Education Week - September 27, 2017 - 19

Rewarding
Fine-Tuned
Skills

asked to do to be successful in the labor market is changing. There are many more expectations of learning skills
throughout our lifetimes."
What that will look like for K-12, higher education, and
employers is varied. But the idea of credentialing is taking
hold in some form in all those arenas.
At the 40,000-student Aurora district, the digital
badging program arose from within its college- and
career-success department as a way to make students
aware of skills-like collaboration and information literacy-that businesses want from employees, while staying
rooted in the Colorado Academic Standards.
Building those badges and their requirements started
with discussions with local employers, said Charles Dukes,
the director of the college- and career-success department. The district consults with Colorado businesses,
which they call "endorsers," to make sure that the skills
needed to earn a badge also matter in the workplace.
"We had to talk with companies to find out what the
value of these badges would be," Dukes said. "One inHIGH SCHOOL SENIOR CHRISTOPHER EDIGER EARNED MORE dustry might need more collaboration, and another might
emphasize critical thinking."
than grades on a report card as he progressed through
Students collect their badges in a "digital backpack"
Colorado's Aurora school district. He was the first stuhosted on the credentialing platform Credly. Clicking on
dent in the district to earn all five of its digital summit
each badge allows a viewer to see artifacts that demonbadges, representing his talents in areas such as collabstrate a student's proficiency in a specific
oration, invention, and critical thinking.
area-that could be a video, an essay, or
But earning those badges wasn't just
By MICHELLE R. DAVIS
a blog entry, for example.
something to show off on his college
Some wonder, however, if schools,
résumé. They unlocked opportunities
with their more traditional, slow-todirectly related to the working world:
innovate models, are best-suited to take
a hands-on tour of a mobile television
on that type of endeavor to prepare stucompany, a writing class at the American
dents for an innovative workplace.
Museum of Western Art, and a three-week internship at a
"The notion of moving from curricula to active learnDenver architecture firm.
ing is discussed a lot, but it really hasn't been accepted
"The badges helped me understand that these are
in K-12," said Jim Hendler, the director of the Renssesought-after skills I'm learning," Ediger said.
laer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications, who
Aurora's digital badging program, which runs across
studies artificial intelligence and robots. "A lot of things
P-12, also offers recognition for more granular skills, like
happening in after-school clubs seem more relevant to
analysis and organization. The effort offers one way that
kids' futures than what they do in the classroom."
schools, employers, and groups working with students
may need to adapt their approach to preparing students
A PILOT PROJECT IN CHICAGO IS HIGHLIGHTING HOW
for the evolving work world.
credentialing can be used outside of school walls to help
This future workplace is likely to be one that comes
students gain workforce skills. The initiative is based on
with rapidly changing technology and skill needs, acwork by the nonprofit organization LRNG, which crecording to a Pew Research Center study released earlier
ated an open-badging and learning-platform program
this year on the future of jobs and job training. The report
that fashioned digital credentials of all sorts and grouped
cites a need for new ways to document employees' evolvthem with learning experiences into playlists allowing
ing skills and their professional learning, pointing to the
users to progress through learning and earn employment
idea of credentialing as one way to accomplish it.
opportunities.
The idea is that students, and employees, can't expect to
"Right now, the way school is set up, the only learning
earn a degree and be done with learning, said Justin Reich,
that counts is what happens in school and the credenthe director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
tials that gives," said Connie Yowell, the CEO for LRNG.
Teaching Systems Lab, who was interviewed about the fu"To keep up with shifts in the world of work, we have to
ture of work for the Pew study. (Reich also writes an opinion
be flexible and allow learning to happen in a variety of
blog hosted on edweek.org.)
places, and for it to count."
"We're in an era of rapid technological and social
LRNG badges were used this summer in Chicago in the
change," Reich said. "As a result, what people are being

Schools and employers are
taking a fresh view of digital
badges in preparing students

Schools & the Future of Work / www.edweek.org/go/futureofwork

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Education Week - September 27, 2017

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