In 2024, CAEL was awarded SkillsFWD funding and became part of a cohort of innovators in the use of Learning and Employment Records (LERs). LERs are portable platforms that chronicle diverse forms of education and employment achievements. They aspire to help individuals seamlessly showcase their skills and competencies in a portable, standardized way that can be easily recognized by employers, educators and trainers.
CAEL’s SkillsFWD funding was provided to double down on creating an LER ecosystem, with multiple entities playing a role in driving impact. For those with LER experience, you are likely familiar with the role of credentialing organizations, LER solutions providers, funders and learners/earners. But this model asked us to look at the entire picture, including employers, HR systems, supporting systems, career navigators, governance and data standards.
It was quite a challenge. Some of the others in the cohort were leading this work for governor’s offices, state government entities, large universities or implementing LERs in high schools across an entire state. Although we were working at a smaller regional scope, it was no less holistic, involving a group of committed and diverse partners in Pittsburgh. It was a privilege and an honor to work beside these leaders as we wrestled with technology integrations, engagement, and building for scale. It has been an incredible learning opportunity for all of us, and has made us all realize we have much more to discover.
For CAEL, the lessons are clear:
An ecosystem is not built in a day. Even when you start with strongly committed entities on one side, building diverse partnerships will reveal essential roles that often weren’t anticipated in your initial planning. For example, you may begin with strong connections to an LER solution provider only to find gaps in employers, career navigation and other integral functions.
Employer adoption is not easy, but it is critical. LERs can help employers find the right hires for hard-to-fill roles, including sifting through a flood of AI-generated résumé. But that does not mean they will quickly be able to adopt a new system or change an organization-wide hiring infrastructure. And until employers fully buy in, the value of LERs is limited.
Documenting skills and matching skills to jobs are not the same thing. The foundation of an LER is the skills and competencies that learners have, whether from your education program, a credential they earned elsewhere or from their own experience. But it also must connect to a job or, more appropriately, a career with pathways they can move along throughout their lives.
Very few paths are linear, so LERs must facilitate pathways in multiple directions. Most people need on- and off- ramps to education throughout their lives. One cannot assume that an LER will only be used to make one move from college or high school to a job. It could be used when returning to college to get credit for prior learning based on learning that occurred on the job or in non-credit training. It could be used to get a promotion based on a volunteer activity. Or it could be used to get into specialized training or even earn credit toward an apprenticeship. Since we don’t know how LERs will be used for the greatest impact by each individual, we must prepare for lots of possibilities.
Support systems matter, especially if we want LERs to help those who need them the most. We aren’t trying to build another LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been, and often still is, a tool for those with the fewest barriers to building a career. This technology must come with a guide on the side and an interface that doesn’t just work for us, but for everyone.
CAEL is committed to continuing to learn as we roll out our LER ecosystem. For us, the LER is a valuable technology tool, but it is the ecosystem that matters most. LERs have a high ceiling in their potential. To realize that potential, the work must begin at ground level, within the many intersections of learning and work. By continuously aligning education, training and employment, we can sustain an ecosystem in which every fork in the road still points the way forward. Once those roads are built, LERs stand a good chance of helping adult learners and workers travel on them.
Forging those pathways is at the heart of CAEL’s mission, and I thank you for helping us move our work forward. If you have ideas about collaborating with CAEL around LERs—or any other strategy for strengthening our workforce ecosystem—contact me at bdoyle@cael.org.
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