Event Leadership Institute Launches Digital Credentials

The Event Leadership Institute (ELI) announced today the launch of a series of Digital Credentials, a new technology for the verification and sharing of skills and achievements via social media and other digital means.

The first two credentials issued by ELI are for Event & Meeting Management Fundamentals, and Technical Meeting & Event Production. Each one required participants to pass a final exam upon completion of a Professional Development Course. Fifty students registered for exams, 32 of which passed and earned ELI’s first Digital Credentials. ELI will be announcing new credentials shortly.

“We’ve designed both our courses and credentials with input from numerous employers across the events industry,” said ELI founder and executive director Howard Givner. “They’ve told us what types of skills are needed for both full time and freelance work, and our credentials will fill a major need in enabling them to identify people who have those skills.”

How They Work

Digital Credentials provide a standards-based and secure method for professionals to display and use their achievements in a range of contexts, such as social networks, email signatures, and websites. Anyone who views a Digital Credential may ‘Click to Verify’ its authenticity, because each credential leads back to a unique Verification page, displaying key information about the credential, including:

• Name of person who earned the credential
• Date of issue
• Date of expiration (if applicable)
• Criteria for earning (e.g. list of coursework completed, exam passed, etc.)
• Description of what the credential qualifies the person to do
• Evidence link (e.g. to a detailed syllabus)

ELI has partnered with Credly to provide the back-end infrastructure to issue and securely store the credentials. Built on the Open Credit infrastructure, Credly is the leading platform for managing digital credentials. All certifications issued, stored and shared using Credly are compatible with the emerging Mozilla Open Badge metadata standard. Using Credly, digital badges can be easily shared on social media, other websites, and through a range of apps and tools that unleash the power of one’s credentials.

“Digital credentials make skills and achievements more visible”, said Credly founder Jonathan Finkelstein, who recently co-authored a report for the U.S. Department of Education on the value of digital badges for adult learners.

“The Event Leadership Institute is offering much-needed programs in event management. By verifying and credentialing skills, they are not only helping the professionals they certify to stand out, they are also setting new standards for the event management profession as a whole.”

Why They Matter

Potential employers, clients and industry colleagues can now instantly see exactly what skills and topics someone mastered in earning their Digital Credential, enabling them to better match candidates for jobs and projects. This follows efforts within the education industry to do a better job of mapping coursework to the specific needs employers have in filling open jobs. ELI’s Technical Meeting & Event Production credential, for example, demonstrates a candidate’s ability to work on events or meetings that require staged production and audio visual logistics.

About the Event Leadership Institute

The Event Leadership Institute (ELI) provides progressive education, training and thought leadership for event professionals through online, on-demand video classes and live events.

Class topics include event strategy and ROI, audio-visual technology, lighting and design, legal and insurance, fundraising, entrepreneurship, and more.

About Credly

Credly helps the world recognize lifelong achievement by offering the leading platforms for verifying, sharing and managing digital open badges and credentials. Groups like the New York City Department of Education, American Alliance of Museums, SUNY, University of Central Florida, Dallas Museum of Art, EDUCAUSE, Instructure, Training Magazine, Yale University, the YMCA of Greater New York, Smithsonian, NMC and ISTE all use Credly to make achievements visible. 

Explore our collection of case studies to uncover the inspiring success stories of organizations that have embraced digital credentials with the help of Acclaim.