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Your source for the latest news and updates about credentialing
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Connecting Credentials: A Beta Credentials Framework
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What is the Beta Credentials Framework? How was the Framework created and for what purpose? What is its value?
Learn the answers to these questions and more by downloading the Guidebook, which provides background information and guidance on how to use the Framework. Click here to begin!Program developers, educators, workforce development professionals, credential providers, human resource managers and professional organizations, as well as others, can use the Guidebook to identify applications for the Beta Connecting Credentials Framework. The Guidebook provides step-by-step processes and tools to:
- Translate credentialing program expectations into competencies
- Identify competencies within existing credentials
- Develop credentials
- Compare credentials -- course to course, program to program, within and across professions
- Align credentials with work functions and tasks
- Produce related formative assessments
- Improve quality and value of credentials by identifying strengths and gaps
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Action Plan Work Groups Underway
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The five action plan work groups continue to meet to discuss issues and solutions in the priorities areas below. Their recommendations will be issued as a unified product that will be widely shared in Summer 2016. We invite you to join the conversation and help inform the discussion within the five work group topics using our online discussion board here.
1. Developing common language to serve as the basis for a connected credentialing system
2. Using real-time data and technology to empower credential users and create continuous feedback mechanisms
3. Creating nimble end-to-end quality assurance processes to support portability and trust of credentials
4. Advancing scalable employer engagement approaches to improve demand signals and increase relevancy and currency of credentials
5. Designing flexible credentialing pathways leading to family-sustaining jobs to increase equity
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Three new webinars added!
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Connecting Credentials is running an ongoing series of webinars to highlight innovations underway and promote information sharing about important aspects of credentialing issues and ideas. Two new webinars have just been announced:
Flexible Learning and Credentialing Pathways for Young People: Where We are & Where We are Headed
Description: How can we evolve learning and credentialing pathways for young people in the K-12 system so that they include a broad ecosystem of credentialing and learning environments, and keep young people on the path to college, career and civic readiness? What will it take for these pathways to be robust and flexible enough to meet the needs of all young people, especially our most marginalized and vulnerable; to align with the needs of the credentialing marketplace and labor market? Hear three K-12 thought leaders talk about obstacles and opportunities within youth systems and current K-12 pathways initiatives.
Hashtag: #youthpathways
Panelists:
- Lillian Pace, Senior Director of National Policy, KnowledgeWorks.
- Rebecca Wolfe, Senior Director, Jobs for the Future. Students at the Center Initiative
- Jennifer Lerner, Deputy Director, American Youth Policy Forum
Friday, April 29, 2016 1:00-2:30 pm EDT
Connecting Academic and Workforce Credentials in Systemic Ways
Description: Mary Alice McCarthy will make the case for Flipping the Paradigm of credit transfer practices to build training-based pathways to the Bachelor's degree. Keith Bird will discuss how increased employer engagement and better integration of the academic and workforce roles of community colleges are transforming both academic and workforce credentials and creating pathways between the two. Evelyn Ganzglass will moderate and discuss six dimensions of credential quality that post-secondary educational institutions and other credential providers can use as a guide to developing more connected credentials.
Hashtag: #credentialquality
Panelists:
- Mary Alice McCarthy, Senior Policy Analyst at New America
- Keith Bird, Chancellor Emeritus of the Kentucky Community College System and Interim President of Gateway Community and Technical College in Kentucky
Thursday, May 5, 2016 2:00-3:30 pm EDT
College & Career Readiness: Credentialing Options & Looking to the Future
Description: How is college and career readiness currently addressing and evolving to address the credentialing needs of traditional and non-traditional youth and adult learners? What's critical for college and career readiness to incorporate stackable credentials, career pathways, on-ramps, badges, and other emerging credentialing options, especially for our most marginalized and vulnerable populations?
Hashtag: #collegecareerready
Panelists:
- Mary Kay Devine, Director of Community Initiatives, Women Employed; Adult college & career readiness coalition for adults/Illinois
- Betsy Brand, Executive Director, American Youth Policy Forum
- Gary Hoachlander, ConnectEd, California Center for College & Career
May 10, 2016 2:00-3:30 pm EDT
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The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) convened the kickoff meeting for its Right Signals Initiative.
The purpose of the Right Signals Initiative is to demonstrate a new credentialing model that recognizes multiple quality credentials to send "the right signals" to employers, students, and colleges about the meaning of these credentials. Key credentials to be targeted are degrees, certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships, and badges.
Walter G. Bumphus, AACC's president and chief executive officer notes the importance of the effort. "Credentials and acquired skills are valuable to both students and employers. This work has the potential to provide a national system of recognizable credentials across all sectors and users making it possible to quickly identify completed courses of study, learned skills, skill mastery, continuing education credits, and other types of credentials."
The 20 community colleges selected from the RFP process to participate are College of Lake County (Ill.), Columbus State Community College (Ohio), Community College of Baltimore County (Md.), Eastern Iowa Community College, Gateway Community and Technical College (Ky.), Gateway Technical College (Wis.), Kirkwood Community College (Iowa), LaGuardia Community College (N.Y.), Lone Star College (Texas), Madison Area Technical College (Wis.), Metropolitan Community College (Mo.), Miami Dade College (Fla.), Mid Michigan Community College, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, North Central State College (Ohio), Polk State College (Fla.), Rio Salado College (Ariz.), Snead State Community College (Ala.), South Seattle College (Wash.) and South Central College (Minn.).
Talent Pipeline Management National Conference
March 23, 2016
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation hosted a sold-out event, which took place in Washington, D.C. and featured notable speakers from across the country who addressed a variety of issues exacerbating the skills gap. The event highlighted the implementation of talent supply chain strategies and practices by members of a National Learning Network.
While many workers still face unemployment, U.S. businesses are leaving jobs unfilled because they cannot find qualified talent. The mismatch between our current education system and today's economy has resulted in an ever increasing skills gap that threatens the security and growth of the U.S. economy. In response, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (USCCF) launched the Talent Pipeline Management initiative, a supply chain approach that calls on the business community and public policy leaders to transform education and workforce systems to be employer-led and demand-driven.
For a full speaker list, agenda and video, please visit the USCCF website.
You can also review the social media discussion using the hashtag #TMP16.
1-Year Anniversary of TechHire
The U.S. Department of Labor is currently reviewing funding proposals submitted earlier this month from community partnerships seeking support for local/regional TechHire collaboratives. http://techhire.org/
Designing Badges for Use by Employers
March 1, 2016
Connecting Credentials and Education Design Lab hosted a March 1 meeting to increase understanding of how digital badging can be of value to hiring professionals and students, particularly to promote access and workforce diversity. The 25 business, education and other badge developers, who participated in the meeting, considered opportunities and challenges throughout the entire sourcing to hiring and internal employee skill development process. They concluded that badges probably had the most potential value in early sourcing efforts and after the initial computer-based screening process used by many companies. They also discussed the importance of building trusted relationships between badge providers and employers and that that might best be done on a regional level.
ACE Alternative Credit Project, Connected Credentials and Competencies: New Insights
February 25, 2016
The American Council on Education recently released two white papers:
Communicating the Value of Competencies and Quality Dimensions for Connected Credentials that sharpen the focus on competency-based credentials.
Both papers contend that lack of trust and confusion about credentials and the many structural dead ends individuals face as they seek to obtain marketable credentials exist because there is no shared understanding in our fragmented and diverse credentialing marketplace about what makes credentials valuable and how that value varies across different types of credentials for different stakeholders.
The Communicating the Value of Competencies paper finds that employers value competencies, but do not get clear signals from higher education institutions about the competencies of graduates. The paper provides context to help higher education decision makers understand and improve the value of competencies among higher education institutions, students and employers.
The Quality Dimensions for Connected Credentials paper provides a useful framework for discussing credentials and how they can be improved, both generally and in the analysis of specific credentials. It proposes six dimensions of credential quality, transparency, modularity, portability, relevance, validity, and equity- that illuminate distinct, yet mutually reinforcing aspects of connectedness. These quality dimensions provide a structure to help higher education decision makers analyze the connectedness of credentials an institution already provides, those it is considering developing, and/or those to which it connects or plans to connect through articulation, transfer, credit for prior learning, career pathways, and/or education-to-employment bridges. If widely embraced, these quality dimensions also could serve as a foundation for a decentralized, dynamic, yet connected ecosystem of credentials that would better serve the needs of all stakeholders. Both papers provide challenging questions to stimulate dialogue and visualize potential futures that address the problems identified.
For more coverage of the event, including the video, click here.
Parchment Summit: A Conversation on Innovating Credentials
Parchment and Connecting Credentials presented the inaugural Parchment Summit on Innovating Academic Credentials in Washington DC. Before a standing-room only audience of more than 215 higher education leaders, national policy advisors and workforce innovators, panel discussions ranged from the new language of credentials to ensuring interoperability and usability.
While many conversations first began at the Parchment Summit, the goal is to foster longer-term multi-disciplinary collaboration between technologists and practitioners, higher education leaders and employers that believe in the transformative potential of technology in extending the reach and the meaning of academic credentials.
Parchment Founder & CEO Matt Pittinsky summarized five themes about credentialing and technology from the summit: 1) go digital; 2) do what paper can't do; 3) create more pathways; 4) communicate more content; and 5) make it actionable.
Early survey results from Summit participants indicate that more than 90 percent would be interested in attending a future Parchment Summit on Innovating Academic Credentials with several respondents asking for more than a one-day convening. In March, Parchment will launch a website featuring videos from the Parchment Summit, presentations, fresh new content and more. The full event video will also be available on the Connecting Credentials website in April. Read the event thread and continue the conversation on Twitter using #ParchmentSummit.
For the full recap of the event and to get involved, please visit the Parchment Blog here.
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| Key Resources and Related Initiatives |
National Resource Center on Credit for Prior Learning
SUNY Training and Education in Advanced Manufacturing (SUNY TEAM) TAACCCT grant
New job site in Colorado brings together powerful players in experiment worth watching
By Paul Fain
Inside Higher Ed
March 21, 2016
Read the full article here
Infographic: The Urban Higher Education Ecosystem Solution
The Kresge Foundation
March 10, 2016
View the infographic here.
JPMorgan Chase Report Reveals Uncertainty Over How Well Tech Training Programs Are Meeting Employers Needs
BusinessWire
JP Morgan Chase & Co.
March 8, 2016
Read the full article here.
MDRC Research on Career Pathways
By Richard Kazis
MDRC
March 2016
Read the full report here.
Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) Handbook
Northeast Resiliency Consortium
Achieving the Dream
March 2016
Download the full handbook here.
To share other resources or a related initiative, please send us an email.
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