Data to Life: How Learning and Employment Records Tell Working Adult Students Whole Stories

Doris Savron, MBA, Vice Provost, Colleges, Assessment and Curriculum at University of Phoenix

Data Everywhere

As data governs more and more of our lives, understanding it all has become increasingly difficult: not only are data sources multiplying, but it's also becoming increasingly difficult to parse these records for accuracy. In other words, there’s a lot of data and we’re not sure if it’s correct.

In higher education, questions about data are more than just numbers and digital recordkeeping. Student’s accomplishments—from degrees and certificates to training and experience outside the classroom—need to be verifiable and easy to share, an important tool for pursuing career opportunities. This can be particularly challenging for a student body of working adults, whose career and education journeys are more likely to have taken them through a variety of institutions and businesses, each with their own disparate recordkeeping practices.

Meanwhile, employers struggle to parse applications from dozens of sources, all the while uncertain if the information they receive is up-to-date or even accurate. In a fragmented landscape of job boards and application portals, a singular reliable resource is more necessary than ever to connect businesses and employees for their mutual gain.

As an online higher education institution, University of Phoenix is uniquely situated to understand and respond to these difficulties. Our vision is to participate in the development of a seamless and interoperable Learning and Employment Record (LER) that empowers learners with experiences and tools that will enable them to pursue their goals and give employers a clearer picture of their capabilities. We aspire to provide our learners with the ability to present credentials of all kinds, including degrees, badges, skills and achievements outside of a classroom. An LER would allow these to be compiled together, a valuable resource for employers who seek competitive advantages through effective hiring and continuing knowledge management practices.

LERs will build on existing and emerging technology to provide learners with verifiable, secure and portable records of their education, achievements, employment history. These records will belong to the individual, giving them power and control over what they share and with whom; meanwhile, verification processes provide evidence that these records are accurate and up to date, streamlining hiring and providing them access to a diverse talent pool. These efforts do more than just address problems with data: they will transform data into actionable insights, allowing for better decision-making at every level—and fulfill data’s promise to tell every individual’s whole story.

“LERs will transform data into actionable insights, allowing for better decision-making at every level—and fulfill data’s promise to tell every individual’s whole story.”

Higher Ed 3.0

The current model of talent data is largely siloed: records for education, employment and training are stored across separate systems with limited accessibility, making it almost as difficult to share this data as it is with old-fashioned paper records—in fact, much of talent data is still analogue, highlighting that while data has become more and more important, it can still be hard to act upon, even for crucial decision-making. These inefficiencies are holding back learners and employers alike, who would be best served by a singular interoperable method of sharing trustworthy records—especially records that are owned by the individual whose experience they reflect, providing security and certainty for all stakeholders.

Innovative technology may allow for organizations—including University of Phoenix—to reinvent how these records are verified and shared. By capitalizing on Web 3.0 data types, LERs are designed to transform analogue records and artifacts into portable, verifiable and actionable data. This is accomplished by converting artifacts (that is, previous records like diplomas, digital badges and certificates, transcripts and skills data) into the Web 3.0 data format of JSON-LD, which are packaged together into verifiable credentials that cannot be altered or tampered with. These can be stored in registries, open libraries that house copies and descriptions of these records to be referenced and understood by third parties like employers.

Even more important than what an LER is, is what an LER does. When many stakeholders align on using these LERs, they will participate in creating an entire ecosystem: issuers like schools share records across secure channels, all of them into an individual’s digital “wallet,” which acts as a comprehensive repository of all a learners’ achievements. This wallet is similar to the one used in cryptocurrency, providing security and accuracy; but it also evokes an actual physical wallet, one that its owner has complete control over.

Moreover, every stakeholder in an LER ecosystem—higher ed institutions, businesses, verifiers, registries—understand that the records they create may be immediately and seamlessly shared and trusted. This is not only highly efficient, but highly transparent: the individual who shares their records is assured that those they share it with can see the entire scope of their work and accomplishments, never doubting their authenticity and understanding them in the context of everything that person has achieved. In other words, not only is the record accurate and easy to understand, but also complete: a data-accurate representation of the person behind the record.

From LER to the Future

Many organizations are working to develop LERs and the necessary standards but have yet to achieve full implementation. We believe University of Phoenix is uniquely situated to meet this goal first: We have created a baseline learner record that includes courses, programs and skills assessments/achievements, as well as robust records of student degrees, validated skills and digital badges. We have a variety of solutions, including the Career Navigator platform, all of which can bring together career-focused tools in a user-friendly interface where students and alumni can easily learn about various career options, plan their next steps, assess their skills and explore job opportunities that align with their program and goals.

We are pursuing an LER ecosystem that can provide even more than an immediate solution that would benefit learners and employers alike: it can become the framework and foundation for a host of future-proofed data solutions. As partners join the ecosystem, they can bring their own data and innovation into the process; other solutions, such as AI, can continue to enrich the ecosystem and provide even more value for our students and employer alliances.

A robust LER ecosystem is more than just the next step: it is a tool that can be used to create more and more innovation, to serve all stakeholders, well into the future of work.