Create or Promote Reference Databases of Trusted Courses and/or Providers

Common to recognition for education, training and employment purposes is the emphasis of the verifying body on the reputation of the organisation issuing the credential and/or the micro-credential itself.

Three tools can be used to help assess such reputation:

• Databases of 'trusted issuers' can be used to list and find institutions that meet a certain set of widely accepted quality criteria. Such lists may be provided by quality assurance bodies who accredit institutions, or by professional associations or ranking organisations that create lists of institutions that meet their criteria.
• National or regional databases of qualifications provide lists of qualifications that can be referenced by any person wishing to check the status of a particular micro-credential (see Chapter 10.1)
• Recognition databases can provide information as to which learning organisations or employers accept various micro-credentials, providing a proxy for a reputational score.

In Europe, the European Quality Assurance Register has developed a database of external Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR). This database includes a list of programmes and HEIs accredited according to the ESG. It encompasses information for most Higher Education institutions on the continent. If learners or authorities want to check whether a specific HEI in Europe issuing micro-credential is accredited, they can use DEQAR because it lists accredited HEIs. A key element of DEQAR is that it makes its data available to other computer systems via application programming interfaces. This allows any recognising entity to integrate recognition checks directly into its systems as seen in Figure 16 below. The screenshot depicts the outcome of evaluating a qualification awarded by an accredited institution part of the DEQAR database for recognition through the Diplome platform, the first blockchain system for the recognition of qualifications run by CIMEA (Finocchietti, 2021).

Figure 16: CIMEA's state of comparability - an evaluation of a qualification for recognition purposes. From Finocchietti (2021).

National course catalogues, which mainly exist in Europe, tend to list all qualifications and/or learning opportunities available within a country.They can be considered best practice on centralising reference databases of qualification offers. The Europass platform includes an aggregator of course data stored in national qualification databases (including some micro-credentials). It therefore provides a one stop shop for trusted information about qualifications on the regional level (Europass, n.d.). The European Training Foundation is currently working with neighbouring countries to the EU to implement a similar network of national qualification databases with a centralised portal, to aid recognition of qualifications (including micro-credentials) throughout Europe's neighbourhood.