“I foresee in 5 to 10 years any time you apply for a professional job a potential employer will look for your digital identity – your professional record.”
Digital credentials are being touted as the next disruptive revolution in education and recruitment. They have the potential to transform the way we interact with qualifications; how we attain, share and utilise them in our personal and professional lives.
The catch-all term 'digital credentials' which encompasses badges, achievements and qualifications are defined as: 'validated online indicators of accomplishments, skills, qualities or interests’.
It's important, however, to make a distinction between credentials and badges as they are not interchangeable.
Digital credentials are simply digital versions of traditional, pre-existing qualifications (e.g. university degree) but badges can be created from scratch by any company or organisation to recognise a specific achievement within that company - this means they have no legitimacy outside of the organisation that created it and can't be transferred to another job. That is until an agreed comparability framework is established between different organisations.
What is the disruptive potential?
The potential for digital credentials to disrupt the training and recruitment industries is huge. There are hundreds of business processes that can be improved as a result of implementing this technology. Some specific examples include:
What are the barriers to implementation?
The technologies that are required to start rolling out digital credentials are mostly operational. The major hurdles that need to be negotiated are issues surrounding cost, security, reliability and comparability. Some specific examples are:
How does the delivery method work?
The flowchart below describes the current delivery method for approving digital badges. As you can see there are safeguards in place to prevent badges from being awarded fraudulently. The institution that creates the badge decides what evidence is required and also who has the authority to review and approve that evidence.
tahdah is a software as a service platform that connects students, instructors and awarding bodies in one online space. Every day we help thousands of people fulfil their training commitments; both professionally and recreationally. What makes us different, however, is our dedication to verification and transparency.
From day one we have built our software around these principles in order to protect the legitimacy and integrity of our customer's awards and training records. That means that every qualification or award earned through tahdah is 100% verified.
This is why we are adamant in our belief that the emergence of digital credentials synergises with our platform in a multitude of ways.
Firstly, for people who are earning these credentials, what are they looking for? They want immediacy, they want reliable validation of what they’ve done, and they don’t want to have the paper stamped and sent someplace. They want a digital version of their credentials that’s authentic, reliable, transferable and understood to be authentic - tahdah can provide this service.
On the other hand, what are organisations looking for? They want to quickly and easily validate incoming students’ credentials. They care that students are presenting them accurate and reliable credentials with a minimum of bureaucratic obstacles - again, tahdah can provide this service.
We want to be at the forefront of the digital credential revolution. We are positioning our platform to make sure that we build our reputation as an efficient, popular and, most importantly, trusted delivery system.
If you would like to find out how our software can transform your organisation please contact our team using this link.