For decades, higher education institutions have relied on transcripts as a process document to exchange information about students, mainly to inform or support admission decisions. Occasionally, students (really, employers) have used the transcript when seeking a job.
But times are changing. We’re entering a new era—one informed by decades of work around cocurricular transcripts and experiential learning. Now, we’re in a position where verifiable credentials can complement the transcript (with degrees and records of completed courses) institutions issue, focusing on directly serving learners. Learners are earning skills from a wide variety of experiences that have emerged from the evolving relationship between the institution and the learner.
The Trusted Learner Network (TLN) at ASU is a learner-focused platform where verifiable credentials, including traditional courses, credits and degrees, may be curated alongside skills and certifications. This approach allows learners to collect, explore and share digital credentials that they have gathered across their lifetimes. The ASU Pocket is a digital wallet for storing students’ verified credentials, allowing the learner to share this valuable information with whom they want, when they want to share it.
Future-proofing in this space means a few things. It includes collecting data from diverse sources and applications that capture achievements, ensuring data ownership and management sits within institutional authority and can be managed at the data layer, creating rich and valuable metadata and storing that data in an interoperable and flexible way.
The risks of not future-proofing credentials mirrors the same challenge we face across the broader data landscape. Data that is brittle or inflexible is difficult to adapt to new use cases or new standards. Especially in the digital credential space, interoperability is crucial. Learners must be able to carry their credentials with them and easily access them for employment and additional education opportunities.
Ultimately, when we think about future-proofing credentials, we are also navigating how to create data that can evolve over time and grow in alignment with our understanding of high-quality credentials.
The Challenges of Future-Proofing Credentialing
The challenge with credentials—and with most data we collect—is that data changes across multiple dimensions. I think about this on an XY chart, where X is time and Y is utility.
Credential data will change over time in response to evolving data standards. Right now, I would argue that the gold star in verifiable credential standards is the Verified Credential Standard version 2.0. But guess what? We developed the TLN with the Verified Credential Standard version 1.0, adapted to version 2.0, and I look forward to the TLN team developing on the Verified Credential Standard 3.0 in the future.
Evolution improves our technological infrastructure but demands that interoperability be a part of the design to prevent us from accruing massive technical debt. Thankfully, it also aligns with the requirement to meet our students’ ever-changing needs. That’s really thrilling. An essential part of future-proofing is making sure your data systems can evolve and adapt.
In addition to technical standards shifting over time, the very definition and content of credentials will also continue to change—what I think of as the Y axis, utility. Thirty years ago, the degree was the gold standard. Thirty years from now, the degree will continue to play a crucial role as a signal of value, quality and education, but students will be able to mix in a variety of signals to express their unique educational and employment journeys. That evolution will require different formats and descriptors and a set of emerging and changing standards to express them.
I like to think of this change as not just occurring over time but in depth. It’s an expansion of what credentials can represent to best serve learners during their lifetime.
Overcoming the Obstacles
One key component to overcoming credentialing obstacles is adopting flexible, future-ready data formats. Verifiable digital credentials are issued in a format called JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data). What makes JSON-LD powerful is that it is self-describing linked data, which means it is hyperflexible. To store data effectively and securely, we are utilizing graph databases and knowledge graphs because they manage JSON beautifully and allow us to redefine data relationships as standards and needs change.
Another important practice to overcome these obstacles is to think about when and how credentials are issued to learners. Once a credential is issued to a student, it moves into that student’s control to share, display or save. Think of printing a diploma and handing it to the student at convocation. When we issue a credential immediately upon completion of requirements, the student is immediately responsible for saving and storing that credential. This is wonderful but may not align with the student’s needs at the time. And what happens when a student loses their diploma? They need a way to reissue it.
When we wait for the learner to request a credential, we know that the data they receive will be freshest. If we issue a credential immediately upon the learner earning it, even though they haven’t requested it, it has more of an opportunity to be stale and inaccurate.
The heart of this practice is to keep your data dynamic until the just-in-time moment when the learner requests it—when they need it—ultimately creating more reliable and impactful credentials.
Key Components of a Secure and Integrated Credentialing Tech Stack
What are the key components of a secure and integrated credentialing tech stack, and how can institutions ensure seamless interoperability between systems?
Interoperability is at the core of any modern verifiable digital credentialing ecosystem. The foundation of this accessibility lies in adopting open, verifiable credential standards that have emerged and enable cryptographic security and trust. These standards ensure third parties, like employers and other institutions, can independently verify credentials and that the recipient can cryptographically verify them. They also prevent credentials from being leaked to those for whom they have not been shared.
Beyond the standards, additional key components of a secure and integrated credentialing stack include the ability to source data seamlessly from multiple internal systems such as student information systems, learning management systems and cocurricular records into a single place. By unifying the data into one location, institutions can enable access, not just for students but also for faculty and staff whose job it is to help students navigate their education career.
Along with these components come all the standard ways that we protect and secure data—the way we manage our infrastructure, our identity and roles, and the way we orchestrate technology for maximum quality and up time.
The TLN’s tech stack is made up of a dedicated services layer that facilitates application builds, which interfaces with a cryptographically secure repository within the TLN infrastructure for credential storage and management. This repository is built on blockchain technology, offering secure and immutable records of credentials.
Additionally, the TLN governing body represents different institutional journeys, design backgrounds and locations across the United States and beyond to ensure we are scaling a network that benefits all learners. Our governance guides the technology, ensuring the handling and administration of students’ credentials is the TLN’s top priority.
These measures allow institutions like ASU and credential providers to securely exchange information within the TLN’s infrastructure.
Infrastructure Impact
There is a lot of evidence showing that an individual who earns an achievement or receives encouragement or recognition by way of a tangible artifact feels motivated to continue engaging with content and learning. In fact, learners are 60% likelier to complete a course when it offers them a digital credential (2024 State of Credentialing report). What’s more, IBM shared that 87% of individuals who earned an IBM badge reported increased engagement, and 50% of those individuals went on to pursue additional credentials.
We also know that there is an articulation gap: Newly graduated students, as well as people well into their careers, struggle with expressing their skills and competencies in a clear and meaningful way. This challenge showcases the need for a more holistic approach to digital credentialing—one that captures a fuller picture of learning, growth and achievement throughout a learner’s lifetime.
Therefore, we have many strong, informed hypotheses that a holistic credentialing strategy could benefit learners. It could not only support them in retaining and attaining credentials but also in fostering their ability to stay deeply engaged with their learning and make it lifelong.
One of the most thrilling aspects about this work is the opportunity to partner with other higher education institutions and to collaborate with students themselves. Together, we can better understand the real-world impact holistic credentialing has and the opportunities we have to design systems that give students agency and empowerment to navigate their futures and tell their education journeys with confidence.
Emerging Innovations and Technologies
When we think about digital credentials right now, we often focus on the relationship between three elements: the educational institution, the learners and the place where the credentials will be used, like to get a job. Advancements in this space hold a lot of potential and will be really powerful. For example, a transfer student could move their verifiable digital credentials to their four-year institution quickly and efficiently, or a prospective employee could share a set of skills to get a job interview more efficiently.
Emerging from this reality will be a new marketplace of development and opportunity that only exists when we empower students to own and manage their credentials. Think about a student being able to access services that recommend degree programs based on the credentials they have achieved. Imagine a job-matching service in which candidates could share their verified digital credentials and receive job offers based on their qualifications.
As we move into an era when resumes and cover letters are democratized through generative AI, verified digital credentials will become the trusted signal for what a learner knows and what they can do, helping them attain their goals. These evolving services will create pathways to connect learners with those opportunities, and the TLN is positioned to be part of those opportunities and more.
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