NEW YORK — May 14, 2020 — Credly, the leader in digital credentials, today announces recognition by IMS Global for its innovative learning and development efforts in collaboration with the American Council on Education’s College Credit Recommendations (CREDIT®) service.
The standards-based digital credentials program has been selected as a finalist for the IMS Global Learning Impact Award, a global competition to recognize outstanding applications of technology that address the most significant challenges in education each year. Through their combined networks, Credly and ACE empower learners to easily pursue credit from academic institutions for workplace learning.
“The longstanding challenge in facilitating pathways at scale between academic institutions and employers has created significant hurdles for working learners and inefficiencies in preparing talent for current workforce needs,” said Credly CEO, Jonathan Finkelstein. “The work ACE and Credly have done brings institutions closer to employers, which is a win for them and for learners looking to parlay skills proven outside of academia into credentials that unlock their professional potential. Our collaboration helps more people achieve valuable and verified postsecondary credentials, opening the door to new professional opportunities.”
As a result of this initiative, Credly expanded its platform offering with two innovative concepts: Official Transcripts and Endorsements. To align with the goal of connecting learners with opportunities, Official Transcripts document verified achievements in a skill-based, structured and accessible manner, while Endorsements translate non-academic achievements and provide third-party quality assurance from trusted entities like ACE.
Learners combine the verified outcomes of ACE-endorsed courses with other digital credentials they have earned across the broader ecosystem on Credly’s network, providing a more complete picture of what they know and can do. Learners also receive recommendations on next steps in their professional journey and use the platform to share a complete record of their digital credentials with third parties, including delivering a digital transcript directly to a registrar or academic institution. The transcript is based on verified, standards-based digital credentials and contains college credit recommendations issued by ACE, as well as competencies, evidence of learning, and other important context and content missing from traditional transcripts.
“By combining ACE’s industry-standard learning evaluation process with the digital reach of Credly’s platform, we’re making it easier than ever to honor what students know and are able to do as part of their educational journey,” said Louis Soares, Chief Learning & Innovation Officer, American Council on Education. “With our unified goal to place more knowledge and agency in the hands of learners as they move between educational settings, this program is only the beginning of the joint efforts between ACE and Credly to create reliable pathways to better opportunities.”
With this collaboration, organizations are better able to document the unique journeys of post-traditional students so their formal study programs can be tailored to their goals and experience. In just the first three months of the program, ACE issued digital credentials through Credly’s Acclaim platform for 12 different organizations, and over 10,000 transcripts have been sent to registrars, academic institutions and employers.
In the long term, this network approach to standards-based digital credentials could radically alter the college journey by placing more agency in the hands of learners and by relying less on outdated proxies of achievement and more on an exchange of competencies and learning achievements acquired in and out of the classroom with institutions that place a premium on identifying and recruiting students with workforce-ready skills.
The public is invited to vote on the 2020 IMS Learning Impact Award finalist projects through May 20, 2020 at noon ET.
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