On December 7th, Credential Engine celebrates its five-year anniversary. Over these past five years, we have accomplished working with over half the states, as well as with federal agencies, Congress, systems, and providers to ensure that students, workers, employers, educators, and policymakers have access to linked, open, interoperable data to be able to make more informed decisions. Together, stakeholders can work to create a more transparent and equitable credential landscape that can illuminate paths to a better future for people, industry, and states.
If you were unable to join us for the entirety of our celebration event, we now have the recording available! The video is uploaded to YouTube where you can easily navigate to the start of our different panels using the timestamps in the video description
Additionally, each session’s recordings and resources are linked below.
We also want to extend a sincere thank you from the entire Credential Engine team to those who joined us during our 5th Anniversary. Thank you, as well, to the wonderful speakers who made the event as engaging as ever and charted paths for us to continue carrying this work forward.
Sessions and Recordings
- Counting Credentials 2022 Report: Scott Cheney, Credential Engine CEO, will provide an overview and release the findings of the new 2022 Counting Credentials Report.
- Credential Transparency Context Setting: Larry Jackson, Senior Director of Retail Opportunity at Walmart, will offer insight from a funder’s perspective.
- Open Data, Better Tools: States’ Work Toward Credential Transparency: This conversation will be moderated by Rachel Vilsack, Credential Engine’s Director of State Partnerships. She will be speaking with Lesley Hirsch, Assistant Commissioner of Research and Information at the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL), Tiffani Tatum, Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and Kerry Ballast, Deputy Director for Workforce Education at Texas Workforce Commission to discuss what is new and how they are working towards credential transparency in their states. This session will also feature one-pagers and short videos from other partners.
- Session Recording
- Credential Engine State Partners Page
- The demos mentioned in this session can be found further down on this page.
- Focus on Equity and Students: Aaron Fichtner, President of the New Jersey Council of County Colleges and Credential Engine Board Vice-Chair will moderate a session with Dr. Paul LeBlanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). Dr. LeBlanc will be followed by Tina Gridiron, Vice President at ACT Center for Equity in Learning, and Elena Quiroz-Livanis, Chief of Staff and Assistant Commissioner of Academic Policy and Student Success at the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education to discuss Credential Engine’s Equity Council and the recommendations that will be put forth by the Council.
- A Mid-Session Welcome: Liz Shuler, President of AFL-CIO provided a mid-session welcome to attendees.
- Current and Upcoming Policy Work: Scott Cheney will moderate this session with Senator Mike Braun, Indiana, and Senator John Hickenlooper, Colorado, as they discuss upcoming policy and the importance of credential transparency. Additionally, the Connecticut Governor has been invited to speak. Scott will then provide updates on current Credential Engine policy work.
- What’s Next?: Jeanne Kitchens, Credential Engine CTSO, will provide an overview of our upcoming Pathway Builder tool. This will be followed by a Learning and Employment Record (LER) session with Deb Everhart, Credential Engine’s CSO, and Dror Gurevich, Founder and CEO of Velocity Network Foundation.
- Closing Session: We will end our celebration by listening to a conversation between Stephen Moret, President and CEO of Strada Education Network, and Barbara Gellman-Danley, President of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and Credential Engine Board Chair
If you have any questions about the many topics discussed during the convening or our work in general, please don’t hesitate to contact info@credentialengine.org.
Resources from Partners
Credential Engine works with a broad array of organizations in different capacities—such as planning, exploratory, or support activities. These organizations are dedicated to credential transparency and linked, open, interoperable data.
We asked our partners to provide one-pagers and/or demonstration videos we could feature to show exemplary projects that demonstrate the value of credential transparency and leverage the suite of tools available, including the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) and the Credential Registry.
Included on this web page are resources that highlight a cross-section of the great work our partners are currently doing. These projects will be highlighted during our 5th-anniversary event and also on this page for viewing after the event has concluded. If you are interested in working with Credential Engine, please contact us at info@credentialengine.org.
State Partners
We work with various organizations on national, regional, state, and federal initiatives to advocate and advance credential transparency to meet attainment, workforce, economic, pathways, and data alignment goals. Along with the initiatives listed below, we also work with many states and regions specifically. More information about our state work can be found on our State Partnerships page.
Alabama Talent Triad
Credential Engine and the Alabama Talent Triad, the state’s new workforce development system, are working together to make information about credentials in the state more transparent and help job seekers and employers better connect during the talent crisis.
North Dakota Open Credential Publisher
North Dakota Open Credential Publisher (OCP) is an open-source credential publishing application including a wallet application that allows North Dakota citizens to collect, store, and share their High School Transcripts as verifiable credentials. In addition, any achievement that is formatted as a Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) or Open Badge 2.1 can be collected in the wallet to provide a life-long Learning and Employment Record (LER).
Associations, Nonprofits, and Education Institutions
We work with a wide array of organizations who broadly support our mission and credential transparency to offer policy and practical guidance to stakeholders, as well as direct benefits to learners. Other organizations that we work with can be found on our Partners page.
Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC)
Credential Engine and the national nonprofit Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) are collaborating to create authoritative accounts of the rapidly changing credentialing landscape in the U.S. — all with the goal of greater transparency in mind. Called Counting Credentials, these customized, state-specific reports help state leaders take stock of available credentials, lay the groundwork for a more transparent credential landscape, provide benchmarks with other states, and guide investments in education and training.
Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW)
CSW catalyzes change in educational and labor market systems, policies, and practices to increase economic mobility, particularly for people of color and others historically excluded from success. Through a partnership with Credential Engine, CSW focuses on achieving scalable improvements in worker skills, lifelong learning, and job quality. CSW collaborates with change makers to develop strategies, identify evidence to inform strategies, build the capacity of organizations, manage initiatives, and evaluate lessons learned.
Credential As You Go
Through a partnership with Credential Engine, Credential As You Go is using the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) to define the variables of incremental credentials being designed. State systems, institutions, and organizations engaged in Credential As You Go are encouraged to add their incremental credentials to the Credential Registry. This will enable employers and postsecondary institutions to learn more about each incremental credential and use the credentials for hiring and applying the learning to additional credentials.
Digital Promise
Digital Promise’s vision is for people to have access to learning experiences that help them acquire the knowledge and skills they need to thrive and learn in an ever-changing world. Micro-credentials earned through their platform recognize and verify the skills that people learn throughout their careers. Committed to supporting historically and systematically excluded learners, Digital Promise strives to support learners with equitable and transparent credential options. Digital Promise was the first organization to include links to the Registry in a large number of Open Badges, connecting these micro-credentials to linked open data.
Education Design Lab (the Lab)
Education Design Lab (the Lab) and Credential Engine have teamed up to offer services that will help stakeholders prepare for LER pilots, laying a strong foundation for pilots designed to empower learners in the sharing of their verifiable credentials and skills as currency toward job opportunities. Learn more about how the Lab and Credential Engine can support your LER pilot here.
National Institute for Innovation and Technology (NIIT)
The National Institute for Innovation and Technology (NIIT) has partnered with Credential Engine to develop an integration with the National Talent Hub, which leverages advanced data analytics to connect jobseekers, employers, and training providers and more efficiently target training. This infrastructure expands the use of Registered Apprenticeships to support strategic industry sectors where they are currently underutilized and provides a great opportunity to broaden the talent pipeline and improve access to currently underserved populations.
View the demonstration video here.
Open Skills Network (OSN)
The Open Skills Network and Credential Engine together support the development of rich, meaningful skills information publicly available and reusable on the web. The combination of data among connected skills, credentials, courses, and pathways from multiple sources is exponentially more powerful than information from any single source or system. And when all of this linked data is open, it can be used by everyone to support the needs of evolving learn and work ecosystems.
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
Credential Engine is collaborating with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s largest human resource professional society with more than 300,000 human resource and business executives in 165 countries, to address a fundamental challenge impacting anyone who participates in higher education or the workforce: How do we make sense of credentials?
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) has partnered with Credential Engine to provide transparency on what a person knows and the skills they possess. SNHU is using the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) to make information about their curriculum publicly available as linked open data, including credentials, courses, and competencies and the connections among them.
Velocity Network Foundation
Velocity Network Foundation is a non-profit member organization, bringing together the leading workforce, HR, and ed-tech vendors on a next-generation public data utility layer for the global labor market. Credential Engine is a member of the Velocity Network, working with other members to include the Credential Transparency Description Language as the semantic layer of this network, providing shared meaning across credentials from numerous providers. In this video, Dror Gurevich, Founder and CEO of the Velocity Network Foundation, explains why the Velocity Network is so transformative, and why CTDL and the Registry are critical for making sense of credentials issued to individuals.
View the demonstration video here.
Product and Service Providers
We work with many different product and service providers to align technologies and build capabilities to advance the mission and value of credential transparency. Other organizations that we work with can be found on our Partners page.
GreenLight
GreenLight Career Wallet, a free service that decentralizes educational records, is partnering with Credential Engine to make it easier for job applicants to communicate the knowledge and skills signified by their credentials, and for companies to find the most qualified candidates for open positions.
View the demonstration video here.
iQ4
iQ4 is a digital Talent Cloud Infrastructure Platform that enables a skills marketplace for learning and hiring. iQ4 has partnered with Credential Engine to advance verifiable credentials that provide job seekers, educators, and employers with valuable data from the Credential Registry using CTDL.
View the demonstration video here.
Learning Economy Foundation + LearnCard
The vision of LearnCard is to catalyze the proliferation of open, interoperable, privacy-preserving digital and physical wallets for identity, rich skills, and Learning and Employment Records (LERs). Built on LearnCard, Metaversity is a wallet and pathways application for learning and employment. Metaversity leverages CTDL and the Credential Registry to add rich, interoperable context to Verifiable Credentials issued to students, and to map pathways through courses, microcredentials, and skills toward graduation and employment.
PAIRIN
PAIRIN, the workforce journey company, believes every person’s journey can be made more relevant and equitable by unifying work and education.
View the demonstration video here.
Parchment
Credentials recognize achievement, and earned credentials allow all types of learners to access future opportunities across many different pathways. The Parchment Award service provides credential issuing tools for institutions and organizations to put credentials in a learner’s digital wallet, weaving together support for innovative digital forms of credentials alongside the traditional paper formats that are still important; the Parchment Receive service makes securely verifying credentials universal and automated.
View the demonstration video here.
Territorium
Territorium’s mission is to unleash the power of learning through technology. Territorium serves more than 10 million users worldwide. Their purpose is to unleash the power of learning by focusing on the results of learning. Through a partnership with Credential Engine, Territorium helps users understand and eliminate their competencies and skills gap towards their desired career or job.