Conference PaperPDF Available

Assuring the Quality of Credentials to support Learning Innovation

Authors:
  • Knowledge Innovation Centre
  • Stifterverband
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13th European Quality Assurance Forum
Broadening the scope of QA
Hosted by WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and
AQ Austria
15-17 November 2018
ISSN: 1375-3797
Author(s)
Name: Anthony F. Camilleri
Position: Senior Partner
Organisation: Knowledge Innovation Centre
Country: Malta
E-mail address: anthony@knowledgeinnovation.eu
Short bio (150 words max):
Anthony is an independent researcher and consultant in Higher Education quality and innovation. His
current research interests include management systems for education, new forms of learning as well as
credentials in education. With respect to the latter, Anthony is advising the European Commission,
several governments as well as institutions such as the European Commission and private foundations,
on digital architectures for credentials, including through the use of blockchain. He is based in Ljubljana,
and is a regular EQAF contributor.
Name: Florian Rampelt
Position: Programme Manager
Organisation: Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft
Country: Germany
E-mail address: florian.rampelt@stifterverband,de
Short bio (150 words max):
Florian is Programme Manager for the German Forum for Higher Education in the Digital Age
(Hochschulforum Digitalisierung) at Stifterverband in Berlin. His focus is on higher education strategies,
open education and internationalisation in the digital age. After graduating in political science and
education sciences, he was a research assistant in teacher education at the University of Passau. As a
researcher he contributes to research and policy work on access to higher education, the social
dimension of education, lifelong learning, the recognition of prior learning and digital solutions in higher
education with a focus on higher education for refugees and the European Higher Education Area.
Florian also is involved in the evaluation and accreditation of study programs in the European Higher
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Education Area and previously served as Director of Education at Kiron Open Higher Education in
Germany.
Assuring the Quality of Credentials to support Learning Innovation
Abstract
The credential-space is currently seeing significant innovation, driven by twin priorities, namely the
unbundling of learning, and the drive to digitise credentials as prioritised by the Bologna Digital Agenda
and the EU’s Digital Education Action Plan. While traditionally students could depend on recognition of
widely understood signals of experience and expertise such as university degrees, the same cannot be
said for the creatures of MOOCS such as ‘nanodegrees’ and ‘specialisations’.
While it is clear that degrees from accredited HEIs form the gold standard in terms of their recognition
and portability, no clear set of comprehensive criteria exists to assess the quality of new forms of
credentials, nor for standards and technologies which are applied to credentials. The authors therefore
propose a framework for such analysis in the form of a set of quality characteristics for credentials,
based on work conducted by the OEPass project.
1. Digital transformation as a catalyst for new types of credentials
Digital transformation is already a reality for both labour markets as well as higher education systems.
Although such developments have not been neglected in recent years, “the progress on integrating
technology in education remains limited” (European Commission, 2018, p. 2). Especially the world of
work increasingly demands a quick response from the education system to provide people with newly
desired qualifications or “future skills” and technology can play a major role in this. In response to this
increasing demand different education providers have developed open educational opportunities that
go beyond the formal structures that make up current educational systems.
While it is clear, that degrees from accredited higher education institutions (HEIs) consist of the gold
standard in terms of their reputation, recognition and portability, no clear set of comprehensive criteria
exists to assess the quality of new forms of credentials. We argue that a discourse on the quality of
credentials in the growing open education market is needed on two main aspects: A) The quality of open
learning and the necessary information that has to be documented for formal and informal recognition
of open learning and B) the quality of technologies and the required standards to enable the digital
documentation of learning in the form of (open) credentials.
New types of credentials have been developed in recent years in order to make learning pathways as
digestible and flexible as possible. This has been especially visible yet controversial in the context of
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). As a basic principle, in order to make university education
available to a theoretically unlimited audience, traditional degrees are broken into smaller units made
available online. As in the Bologna system, degrees are broken into modules, modules into courses.
These courses can be even further split up into short segments based on empirical evidence on the
effectiveness of smaller learning units. Universities are becoming part of this trend by partnering up with
international MOOC platforms, applying such modular approaches themselves, and adding a certain
degree of stackability. For example, EdX has a developed a MicroMaster system for university partners
(Rampelt et al., 2018).
1
MicroMasters from a wide range of topics such as Supply Chain Management
or Artificial Intelligence can either only be taken on their own or additionally count towards a full masters
1
Further information here: https://www.edx.org/micromasters
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at universities such as the MIT. But also other MOOC platforms such as Coursera and FutureLearn also
offer different university level units, from full-degrees to single courses with content often offered for
free and learners paying for assessment and credentialisation at the end of the course. Udacity has
developed its own brand in the business with so-called “Nanodegrees”
2
that explicitly aim to serve labour
market needs as an alternative to traditional degrees
However, while traditionally students could depend on the recognition and trust in widely understood
signals of experience and expertise such as university degrees, the same cannot be said for the new
different forms of unbundled education. A typical university may today offer several different types of
credentials, ranging from certificates of MOOC participation all the way up to full degrees.
The private sector is proposing a host of solutions to recognise learning in smaller segments, from the
aforementioned Nanodegrees or MicroMasters, to centralised skill-banks verified by standardised
testing to online systems of recommendation similar to peer-reviewed literature (The Economist, Lifelong
Learning Supplement, 2017).
Additionally, a mixture of technological developments, currently for example visible in the emergence of
blockchain for educational credentials (Grech & Camilleri, 2018), and policy developments, in particular
the focus on credentials as part of the European Commission’s Digital Education Plan (European
Commission, 2018) or the “Bologna Digital” initiative (Orr et al., 2018) make it even more clear that such
an increased focus on innovation in credentials has to be accompanied by a discourse on standards
and guidelines regarding the quality of technologies and the quality of open learning.
The authors therefore propose a framework for such analysis in the form of a set of required elements
and quality characteristics of credentials, based on work conducted by the OEPass project.
3
2. Types of credentials
A credential, in its most essential form, is a statement awarded from one party to another describing
the latter’s qualities. Credentials are used for the purpose of proving to a third party that the holder
qualifies for something. An educational credential is typically awarded by a responsible and authorized
body that attests that an individual has achieved specific learning outcomes or attained a defined level
of knowledge or skill relative to a given standard. (ACE, 2016, p. 5)
Examples of credentials might include:
a degree is a formal qualification from a university to a graduate describing that they have
achieved expertise in a subject (e.g. medicine). This credential can be used to prove to
another educational institution that the holder qualifies for admittance into a doctoral degree
programme;
a job-reference is a social recommendation from an employer to a previous employee
describing their job performance and attitude. This credential can be used to prove to a
recruiter that the person qualifies for a job;
a medical licence is an identity from a medical chamber to a doctor describing that they have
the required medical knowledge, skills and conduct. This credential can be used to prove to
a patient that the holder is qualified to practice medicine
2
Further information here: https://eu.udacity.com/nanodegree
3
More information here: www.oepass.eu
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In the context of OEPass, educational credentials, may be divided into the following categories:
For the purpose of this paper we have considered: 1) Formal recognition in higher education (2) formal
recognition in the labour market and (3) Informal recognition in the labour market. For formal recognition
of credentials in higher education the criteria for the value of a credential are based on existing standards
and guidelines. In a European context these are the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance
in the European Higher Education Area (ESG, 2015) but also practical guidelines for credential
evaluators and admission officers developed from within the ENIC-NARIC network, especially the EAR
Manual (2016).
3. Elements of a Credential Statement
In general, the standards that exist for formal recognition and quality assurance in higher education can
and should also be applicable to any new forms of (open) learning, certification and credentialization.
This means, that when assessing credentials as a proof for the quality of (open) learning, key elements
of a qualification should always be considered, with learning outcomes being the most important
criterion (Nuffic, 2016).
As part of the PARADIGMS project the Dutch NARIC Nuffic recently published a policy paper focussing
on the evaluation of MOOCs that suggests seven criteria for the assessment of a MOOC certificate
(Nuffic, 2018). These criteria can also be translated in the more general context of credentials and their
trustworthyness for recognition in higher education. Based on a JRC report from 2016, the Nuffic policy
paper also suggests the use of a basic traffic light model that describes different levels of meeting certain
criteria (Witthaus et. al., 2016). For the characteristics of credentials that describe the required elements
of a credential statement we made use of most of the criteria described by the PARADIGMS project for
MOOCs and suggest additional criteria, adding up to a set of 8 criteria for the assessment of a credential
for formal recognition in higher education. For the labour market, informal recognition could be based
on some or all of these criteria.
Next to clearly defined learning outcomes, a credential also needs to contain transparent information
on the quality of the programme or learning opportunity leading to the credential, the level of learning
(ideally referenced to a a qualifications framework) and the workload required for getting the credential.
The learning outcomes should also be backed up by a robust assessment mechanism described in the
credential that also verifies the identity of the learner as well as the issuing organisation. Additionally,
the reputation of the organisation issuing the credential can support trust in the credential
Figure 1: Educational Credentials
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Based on this, we have slightly adapted the traffic light model suggested by the PARADIGMS project
for the evaluation of the necessary elements of the credential statement (see figure 2).
When using such criteria to evaluate the quality of a credential it also has to be clear, though, that high
quality credentials can have different characteristics and do not necessarily need to comply with all
criteria to the same extent (also see Nuffic, 2018).
4. Quality of a Credential
As a document which proves the eligibility of the learner to qualify for something, it can be said to had
three purposes, namely to act:
as a unit of account;
as a means of exchange;
as a store of value
The more these characteristics are met by a credential, the higher its fitness for purpose, that is, the
more likely it will be accepted by third parties. The importance attached to these characteristics depend
on users and their intended use-case. Given this, we have developed a matrix to describe the fitness
for purpose of the elements above:
Quality of the Statement
The statement should:
Distinct
represent a specific and identifiable and
measurable experience, skill or fact
be attributable to a single, identifiable
person
Authentic
contain enough information to:
verify when, where and by whom it was
issued
trace and reproduce the conditions under
which it was issued
be able to be issued for a limited period and
be revocable
Accessible
be issued in a widely-spoken language or in
a easy to read graphical format
be issued in a standardised form, according
to standardised processes
Figure 2: Elements of a Credential Statement
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Exchangeable
be modular, allowing for the credential to be
subdivided into smaller credentials or
stacked into larger credentials
be convertible into other types of
credentials
Portable
be owned by the learner
5. Conclusion and Outlook
The concept of assuring the quality of the credentials represents a genuine new frontier for European
Quality Assurance. On the one hand, it must reflect standards with regard to the quality of the statement,
respectively the quality of learning. This has already been successfully implemented throughout the
European Higher Education Area. It is, however, still necessary to clarify with all relevant stakeholders
what the minimum requirements are especially for the recognition of open learning.
At the same time, new standards and quality characteristics must be added that do justice to the
complexity of credentials. Combining these different characteristics that form the quality of credentials
is an approach that has just started to emerge and will still need several iterations in order to develop
robust frameworks. A trusted system of credentials thus requires considerations of the following aspects
holistically: Principles, standards and technology.
Based on these considerations, we see the quality framework that is currently piloted within the OEPass
project as having the following uses:
As a design tool for institutions thinking of innovating in the credential space, to ensure that the
eventual credentials meet appropriate quality standards from a holistic perspective;
as a basic set of design-requirements for implementations of credential technology;
as a transparency tool for students who are trying to determine equivalency between similar
programmes offering different credentials;
as a transparency tool for credential evaluators at higher education institutions who are trying
to assess the quality of learning documented through a credential and at the same time need to
build trust into the robustness and quality of new technologies.
Figure 3: Key aspects of credential systems
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For the acceptance of any new credential model to become a reality in the higher education context, it
not only needs to complement the long existing standards, it needs to provide an easily adoptable
mechanism, that can form part of the administrative, legislative and technological accreditation process.
However, on the basis of our conceptual framework, we hope for a broad discourse on implementation
possibilities, which has to be closely connected to real-world application with various stakeholders,
especially including universities. Therefore, higher educational institutions have to inevitably consider
themselves to be part of the change process in quality systems.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank all partners of the OEPass project for their invaluable contributions to the
conceptual work for this paper. We especially would like to thank Denes Zarka, Raimund Hudak and
Timothy Read for their expertise and continuous feedback.
Discussion questions for the EQAF Workshop
1. Do credentials hold an ‘independent’ identity complementing the statement of the learning they
represent?
2. Which of these quality characteristics are important enough that they should be considered
‘minimum’, and possibly be reflected in the ESGs or other standards and guidelines yet tob e
developed?
3. Would such a framework for credential quality help support innovation in credentials?
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... According to the 2018 Bologna Implementation Report, "less than half of the countries (16) have adapted their legal framework and external quality assurance procedures to facilitate and monitor digital provision" (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2018, p. 78). Also standards for digital technologies used for teaching, learning and recognition have not yet sufficiently been considered in existing QA mechanisms (Camilleri, Rampelt, 2018). ...
... Based on this, the OEPass project (Camilleri & Rampelt, 2018) has slightly adapted the model suggested by NUFFIC for the evaluation of the necessary elements of the credential statement (see Figure 1). (Camilleri & Rampelt, 2018, p. 5) When using such criteria to evaluate the quality of a credential it also has to be clear, though, that high quality credentials can have different characteristics and do not necessarily need to comply with all criteria to the same extent (also see Nuffic, 2018). ...
... Based on this, the OEPass project (Camilleri & Rampelt, 2018) has slightly adapted the model suggested by NUFFIC for the evaluation of the necessary elements of the credential statement (see figure 3). ...
... The challenge for quality assurance currently, is that it has been focussed on assuring the institutional integrity of higher education provisions and has paid less attention to learning outcomes and other performance indicators (Hazelkorn, 2018). It has also not yet sufficiently looked into standards for digital technologies used for teaching, learning and recognition (Camilleri, Rampelt, 2018). ...
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Quality Dimensions for Connected Credentials
  • E Ganzglass
  • D Everhart
  • D Hickey
  • C Casilli
  • B Muramatsu
• Ganzglass, E., Everhart, D., Hickey, D., Casilli, C., & Muramatsu, B. (2016). Quality Dimensions for Connected Credentials. Washington, DC: American Council on Education. Retrieved from http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Quality-Dimensions-for-Connected-Credentials.aspx