Alternative Digital Credentials and How They Will Transform Higher Education
1. UC Berkeley Freshman Seminar
Alternative Digital Credentials (ADCs): How They Will Transform Higher Education
by
Gary W. Matkin, Ph.D.
Dean, Continuing Education
Vice Provost, Career Pathways
University of California, Irvine
October 8, 2019 1
2. Who Am I?
• Gary W. Matkin, BS from USF, (Accounting) MBA, Ph.D.
from UC Berkeley (Education), CPA (CA. inactive)
• Dean, Continuing Education& Vice Provost, Career
Pathways
• Age 75
• 45 Years of Service
3. Gary Matkin’s Pathway to a 46 Year Career
1962 Entered University of San Francisco as accounting
major
3
5. Gary Matkin’s Pathway to a 46 Year Career
• 1966 Graduated from USF and worked for Touche Ross (accounting firm)
• 1968 Gained CPA and left public accounting
• 1968 Entered UCB Graduate School of Business, MBA
• 1969 Graduated with MBA and went to work for Kaiser Industries
• 1972 Employed by a small start-up firm that failed
• 1973 Entered employment at UCB in University Extension as Business Officer
• 1975 Entered UCB Ph.D. program in higher education
• 1989 Graduated Ph.D. program
• 2000 Became Dean at UC Irvine
• 2017 Became Vice Provost at UC Irvine
5
6. What Do I Do?
6
• Campus Relations
• New Business Development
• Increase Capacity
• Manage the Future
7. General duties include:
• Campus relations
• New business development
• Predicting future & adjusting to new future
• Building capacity
8. General duties include:
• Campus relations
• New business development
• Predicting future & adjusting to new future
• Building capacity
9. General duties include:
• Campus relations
• New business development
• Predicting future & adjusting to new future
• Building capacity
10. MAIN MESSAGE FOR TODAY’S PRESENTATION
START CAREER SEARCH AND PREPARATION EARLY
Go to Your Career Center for Help
10
11. Purposes of this Presentation
1. Understand the leadership role of managing the future
2. Gain the background to know why ADCs will be an
important part of your future
3. Understand how the advent of ADCs demonstrates the
management of the future
4. Understand how to create a “wallet” of testaments to
your skills and abilities
11
15. What Does an ADC Contain (Metadata)?
• Verification of earner’s identity
• Qualification and information about the issuer
• Date issued, date to be expired
• Description of competency
• Criteria used to assess competency
• Relationship to other related competencies
• Examples of student work (optional)
15
16. ADC Metadata: Competencies Gained
16
This badge is awarded to students
that learned the basics of static
front-end web design using HTML,
CSS, and Bootstrap.
Badge also recognizes students
understanding of mobile responsive
practices, media queries, and the
deployment of web applications.
17. ADC Metadata: Criteria Used to Assess Competency
• Creation of portfolios with responsive
layouts and use Bootstrap and other
utilities using media queries
• Creation of a full fledged portfolio site
with HTML and CSS or wire frame
using basic CSS rules and HTML mark
down
17
18. Characteristics of ADCs
• Alternative to what are now issued
• Non-degree certifications of skills and abilities related to
workforce needs
• Digitally created, stored, and transmitted
• Attest to competencies
• Portable
• Easily understood
• Information rich
18
19. Competency vs. Learning Achievement
The Big ADC Challenge
Competency
• Based on demonstrated skills
• Workplace relevant
independent of learning
Learning Achievement
• Based on learning assessment
• Academic relevance and learning
centric
21. Rationale for Institutional Adoption of ADCs
• Already widely used
• Transcripts largely irrelevant to workforce needs
• Certify valuable, more granular, non-degree-level skills and abilities
• Makes universities accountable
• Young adults demand shorter, relevant education
• ADCs are a natural outcome of open education
• Companies use digital searches to hire candidates
• The ADC ecosystem is developing
• Employer acceptance is increasing
21
22. Criteria for Issuance
1. Non-duplication of existing certifications (transcripts)
2. Relevant to workforce needs
3. Must indicate competencies, assessments, and evidence of attainment
4. Must be issued for evaluated competencies and learning
5. Must be substantive (non-trivial)
6. Assessments must be clearly and specifically defined (rubrics)
7. Assessors must be highly qualified in the specific field being verified
8. Levels of competency must be clearly defined
9. Institutional permanent records should be maintained
10. Identifying issues must be authenticated and secure
22
24. Icon Design
• Icons should be
1. Readable at a glance (simple design)
2. Clearly indicate the competency achieved
3. Name the issuing institution
4. Name the issuing unit of the institution
24
26. Implementation Principles
1. Identify and address institutional barriers to success
2. Develop institutional buy-in and support
3. Get the word out
26
27. Issues in Implementation
• Making the institutional case
• Gaining employer buy-in
• Gaining the infrastructure for issuing ADCs
• Choosing the right vendor
• Waiting for BlockChain
Mention BS at USF, MBA, PhD from UCB. I am not a professor, I am a professional administrator.
Here are some examples from both higher education and the corporate world of the icons used to signify that the recipient of the ADC has achieved a specific competency in a defined topic.
Here are examples of ADCs issued by UCI. Note that it contains three simple components:
Name of issuing institution institution
Unit or division issuing institution responsible for ADC (UCI Division of Continuing Education)
The competency represented by the ADC (HTML/CSS)
To initiate the issuance of an ADC, the issuing organization or institution posts the ADC to a repository that is secure and unhackable. At the same time, the issuing organization or institution stores this posting to its own record system.
After posting to the repository, the recipient may then post the ADC to any digital repository including to a resume, to LinkedIn and other social media sites, to employers and potential employers, and even to friends.
Each ADC, once “clicked on” opens up to reveal “metadata” about the ADC and the skills it verifies. This is a listing of common metadata.
This is an example of the competency description for an ADC.
Each ADC also explains the assessment criteria used to verify the competency.
From the previous slides the following characteristics of ADCs are clear. ADCs are alternative to currently issued, traditional transcriptable learning verification and are directly relevant to current workforce needs. They are digital in character which means that they can be transmitted and stored in immediate digital fashion. Finally, their best use is to verify competencies rather than simple learning achievement.
The last use of ADCs is in the verification of actual competency or skill mastery rather than just a verification of learning. Competency is the application of learning to a specific skill/behavior rather than just knowledge.
This is an actual transcript of a student at UCI, showing his entire academic record. On this record is an entry, “Artificial Intelligence 171” and the student earned a B+. This entry may be of interest to employers but it is hardly useful in describing what the student learning in the course relevant to the job being offered. Except as evidence that a student persisted successfully to gain a degree, traditional transcripts are not useful to employers who are looking for specific skills.
Evidence that ADCs are indeed a higher education imperative is rapidly increasing. ADCs are already widely issued, especially by non-higher education institutions and several governments are adopting ADCs as central to higher education systems (New Zealand, Malta, Australia). As already indicated, traditional transcripts are less and less relevant to workforce demands for competency certification. ADCs fill in an important gap between learning and work relevant skill verification. The adoption of an ADC system will push universities toward greater alignment with the demands of both students and local economies, making universities more accountable for what they produce. Young adults are demanding shorter, relevant education that they can put to immediate use. The huge supply of open education available in the world represents a large opportunity for certification of competencies. Hiring practices of companies increasingly depend on digital searches for job candidates. ADCs make those competencies discoverable. ADCs are forming a system of standards and support, and employer acceptance of ADCs is increasing.
Selecting the criteria for the issuance of ADCs is the most important and nearly decision that must be made. The highest criteria involved is the verification of competencies, rather than learning achievement. Universities typically measure learning achievement by issuing grades. They are usually not skilled at verifying competencies—the application of learning to relevant practical applications. There will necessarily be a tension between competency-based ADCs and learning achievement based ADCs.
Any implementation plan should begin with the making of several decisions, listed here. The criteria for issuance has already been discussed. Icon design may seem out of place in the early decision making process, but it turns out to be important because it has to reflect the structure of the offering. Metadata content has already been discussed and is listed in the following slide again. Ultimately, universities have to select a particular platform offer the issuance and record keeping necessary for the service.
These are general guidelines for the development of an icon. As institutions consider what they want in a badge they will usually find that they want to distinguish between levels of competency. The obvious way to handle this situation is to have different shapes or colors for different types of badges. This can create some problems. One factor mitigating this issue is the fact that the metadata can describe the specific badge and its scope.
Before and as a detailed implementation plan is developed, these three activities should be engaged.
As a new movement, ADCs face some challenges that need careful monitoring by adopting institutions. Clearly, criteria for issuance have not been standardized or generally agreed upon. The iconography that defines ADCs is highly variable and often not descriptive. Further, the metadata to be included has not been generally defined or agreed upon.
As of September 3, 2019, UCI has issued 1991 skill badges, 1368 of which has been claimed and 821 that have been shared, primarily on LinkedIn.