the full announcement, click here.

Every month, Credential Engine and our state partners meet to discuss updates and share their experiences with fellow states around credential transparency. Most recently, five states, Vermont, Colorado, Minnesota, Alabama, and Michigan, presented their learnings, challenges, and approaches to communicating the importance of credential transparency, publishing to the Registry, working with institutions to collect data, and policy development. A main resource for these states to follow and articulate their progress toward credential transparency is the State Roadmap and Action Guide for Transparency, which highlights the steps for state policymakers to help take the inefficiencies out of the labor marketplace and provide more efficient and equitable access to actionable information through the prioritization of credential transparency.  

This month, we are highlighting Vermont's work on Step 2 of the roadmap, “Communicate clear uses cases to benefit students, workers, employers, educators, programs and key policy goals”, and Colorado’s work on Step 3 of the roadmap, “Commit to using a common language and identify what data about credentials and competencies are necessary to be transparent and publicly available.”

• Vermont presented that sharing messaging for specific stakeholders at a high level prior to an initial meeting was helpful so that stakeholders could grasp the importance of credential transparency.  Sharing visuals like the Credential Finder and My Future Vermont provides a valuable demonstration.
• Colorado is aligning fields in their Eligible Training Provider Lists (ETPL) to the CTDL and through new legislation, HB22-1349: Postsecondary Student Success Data System, it will enhance what is collected and make it a ‘canonical source’ for education and training opportunities. Ensuring that the collection of data is aligned with CTDL, it will funnel the information to different publicly available tools.