Meet Nicole.

Nicole wants to build a tool where all learners can manage and show their recognition capital. Nicole has been unsatisfied by her ePortfolio experiences and she now wants to create a web-based tool where learners can show their competences in the context of their networks, their communities of practice, with every trust-supporting data they might have: verifiable credentials, endorsements and other evidence of their competences.

What's the objective?

Enabling learners to show their recognition capital in a trustworthy way. The recognition capital comprises:
  • Credentials received
  • Credentials issued
  • Endorsement received
  • Endorsement issued

Who will have access?

There are three main level of access to the credentials:
  • individual: the ability to visualise and manage one’s recognition capital: creating, issuing and collecting recognitions/credentials
  • Community of practice: the ability to visualise the community of practice, the relationship between its members
  • Public: the public view of the community and its members, under their control
Some of the questions to address:
  • What kind of credentials and evidence will be produced?
  • How open and closed should the community of practice be?
  • Can external people, e.g. mentors be called in for endorsements?
  • Who will be interested in reading profiles and credentials?
  • …

Who will be able to claim recognition?

The members of the network or community of practice will be able to claim and offer recognition to the other members of the network/community.

What will be recognised?

Within a community of practice, what is recognised is.. practices, established practices and emerging ones. Through reflection and conversations within a community it is possible to elicit discrete competencies, something useful to share practices, train new comers, etc. What kind of credentials and evidence are going to be supported? Check what is already in use among interested learners and what might become relevant in the near future. It might be worth it to encourage some particularly relevant standards even if they are not yet broadly used. Allow uploading of evidence in multiple formats, even without a corresponding credential. Think of the most various way someone may prove recognition in the digital world and allow a way to do so.

Nicole’s Path

Starting out

Nicole start her journey by reflecting on her own experience in relation to recognition, the success and failures. She also does some desk research to have an idea of the state of the art regarding recognition. The initial features selected by Nicole for the web application are:
  • Facilitate the collection of any content types that could be used as evidence of competences, achievements, engagements, etc. including digital credentials
  • Enhance the collection of digital artefacts with metadata to connect the different collections across profiles
  • Provides the ability to promote the elements of that collection into credentials through direct endorsements or used as evidence when claiming a digital credential
  • Allow the user to add context and narrative to the collected recognitions
  • Makes it easy for the users to control the visibility of the contents
  • Makes it easy for the visitors/readers to access content in a secure and meaningful way.

consolidating

After a successful pilot of a beta version of the web application Nicole adds the following elements for the initial release:
  • Enhance search and aggregation based on metadata.
  • Be as content-rich as possible when supporting links to external content: get thumbnails, text, previews.
  • Allow users from employment or job agencies to input job requirements and perform searches based on that.
  • Allow users from employment or job agencies to define how trustful they want to consider specific credentials or issuers.

Extending

Based on the experience gained in the operation of the web application
  • Extend the support to a wider range of digital credentials.
  • Allow users to invite visitors to collect endorsements.
  • Allow user.to define different profiles with different accesses
  • Harvest issuers and endorsers profiles to enrich the representation of one’s profile with relevant information from the issuers and endorsers

Technology checklist

  • Taxonomies
  • Digital credentials displayer (support Open Badges, Bitsoftrust, Verifiable Claims, possibly evidence from social networks. To include formal paths also support Blockcerts, EDCI, DCC)

What do they think?

I’m happy to be able to show all their recognitions I’ve received and offered, like endorsements. This is has been very helpful to find a job. Now that I’m employed, I wonder why my employer is not doing the same things for her employees.
I have been invited to endorse and provide an  opinion on specific skills ands awards. I am happy to do so but do not particularly enjoy having to create register on the different platforms where the people I endorse are. I hope that in the future it will be much more straightforward.
I need to better understand this new way of presenting resumés, how to read, explore and evaluate their contents. I like the details provided, the ability to verify the claims made by the author like reference letters in the form of endorsements.