Unbundling higher education is becoming a reality and it has undeniable advantages to today’s lifelong learners, and so does the availability of short learning programmes and online MOOCs. These more agile means of education are more suitable, in their size and format, to address quickly emerging new skills and competencies (and their unique combinations) demanded by the labour market. Despite all these trends and developments several issues – such as concern about data protection and privacy, lack of trust in online learner authentication & assessment and the missing of commonly approved standards and mechanisms to facilitate the validation and recognition of digital credentials – cause a serious bottleneck to progress. The ECCOE project presents a solution to many of these problems with the perspectives of learners, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and employers in mind in equal measure, and seek to gain support from decision makers on institutional, regional, national and EU level to make digital credential recognition and transfer practicable.
Higher Ed Institutions
are able to benefit directly from the ECCOE activities and public results. HEI representatives were closely involved in the project by collecting and analysing their courses and modules in the frame of the IO3 work, attending our multiplier events and joining peer reviews of our draft outputs.
Learners
are able to have their skills and competences more closely viewed by the application of course and module level credentialisation. Consequently they can communicate their skills and qualifications more effectively when looking for a learning or job opportunity.
Employers
are able to see the potential benefits that standardised credential documentation provided through the ECCOE credential metadata. Representatives of the labour market were invited to test the credentials stored in the ECCOE-System for transparency and recognisability.
