21st Century Credentials for 21st Century Learning

This year marks 40 years since the U.S. Secretary of Education released a landmark report on the state of education in the country. The findings were devastating — so alarming, in fact, that they titled the report “A Nation at Risk,” concluding that education within the United States was “being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

The authors’ key recommendation was to create a “Learning Society” in which lifelong learning would help workers keep their skills up to date in an ever-changing world.

In the 40 years since, employers, policymakers, and researchers have all argued that lifelong learning is essential and “an economic imperative,” according to business leader Marc Zao-Sanders. But until recently, we have lacked the technology to truly recognize all the learning that a person may gain over a lifetime. Consider the following true story:

Jana was a brilliant student, who completed 80% of her graduate degree, but because of family health challenges requiring her assistance, she dropped out. After many years and despite all that she learned and the skills she gained, she had nothing to communicate what skills she gained during her graduate education. Her years of schooling were largely wasted, and she resigned herself to not being able to work in her chosen career.

Today, we finally have the technology available to help our educational credentials match the 21st-century model of learning. Focusing on what we teach, how we teach, or even where we teach, as we have done in the past, is not sufficient. We also need a revolutionary shift in how we recognize what “counts” as learning. 

Recently, technological innovations such as Open Badges, Verifiable Credentials, and Comprehensive Learner Records have opened the door to intriguing possibilities. These digital credentials are data-rich, embedding evidence of the learning in the credential itself. They’re flexible and shareable, and can represent learning and experiences of different types and durations.

The use of these credentials is growing rapidly. From 2011 to 2018 between 15 and 24 million Open Badges were issued, a number that grew to 43 million by 2020. As of 2020, 1.6 million certificates on edX had been issued, and an increasing number of universities are developing their own microcredentials (including 88% of universities in an Australian sample). 

Despite these early successes, these new credentials have not delivered on their potential to resolve inequities in education. In a new paper with the Center for Growth and Opportunity, I examine the changes that will need to happen at the three levels of society to make these badges mainstream and successful.  

First, we need to empower individual teachers and learners to create and issue these credentials. Too often, these credentials are created by institutions to give credit for what the institutions value instead of letting learners seek recognition for what learners value. Empowering learners in their own educational journeys is more motivating, more equitable, and leads to better learning. 

Second, institutions need to remove institutional barriers. For example, earning an open credential will not be very appealing if it cannot be funded by financial aid, registered  within the university system, added to an official transcript or comprehensive learner record, or labeled with the name of the institution. 

Releasing this control can be scary for institutions. However, as hiring managers have indicated, universities will need to adapt if they want to stay relevant. A flourishing open credentials program can benefit institutions via higher brand awareness and increased student engagement with the institution. 

Finally, institutions need to shift toward a more universal and open recognition of all learning and experience — as companies and hiring managers are already doing. 

In a world where education is not limited to a small number of elite institutions but dispersed throughout society, learners will have greater potential for lifelong learning, equitable upward mobility, and self-fulfillment. 

To achieve this, we need institutions to recognize learning from other entities, agree to use common open technologies for sharing credentials, and develop more sophisticated methods for trusting credentials besides accreditation. 

Most importantly, we need to trust learners to own their own learning journeys, as well as their own credentials. 

Richard E. West is a professor in the Instructional Psychology & Technology department at Brigham Young University.