Creating Equitable Futures for All Learners Through Credential Transparency
This Policy Brief explores how access to better credential information can be a useful tool for equity.
Working toward a better connected learn and work ecosystem requires collaboration and planning. Credential Engine has developed the following resources to use as state leaders learn about, plan for, and implement policies and practices to create a transparent credential marketplace. The resources in the Toolkit are designed to help state leaders understand and execute the steps in the State Roadmap and Action Guide to Transparency to bring about, maintain, and benefit from credential transparency.
The resources align with each category in the Roadmap — you can scroll or use the “Jump To” drop down to navigate — and can also be filtered to see items specific to each step in the Roadmap and to different audiences. Keep checking back as we add additional tools, guidance, and other materials.
This Policy Brief explores how access to better credential information can be a useful tool for equity.
Credential Engine hosted a virtual event on November 18, 2020 to hear from foundation leaders, state leaders, policy makers, quality experts, and more about concrete solutions and opportunities states can leverage to address these challenges.
Learn more about how credential transparency and linked data can power better decisions in states for all learners and how Credential Engine supports states in this work.
Supporting credential transparency efforts is key to building an education and workforce marketplace ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century economy. This roadmap outlines how policymakers and other state leaders can lead on these issues.
Annual report series from Credential Engine helping to map the credential landscape.
Almost 1,000,000 credentials exist in the United States. It’s difficult to find relevant information about many of them, but The Learn-and-Work Ecosystem Guide, developed by the Lumina Foundation, highlights the many intersecting initiatives aimed at shedding light on the confusing marketplace and shows where Credential Engine and its technologies fit.
Learn about how Credential Engine is bringing transparency and credential literacy to the marketplace for different audiences including higher education, the business community, and certification & licensure.
This selection of press clips and other media are notable examples of how Credential Engine's work is being highlighted and gaining traction.
A selection of our most frequently asked questions and answers about Credential Engine's goals and technologies.
This PowerPoint presentation describes who Credential Engine is, what we do, and how transparency leads to transformation. Partners can adapt and customize this slide deck based on their needs.
Credential Engine currently partners with 19 states and the Los Angeles region. Prior to the annual convening of state partners in 2019, each state team that was able to attend wrote brief summaries of their projects–including goals, publishing methods, and priority use cases. This resource contains all of those summaries in one document.
Credential Engine has targeted expertise for helping states and regions benefit from credential and competency transparency. In addition to our open, freely available resources, we offer fee-based services for strategy, project management, and implementation support for using CTDL data effectively to achieve statewide and regional goals.
Credential Transparency requires a collaborative effort; this guide provides context for who should be involved in the work within states and what their roles might be.
The Credential Registry and CTDL can be the backbone of numerous initiatives, projects, and other uses. If your state has not already determined its priority use cases, this guide can help you develop and communicate use cases that are important to your audiences.
Once priority use cases have been determined, it is important to communicate the value and vision of this work. States can use this template or develop their own communications resources to share their goals widely.
Credential Engine's technologies can support numerous statewide priorities. This resource provides examples of how states have approached using a common language and open source, comparable data for use cases such as defining pathways, updating approving functions, identifying high value credentials, and others.
A general workflow that state teams follow as they begin the work towards credential transparency and their partnership with Credential Engine.
Credential Engine offers multiple options for publishing to the Registry. This guide outlines the publishing methods available and approaches states might take to utilize these methods for different processes and stakeholders.
Credential Engine requires a minimum set of data to ensure consistency and usefulness of data published to the Registry, as well as recommendations for benchmark levels of data that can be published to support many use cases. Additionally, state and regional partners often choose to set their own policies to ensure consistency in the state.
Many state and regional partners have existing credential data collection processes; Credential Engine's trusted third party publishing policies are designed to streamline workflows for efficient publishing while ensuring buy-in and participation from credential providers.
These step-by-step guides walk users through publishing via the manual editor for organization information, minimum required credential data, and benchmark level data.
The publishing resources below provide instructions on how to publish credential data via the Bulk Upload publishing method.
Use this step-by-step guide to publish competencies and competency frameworks, and then link them to credentials and other data.
Credential Engine has recommendations publishing complex information such as costs.
Use the Registry Assistant API Handbook to plan, test, and publish using an Application Programming Interface (API).
It’s possible for states to have full transparency about both the skills needed for success in the job market and the credentials that signal competence and readiness for those jobs. But it only will happen if states employ better workforce and education data through P-20W data systems and adopt new technology that enables the data to be analyzed and made actionable.
When a state commits to credential transparency, it unlocks a multitude of opportunities. This document outlines some of the many goals, initiatives, and uses that comprehensive and open source data about credentials can support.
View examples of tools and applications that have been built using Credential Registry data.
Use these resources to develop tools and applications that pull data from the Registry.
Learn more about some of the technologies behind Credential Engine's work: the Credential Transparency Description Language and linked open data.
State leaders can use and adapt this example executive order in drafting their own executive policies.
States can use and adapt this language in drafting legislation, executive orders, regulations, and other policies supporting credential and competency transparency.
Explore examples of how state and regional partners approach implementing credential transparency from kick-off to publishing and consuming.
Institutions and agencies can use this sample language signaling an expectation to link to the Credential Registry and support publishing and consuming data in CTDL in requests for proposals (RFPs) and other procurement practices related to educational technology.