“Digital Credentials: A Better Way Capture And Communicate Learning,” by Tom Vander Ark, in Forbes

“Credentialed demonstrations of mastery will eventually replace most of conventional grading and transcripting. In some places, that will unlock opportunities to learn from multiple providers creating faster, cheaper, more flexible and personalized learning pathways. Credentials will become better signals of capabilities and, as they become more portable, will make employment more equitable.

“Better credentials won’t tell the whole story. Learners should also be collecting artifacts of their best work and honing their storytelling skills so they can make the best case for themselves—by showing, telling, and sharing verified credentials.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

At one extreme—the standardized end of the spectrum—is the grade-transcript model.

At the other end of the extreme—the non-standardized end of the spectrum—is a Wild West of credentials, issued by anyone for any reason with no necessary reference to external or objective benchmarks.

In between are new credentials that:

• Point to clear, consistent, and coherent definitions or descriptions of mastery.

• Are “clickable” (ie, consist of one or more layers of metadata about assessments, performance, and more information).

• Link to portfolios of curated work (ie, a story about growth and capability).

The Mastery Transcript Consortium is just one place enabling this future.

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“New college opening with degrees with no subjects,” by Sean Coughlan, on BBC.com

“A new higher education institution is opening in London next autumn which will not teach traditional separate subjects - but will be able to award its own degrees.

“Rather than offering conventional degree subjects, such as history or physics, there will be a single three-year degree course focusing on global issues, such as climate change, with the aim of ‘cutting across disciplines’.

“Students will all take a combined arts and science course aimed at teaching problem-solving skills.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

We are still at the infancy of a shift away from single disciplines and single discipline-based departments, but these early adopters in London are building an important proof point for a future of learning in which transdisciplinary work will be the core, not just a capstone project or independent study.

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“Could Entrepreneurship Programs Someday Replace Their Colleges?” by Gary A. Bolles, in EdSurge News

“As Clay Christensen says in The Innovator’s Dilemma, successful organizations can’t get out of their own way exactly because they have a model that has worked for them in the past. Because sustainable innovation rarely happens at the core of the organization, as my friend John Hagel at Deloitte says, you must begin by innovating at the edge. That means an initiative that’s not tied to the organization’s traditional business model, encouraging entrepreneurial thinkers to come up with radical new approaches, potentially scaling the new model to the point where it can dramatically influence the current organization—or even subsume it.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

At a time when COVID-19 is siphoning school leaders’ attention from innovating internally, look to the edges of your ecosystem for innovations that won’t disrupt your infrastructure.

For example, Expeditions enable schools to offer innovative programming to students that would be too expensive and that would take too long to build in-house. In addition, our partners send teachers to observe how we design and facilitate the experience.

Whether it’s through Expeditions or some other “innovation from the edge,” now is the time to experiment with things that will eventually lead you to new business models and a sustainable future.

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