As the number of pathways available to learners and workers continues to increase, so, too, do the challenges to demonstrate and maintain an increasingly diverse portfolio of skills, competencies, and credentials. Digital credentialing and platforms offer a unique opportunity for technology to support learners and workers throughout their education and career journeys.
Digital Promise’s new report, Learning Transition Design Principles for Learning and Employment Records: Co-designing for Equity, defines a learning and employment record (LER) as a digital record of an individual’s skills, experiences, and credentials that can be combined with other LERs and digital credentials for use in pursuing education, career, and life opportunities. LER technologies are a promising and budding industry to meet this new era of evolving educational and professional opportunities and challenges.
LERs that center the experiences of diverse learners can build flexible and intentional technologies to meet individuals where they are as they transition from education to the workforce, or between learning experiences. Through a collaboration with historically and systematically excluded adult learners and workers, including those experiencing poverty and multilingual learners, Digital Promise established a set of design principles to inform the development of LER technologies. While this guidance is invaluable to LER development teams, decision makers also need access to indicators about technology quality.
With generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, our product certification team leveraged these design principles to support diverse learning transition experiences. This new product certification signals to consumers that an LER technology has demonstrated that learners’ and workers’ learning transitions have been centered in the development of the technology. LER technology teams must submit evidence to demonstrate that the product:
The product certification team independently assesses the submission artifacts to determine if the product has demonstrated these requirements. If both assessors agree that the expectations have been met, the LER technology earns an Open Badge to share the product’s certification.
Using a process that embraces iterative design, the product certification went through multiple versions to ensure that an applicant’s fulfillment of the requirements demonstrates that the tool prioritizes users’ learning transitions. In the final stage of the product certification development, we invited a select group of companies to participate in the pilot of the application. Just under 60% of the technologies invited to participate in the pilot successfully met the requirements, and we are thrilled to recognize their efforts as the inaugural group of earners. Read about this work in our latest press release.
Digital Promise is proud to recognize the following technologies, which are the first to earn this new certification:
We would like to further recognize LearnCard, Open Credential Publisher, and TeacherWallet for also having earned the LER Inclusive Design: Product Certification.
The Learners’ Journey LER Technology: Product Certification is now open and we welcome companies to submit applications! Learn more about product certifications and other available applications, including the LER Inclusive Design: Product Certification.
