For a digital micro-credential to be recognised using a digital system (so that it may then be verified and recognised for learning and/or employment purposes) it is, according to Camilleri and Ardie (2022), necessary that:
- Digital credentials are sent from a learner to a verifier (any digital system of an entity recognising a digital credential for education and training or employment purposes) in a commonly agreed format.
- The verifier can verify the authenticity of digital credentials via, e.g. a digital signature or against a registry.
- The verifier can process the content of digital credentials according to a standardised format.
- The verifier can confer the status of recognition to the holder as a result of processing the content of the credential and/or holder.
To enhance the recognition of their micro-credentials, providers should issue credentials that allow the seamless management and verification of computer-readable, digitally-signed credentials (portability) as well as their rapid exchange across different digital systems (interoperability) while ensuring the credential holder maintains ownership and control of the credential.
This would enable, for instance, individuals to share their credentials seamlessly with the digital systems of talent managers or employers' human resources management systems, therefore enabling mobility of learners and people in the workforce.
Notwithstanding this, many micro-credentials, especially those offered by commercial entities, do not necessarily align with these values. There are significant examples of providers implementing 'walled gardens' - enabling transparency and portability only within their own systems to keep users locked into their own offering. While this may be a valid business model, this guide suggests that enabling competition between individual micro-credentials (rather than micro-credential vendors), and allowing for full transparency and portability, brings more benefits in the long-term to the micro-credential market as a whole.
Issue Digital Verifiable Credentials
Increasingly, credentials of all kinds need to be issued in formats that can be understood by computer systems. In 2001, it was already reported that 90% of large US companies are saving at least one week by automatically screening and processing applications in their hiring processes rather than screening them manually (Cappelli, 2001).
Ensuring that a person’s micro-credentials can be recognised in the digital world requires a computer system to be able to understand the information in a micro-credential and to be able to verify its authenticity.
Ensuring that the information in the credential can be understood requires using a structured data format to encode information about a learner’s achievements. Unlike an unstructured format such as a scan or a Portable Document Format (PDF) which merely presents information to a human to process, structured data can be queried by a computer system to extract meaning. Thus, e.g. it becomes possible for a system to automatically match the skills of a learner to a job opportunity. Equally important to using a structured data format is using a commonly accepted data model. Only by aligning to common standards, does it become possible to share and process digital micro-credentials in a lifelong perspective. Examples of such data models include the European Learning Model, Open Badges and the Comprehensive Learner Record. Of these, the European Learning Model is specifically designed to support the recommended properties of micro-credentials described in Annex I of the EU Council Recommendation (2022).
Verification of authenticity is accomplished by digitally-signing a credential. A digital signature is a digital code which is attached to an electronically transmitted document to verify its contents and the sender's identity. The security of the document derives from the security of cryptographic protocols, which ensure that the certificate is cheaper to produce than its paper equivalent but prohibitively expensive to reproduce by anyone except the issuer.
It is also possible to also check the authenticity of the institution issuing the credential. This implies checking that the institution is reputable and not a diploma-mill. This can be done by including the institution within lists of quality trusted (as described in Quality Assurance chapter) institutions, which can be automatically queried by credentialling software.
While introducing digital signatures would be an added cost and complexity, the long-term benefits can outweigh the downsides by, e.g. reducing the necessity of the issuer to verify the document after issuing and enabling the recipient of the credential to share it seamlessly and instantly with third parties.
The European Digital Credentials for learning are an example of a credentialling system that can be used freely by any micro-credential provider to issue verifiable credentials. It supports the requirements of using structured data, by implementing the European Learning Model. The credentials are made available both as a human-readable ‘diploma’ as well as computer-readable code, supported by an extensive list of authenticity checks as demonstrated in Figure 6.
Figure 6: A demonstration of a digital micro-credential using the Europass platform.
These include checks on the digital signature to ensure that the awarding body actually issued the credential, checks to see if the credential has been tampered with and whether the credential is a valid (micro-) credential. Additionally, the system is linked to the European Commission’s accreditation database which checks and verifies any licences the educational institution may hold (Europass, n.d.).
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