From Badges to Trust: The Future of Learning and Unlocking Potential with Open Recognition

In this interview, Dan McFadyen and Don Presant, President of Learning Agents discuss open recognition, evolving from digital badges to broader trust systems. Don highlights open recognition’s importance in validating learning, performance, and community involvement. He explains how it encapsulates stories in badges, unlocking opportunities in careers and learning. They delve into how Learning Agents assists organisations in deploying digital credentials, helping to overcome challenges by providing flexible recognition frameworks. The conversation also touches on the difficulty of assessing “durable skills” and the potential of platforms like SkillsAware to assist individuals in articulating their capabilities.

• 00:01:10 - Why Open Recognition Matters in Today’s Learning Landscape
• 00:07:21 - Connecting Evidence of Learning Outcomes to Real-World Value
• 00:12:31 - Learning Agents’ Journey to Creating Trust and Transparency in Open Recognition
• 00:18:14 - Global Collective Efforts in Building Skills Recognition Ecosystems
•  00:27:10 - Recognition and Reconciliation: Learning from First Nations Perspectives
• 00:33:48 - ePIC in Paris – Shaping the Future of Open Recognition
• 00:40:24 - The Future of Open Recognition: AI Technology, Skills Literacy, and Lifelong Learning

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Credentials just got personal - Unleash the power of your skills data and personal credentials

Credentialate is the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform that helps discover and share evidence of workplace skills.

Find out more at: edalex.com/credentialate
Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/edalex
Follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjTzWgfUthHonR7Z5LatKGQ

Transcript

Dan McFadyen (DMcF) – Hi, I’m Dan McFadyen. I’m Managing Director at Edalex and also Director at SkillsAware. It’s my great pleasure to be joined today by Don Presant. Don is the President of Learning Agents, which he founded in 2000 with a vision to connect individuals with skills and careers using innovative educational technologies. Don is a global leader in the open recognition space, a consultant in digital credentialing initiatives, and a service provider. In 2016, Learning Agents launched CanCred, bringing the established Open Badge Factory, or OBF digital credential technologies to Canada, designed by Canadians for Canadians. Don, thank you so much for joining me today.

Don Presant (DP) – My pleasure to be here. Thanks very much for inviting me.

Chapter 1 – Why Open Recognition Matters in Today’s Learning Landscape

DMcF – Now, it’s wonderful to have a discussion with you. So, look, we’ve got a lot to cover off today, so, I think let’s dive right in. So, kicking off, you’re known around the world for your expertise and insights in the open recognition space. You describe yourself as a proud badge nerd. So what is open recognition and why is it important?

DP – So I’ve sort of come at this over the years through edtech. I began at TVOntario back in the day. I started there in about 1989. I like to say I dragged them kicking and screaming onto the internet when they were still more concerned with the 500-channel satellite cable universe. I told them, “There’s this thing called the Internet that you might want to know about. That was great for a while and then it wasn’t.. So I left there in 2000 and was looking around for what to do. And an ex-colleague from TV Ontario basically advised me: “Get into career stories telling people’s career stories because it’s very hot right now.” So I got into that and I did these multimedia bios called Career Destination Manitoba and similar projects illustrating career pathways with real people.. And then I got more and more interested in the notion of portfolios – telling your own career story as it’s evolving. So I got involved in ePortfolios. I like to tell people that it’s a very sad story, but my honeymoon was at an ePortfolio conference… but it was in France, in La Rochelle and I’m still married, and did manage to reproduce. And gosh, the conference is back in Paris this year. And now I’m now co-producing the conference.

DMcF – So that’s not a sad story at all then!

DP – Exactly, yeah, it starts outside, I guess. Anyway, so, basically, that’s – I got involved in recognition through that. So recognition of what you know and can do and ways of assembling evidence around that. But over the years I got a little frustrated with I would say mostly academic approaches to ePortfolios where there was on, basically a learning portfolio. And it’s almost like a torture chamber for students where they had to reflect, reflect, reflect, reflect, and then, you know, they couldn’t wait to escape it, etc. So, and it wasn’t really something that … it wasn’t fulfilling its promise – became just another academic title. So, roll along to 2011. Mozilla invents open badges for me. Sometimes I call that the singularity because all of a sudden you could do something over here. And whether that’s learning, whether that’s performance, whether that’s something in the community, you could have that story encapsulated in a badge and then you could carry it forward to new opportunities, unlocking new learning, unlocking careers, unlocking… maybe just a larger role in your community. 

So for me, that was like – that was ePortfolio in bite sized pieces – much more accessible, much more progressive, more visible. And so it’s very exciting – the days of Chicago City of Learning, etc., back in the day. So that was basically when I drank the Kool Aid and brought actually badges to the ePortfolio conference. So I’m starting to help program it. Mozilla came to the ePIC conference in 2012. Doug Belshaw had just joined Mozilla at the time and so he was telling people about these badges, etc. and it’s grown like Topsy. It’s grown at that conference like a virus. I sometimes say, you know, in a good way.

DMcF – I was going to say, we have to maybe clarify this good / bad – good virus, right? Yeah. Okay.

DP – And over the years, it’s evolved so that open badges were a flexible container for recognition and that – it was a very interesting way to talk about notions of recognition. And so over the years, it’s become more and more about recognition and less about the badges themselves. It’s more about the practices of recognition. So the badges, which can be micro-credentials, can be non-formal badges, can be informal badges, they’re just containers for recognition. That’s the way myself and the other people in this community I belong to now this international community, that’s the way we think of it. So “Open Recognition” is something that is can include formal recognition, can include credit – based recognition, can also include workplace-based recognition, can include recognition in the community, can be interpersonal recognition. So the idea is just to be clear about what you’re recognising and then backing that up, having a justification for what you’re saying because it’s very transparent.

DMcF – Mm hmm. And when you say Interpersonal Recognition, can you expand on it? What do you mean by that?

DP – Well, for example, I’ll give you an non-formal example. First, we’re working with la COFA, and they were actually at last year’s ePIC. They’re the Ontario Coalition of Adult Educators in Ontario for minority francophones. So they’ve developed a competency framework for adult educators, professional competency framework, and they are encouraging their workforce in Ontario to challenge for badges and say, I think I have the evidence to demonstrate the skill at this level. And here it is. And here is a colleague who says I have that skill. So it’s an endorsement by a colleague, so that’s a non-formal example, but it can also just be, thank you for helping me and I issue this badge on a sort of a person-to-person basis to say that you made a difference for me. Mozilla, actually MozFest, they had a whole activity built around that one year at the MozFest. I recognise you for this, I recognise you for that.

Chapter 2 – Connecting Evidence of Learning Outcomes to Real-World Value

DMcF – Brilliant, brilliant. Well, so there’s so many themes that you’ve touched on already – I’d like to dive into one particular area and explore recognition a bit more and layer in some market research that we commissioned that revealed that only 33% of North American college graduates feel comfortable voicing their own skills during their during their first job search. And yet we have an increasing emphasis and switch across from the employer perspective towards skills-based hiring. So where do you see open recognition, digital credentials? You mentioned micro-credentials as well. So where do you see these tools, technologies, approaches fitting in, and supporting and enabling skills-based hiring?

DP – Well, it’s interesting that whole skills-based hiring thing, I think it’s still somewhat it’s still achieving that plateau of productivity on the Gartner hype curve – somewhat. I think we’re getting there and closer every year, right? It seems to sort of make more sense. There are more people showing up who seem to understand where it’s at. I think the skills business, a lot of it… skills – I have mixed feelings about a skills-first ecosystem because sometimes it’s technology first, sometimes it’s courses first. Take this course, then you’ll have the skill and it’s something you put on your forehead and you know, you can fill up these skills and we know it doesn’t work like that. I think a lot of skills out there are durable skills. 

So really I think it’s about performance. I think employers are less concerned by skills than they are. “Can this person help me get stuff out the door?” or “Can they grow with me over time?” “Can they help … Can they help my company grow?” “Can they help my company learn?” So those things are a little more holistic and a little more based on… That’s where you get into the weeds of the detail of the tasks and what kind of tasks can you help with and what are the details of that. That’s why they talk about learning being very contextual, right?

The other issue with skills is if it’s SAP, that’s pretty clear. If it’s communication, what do you mean? If it’s leadership, what aspect of leadership are you talking about? So I sometimes say those durable skills, it’s like trying to stack jellyfish because regardless, they get defined in different ways and they kind of morph into each other. So really what it comes out to being is what can you do? What are your capabilities with those skills? And the skills are part of it, but it’s also your knowledge. It’s also your context. Maybe you have a skill and you can’t do it in your workplace because it’s just there’s no capacity in the workplace to accommodate that skill.

DMcF – But yeah, it sounds like with Open Recognition, it can be not only from workplace activity and experience and demonstration of your skills, but through volunteering, through hobbies, through travel, through, you know, all sorts of.

DP – So my colleague Serge Ravet is a bit of a thought leader in this area, and he was keynoting… at – I’m on the board of the Canadian Association for Prior Learning – and we invited him over from France to our annual conference that was in Nova Scotia just a couple of months ago. And he was talking about contexts that would be formal, non-formal and informal, and also macro, meso and micro. So the micro would be person-to-person. The meso would be the institution or the organisation, workplace, etc. The macro could be the region or the society or whatever, you know, thing you’re trying to do. And it’s a really interesting way of setting up a grid. And then you can talk about things that, okay, this one would be sort of a meso non-formal type of recognition that could be useful. And the point of that is that it should be possible to move from formal or meso to social, you know, the macro. It should be possible to move from informal to maybe even non-formal and maybe even formal as a way of saying – so, for example, I’m a health professional. That’s great. I have all those hard skills and, you know, I did my internship, but how am I working with First Nations communities? That was something that BCcampus back in the day was experimenting with. Maybe those hard skills are great. But if you’re going to alienate the people you’re working with, then that’s not really going to help you.

DMcF – Absolutely not.

Chapter 3 – Learning Agents’ Journey to Creating Trust and Transparency in Open Recognition

DMcF – Yeah, interesting. And then switching gears a little bit and referring coming back to the history that you shared around your involvement with the badging community and perhaps one of the OG members, given you’ve been following it and participating in it – what, since the last 15 years or so – so, you and Learning Agents help organisations on their own journeys to deploy open badges and digital credentials. How does that work? Do people get it? What challenges do people face from the organisation, and then also the recipients?

DP – Well, I mean, you get a lot of variation. There still needs to be more awareness. I think you get the people who think of them as pretty picture stickers. There you go – That’s great. They don’t really think about the metadata that’s inside. I think there’s a chance to tell a story inside a badge, and it doesn’t have to be a long story, but it should be a compelling story. And there should be evidence to back that story up, right? In the form of either a good narrative and the endorsement or actual direct evidence. Then there are people going the other direction. It has to be, you know, rigour, quality has to be, you know, accredited, etc.. And I think that is again, that’s a piece of the puzzle. It’s not the whole puzzle. So you can have that, but you need more. 

So between those two poles, sometimes people get their account and somehow they’re stuck – the blank page syndrome. So a lot of what we do is … we’re kind of known for helping people get started. So we’ll set up the account for them. We’ll populate it with model badges or badge templates that are based on a flexible recognition framework that we’ve developed over the years working with clients such as ILO, Inter-American Development Bank and others. And so there’ll be certifications or credentials, but there’ll also be webinars or self-paced courses where you could bang away at the answers until you got them or somewhere in the middle could be applied learning, learning in the workplace. So work internships, work-based learning, assembling evidence packages and maybe those are evaluated and maybe those aren’t. So what we can give people is a collection of these things as starting points that they can say, Oh, okay, I see how to get started now. Even if they change them, they’ve actually got… it’s a stick in the sand, something they can start with.

DMcF – Brilliant – and I think you’ve partially answered this already but, but do organisations tend to have challenges around the durable skills or is that easier for them or a bit more concrete… You mentioned, technical skills around SAP or any other technology versus some of these durable or human skills might be a little bit harder to point out.

DP – Yeah, so durable skills, they’re the most important according to people like World Economic Forum and they’re the hardest to assess the hardest to have developed. They’re the hardest to move out of the original context, right? Back in the early days, you know, a lot of people were, you know, developing these little self-paced courses on communication or teamwork or whatever. And how much would be retained by anybody from that. It’s very much a cookie cutter approach, and where we’re trying to get people to go is to think in terms of what an employer would want. An employer wants to know that you’re not a psycho, that you’re going to show up on time, you’re going to have a certain amount of resilience. You’re going to be able to solve problems, but also not be afraid to reach out and ask others and help others. And how do they get at that? You know, is it courses? You know, you have these courses on it that wouldn’t really impress me very much. It’s more about demonstration that you’ve done it. 

So that’s one of the reasons I’m excited working with SkillsAware, for example, is the tons of examples that somebody can start tweaking on and start pulling events out of their past. So it’s like a friend of mine says, it’s not what you know, it’s what you can think of in time. Well, ideally, if you can prepare some of these stories in advance for those kinds of behavioral interviews or situational interviews about possible situations in the future.

DMcF – Well, and that really dovetails with that market research that I flagged earlier that most graduates just they don’t have that vocabulary they don’t have that language of their own skills. And certainly, when you put a socioeconomic lens on it or other factors that make it even more challenging, if someone hasn’t grown up hearing that sort of language. And so verbal skills and teamwork and collaboration or leadership… critical thinking. So that is part of that part of our collective challenge. So yeah, wonderful to hear what you’re doing in that regard.

Chapter 4 – Global Collective Efforts in Building Skills Recognition Ecosystems

DMcF – And then diving in a little bit more on Learning Agents and your solutions. So CanCred Factory is a part of that. And as I said in the intro that, you know, by Canadians for Canadians, I noticed the very traditional Canadian architecture in the background. Now I think we’ll come back to that a little bit later because that might not be from Canada. But yeah, tell us about CanCred Factory and what the history is and how that fits in and the value of that for your clients?

DP – Yeah, it’s kind of related to what I was talking about with bringing badges to the ePIC conference. So badges started being presented at the ePIC conference and our current partners, Open Badge Factory Solutions, was known by another name at the time they were coming to these conferences because they were using the Mahara platform. They had forked the Mahara platform. They had an ePortfolio platform in Finland that was serving the educational system in Finland, it was called Kyvyt. But then, they heard about these open badges and then they started developing a solution around it. And I started talking to Eric Rousselle, who was with Open Badge Factory Solutions, and we set up this partnership in Canada in 2016, and we’re actually the only one in the world to have this. Basically those – that same technology on Canadian servers for the Canadian context. And at one point people didn’t necessarily seem all that impressed by the Canadian part but actually recently it’s become a little more important to have a Canadian technology solution.

DMcF – Absolutely, and they said it with such great concern around data sovereignty, that is just increasingly important stuff.

Fantastic. Brilliant. And then you’ve mentioned SkillsAware, I’ve mentioned it as well, so, earlier this year, both Edalex and SkillsAware we’ve been thrilled to partner with Learning Agents and it really brings such great opportunities and excitement from our side. But one of the key areas that we’re seeing a lot of interest and traction in is our RPL or PLAR just by different acronyms all around the world – lots of letters. And what is that? What does it mean? Why is it important? And then, what opportunities do you see for platforms like SkillsAware, to play in that space.

DP – I mean, this goes back to what I was talking about, you know, portfolio conferences and things like that. For me, the doorway was recognition and what’s often called recognition or prior learning or in the States, they call it these days Credit for Prior Learning, which is a term I’m not crazy about, because it’s about more than credit. And in fact it’s about more than prior learning. It’s a lens on learning. So it’s a lens that says you can develop your skills not just by taking a course, you can develop them experientially. And often that’s a better way of doing it. So for example, with the durable skills that we’ve been talking about – so, you have all sorts of people looking at this. Internationally they have something called VPL – Validation of Prior Learning. It’s an inclusive term that can include credit transfer and to some extent maybe even external credit, i.e. coming from the industry sector. 

So, you know, a manager of a McDonald’s Management Program could be selected for credit and sort of brought into the system. But most importantly, I think, what most people think about it, is that it’s PLAR, Prior Learning Assessment Recognition or what they call it, sometimes called APEL Assessment or Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning in Europe. And basically, it’s looking at what you’ve got and trying to figure out what skills are embedded in that and how those could be applied – typically to the needs of a program or the needs of an admission to an institution. And there are some limitations around that. What if you’ve got some great learning but there are no programs to do with it in the institution? You’re kind of out of luck.

So where we come at it is those principles can be applied to anything, it doesn’t have to map to a program. So that’s part of that openness, right? Is, if you have skills, how can we help you cluster those skills in interesting ways that might help you take the next step in your life, whether it’s in the community, in the workplace, or in post-secondary education and people, like – there’s some real thought leaders are out there around this. Nan Travers is one that comes to mind. She’s sort of a doyenne of recognition of learning and that’s actually what she calls it now, is just recognition of learning. She took the prior out and she talks about what – recognising not just what we cherish, but recognising what the person brings. So, in other words, if we just cherish this program, if you’ve got that breadth, you should be bringing that to us and enriching us in both directions.

DMcF – That’s great. And really, any tool that helps enable this process and get that – get people thinking about this, the skills and then elicit information and gather the evidence and compile that and support that, is going to help the two thirds of us who are struggling with the vocabulary, with the language, and ultimately with the proof.

DP – Yeah, exactly. And going back to Portfolio time. So I often said, wouldn’t it be great if you had a study buddy, a recognition buddy that could help you and say, “Well, no, you did something last week. Don’t you remember doing that?” You know, somebody you can see ourselves as others see us, right? That’s, you know, that Robbie Burns thing.

So basically, you know, you have PLAR advisors who help people. But the trouble is PLAR advisors don’t typically have the breadth of knowledge of the world of work to effectively help a person in every sector, every kind of person who’s going to come in the door. Maybe they can help people because they came from the health sector so they could help somebody who wants to get into long-term care, but they don’t know anything about construction. So if somebody has done sort of carpentry work on worksites or done general labour on worksites, they can’t work with them and figure out where that’s going. 

So the power for me of the SkillsAware, I’m getting quite excited about it because I’ve been working my log – with my recently acquired login and playing with it and starting to upload evidence – it helps me because it prompts me, then starts telling me, okay, this skill needs a little more evidence here. Here are some suggestions for some things you can put in there, but you can also keep the human in the loop so that PLAR advisor can be still at that person’s side, still encouraging them and activating them and helping them with that confidence. Meanwhile, you have this sort of breadth of the world of work that’s been sort of that the whole system has been trained on with all those skills that have been developed over the years in partnership with industry over – what is it, four decades. So it’s very exciting to be working with it.

DMcF – Perfect, that’s right. And yeah, and you mentioned transferable skills and durable skills. And one of the early projects that we’re working on, that’s really exciting for us, is working with a group of veterans who are transitioning from active duty into civilian lives. Then again, just as, just as most people have challenges describing their skills – skills earned and developed in a military context – they don’t necessarily know how that corresponds. And so what industry you’re talking about going from construction to another industry. So construction might be the destination for some of these veterans or… cookery or aged care or the whole range of different areas where they have these amazing skills and abilities and yet they just don’t know how to recognise it. So yeah we’re like likewise, really excited about that potential.

Chapter 5: Recognition and Reconciliation: Learning from First Nations Perspectives

DMcF – Let’s pivot to a different topic, but a critical one nonetheless. One of the areas, a passion area for you is around supporting First Nations communities, especially concepts such as reconciliation and clearly, recognition. And it’s something that we’re very passionate about as well. Can you tell us more around that?

DP – Sure. But I should preface these remarks by saying I’m an old white guy. Okay, so bear that in mind. Okay.

DMcF – Not old, but OK.

DP – Thank you – you’re very kind. I came to Winnipeg in 2000 from Toronto, and it was a shock to me because in Toronto, indigenous people are – they’re just below the surface. You come to Winnipeg, it’s already… it’s like… I think it’s something like 12, 13% of the population, very visible. All of them are very visbily there. Wow – I had no idea.

So there’s a national columnist called Niigaan Sinclair, who calls Winnipeg “Ground Zero for Reconciliation” because the population is so high. There’s Winnipeg, there’s Regina, and then the other communities in Western Canada sort of drop off quite quickly. And so a number of tribal groups and also, of course, the whole Métis thing – I don’t know if you remember hearing about Louis Riel. I’m not sure he would have made it down south in terms of what – but basically was the founder of Manitoba and then he was hung, 15 years later for transgressing in the settler wars. And then the Métis fell on very hard times. And then of course, we have the Inuit up north. So huge, very troubled history of initial settler depredations, what they call the residential schools. So that’s what led to this Truth and Reconciliation initiative: residential schools, which are essentially set up for cultural genocide to kill the Indian in the child and, you know, huge intergenerational trauma. Hundreds of unmarked graves across the country, just all kinds of abuse, really bad.
And then the sixties scoop, where there were, again, another form of cultural genocide, scooping these kids that they figure shouldn’t be with their parents and then placing them, you know, sending them down, down south, to the States even, to be raised. So there’s a lot of stuff to work through. 

So Truth and Reconciliation is something that was set up in Canada, kind of based on what happened in South Africa. And there was a Justice Murray Sinclair, who was actually the father of Niigaan Sinclair, who oversaw this. And they came up with, I think it was 94 challenges for Truth and Reconciliation that people should be working through. And so possibly similar to Australia, New Zealand, you know, where there’s some recognition of what’s happened, it’s actually quite well developed in Canada. And among the things that have come out of it, is that indigenous people are not like settler people. They often have a different way of approaching life, a different way of looking around them a different way… They talk a lot about land-based learning. They talk a lot about connection between people, the seven generations before, the seven generations after. The notion of… you mentioned something earlier, the notion of talking about yourself and bragging about yourself is actually painful to some people. 

My colleague Susan Forseille wanted to bring an elder who achieved his Masters because they are decolonising their recognition of prior learning at Thompson Rivers University. It was basically a big problem for him to brag about himself. So he brought the people to where he was, talked about the things that he worked on and was there with other people talking about him. And so it was a little more comfortable for him. Meanwhile, he had set up one of the first sort of treaty challenges for his First Nation – in all of Canada – successful treaty challenge. So he is like a very smart person and a very driven person – so definitely deserved it. But again, it just wasn’t coming from that space.

So we’ve been very happy to welcome indigenous perspectives on recognition at the ePIC conference in Europe. But it’s kind of weird because that’s where all the settlers came from. So we’ve had people come from Australia, from New Zealand, from Canada, still trying to get some from the States. But my dream is to set up a spinoff conference right here in Winnipeg called Recognition and Reconciliation, where people could bring their stories… because right here, this is what they call Turtle Island North America, and we’re the centre of Turtle Island. We’re Ground Zero for Reconciliation. What better place to have it? And I have tons of ideas on how to do that, but I’m a little limited by being an old white guy, so I’ve got to find a good partner to do that. So Indigenous people won’t have to go to settler Valhalla to talk about the way they look at recognition.

DMcF – Don, thank you for your work and what you and your colleagues are doing in that space – it’s certainly an area that we’re passionate about. We’ve done a number of Indigenous related projects both here in Australia but also in North America and tribes that span the modern country divides between the US and Canada so…

DP – Oh, that’s right, yeah. You’re working with the Blackfoot in far western Canada.

DMcF – Yeah. So it is something and we see countries like New Zealand that have historically done really well – relatively well in that area – but I think it’s an opportunity for all of us to learn from each other and learn from these First Nations communities and become better, better individuals and people in general. So, yeah, keep up the good work in that area.

Chapter 6: ePIC in Paris – Shaping the Future of Open Recognition

DMcF – Now, so you’ve referenced a few times here in Winnipeg, but again, I look in the background and I see the Eiffel Tower there… so what’s going on? Do you have a plan to shift that across to Canada? Or…

DP – Well, yeah, I can make it Winnipeg if you like. So basically this conference I’ve been going every year since 2004, and as I mentioned, I’m starting to co-produce it etc. We had it in Paris last year. It’s in Paris again this year. The mothership ePIC conference will always be in Europe. So it’s in Paris again this year and we’re trying to lure people from all over to come to it. I’m usually pretty successful in getting some Canadians to come across, some Americans to come across, but also people from the UK, people from further afield. 

Certainly we get a very strong Australian contingent coming. I mentioned last year we had some people from New Zealand talking about Maori ways of recognition – that was an amazing session actually – and that person has as mentioned, that she’s interested in helping with the Recognition and Reconciliation one. But this year we are following on from something called the Paris Declaration on the Equality of Recognition. So in other words, formal, non-formal informal ones, not necessarily better than another. It’s about a tapestry of recognition for the fabric of life. So there will be something about what’s called the Manifesto, the Open Recognition Manifesto. That’s a session that my friend and colleague Serge Ravet is going to be running and a number of other ones.

We’re also going to have a Recognition Challenge which – actually wearing another hat. I want to get you to look at from the point of view of Edalex and SkillsAware – I think that could be kind of cool. And what was the other? Oh, yeah. Well, another theme we’re exploring, a couple of things. 

One theme we’re exploring is the notion of embedded recognition practitioners and the different levels of that function in organisations. So if somebody can recognise themselves, that’s a start. Somebody can help recognise peers, that’s a help. Somebody can be a little more professional about it and talk about using a recognition of work-based learning as in a more professional way. So we’re working up a whole sort of competency framework or practice framework for doing that, that we’re going to be looking for people’s feedback on. AFNOR – the Standards Association in France, kind of like Canadian Standards Association. I don’t know what they have in Australia is that the ASA or something? So AFNOR in France is developing a standard for open recognition from which we at least hope to get some good definitions about the various terms. 

And what was the other thing? Yeah, I’m trying to work up a panel on funders – and what they’re trying to do and how they’re sort of trying to do it and what lessons they’ve learned along the way, because they’re essentially trying to innovate at a distance. You know, they can give people the money and then sort of watch as they hopefully do something good or maybe not so good and maybe there are some unintended consequences, etc. So I thought we’d have something on funders this time around. But other than that, it’s just people submitting proposals for sessions, for clinics that could be working out a problem, for workshops that would be more like, “Here’s our process, let’s take you through it”. And or we even have some sort of quick, I mentioned the panels, but also some quick pop-up plenaries. So we have one of the founders of Acccredible is coming, and he’ll be talking about how he got into the digital credential business and that basically…

DMcF – Yeah, yes, well I know my colleagues Margo Griffith at Edalex and Yasmin King at SkillsAware have both attended and I think they both are quite protective of their attendance. They have submitted their proposals. Yes, that has something to do with the setting, but obviously a wonderful setting. But all the topics that you’ve described are fantastic.

DP – We’re actually right about there, near the Eiffel Tower.

DMcF – Brilliant, so how do people find out more? So it’s ePIC – e – P – I – C,

DP – So, epic dot openrecognition dot org, and you can still submit a proposal, although now more for presentation than anything else. We’re still accepting a few of those and you can – on that website you can also see the proceedings from 2024 which should give you a great idea of the kinds of things that are talked about. So for example, AFNOR was talking about setting up this project for standardisation. And we also have LAiSER – that one about the Rosetta Stone for skills, so, we had those folks across – Groningen Declaration Network was there AACRAO – the US Registrar association was talking about how they’re developing sort of a network for this and we’re actually linked with them. Serge is going to be going on to their conference in Oslo the week after. We’re trying to say, “Hey, if you’re going over for that, come over for us.”

DMcF – Why not? Hang out in Europe a little longer. That’s fantastic. And see, I haven’t been able to attend, but the feedback from those who have is, it’s a very unique conference and the individuals, but just the discussions and the workshops, and it’s unique and really gives people some great insights. But then it’s also what people take away and then the follow ups and then the initiatives that are that have come out of it. So congratulations for your wonderful work with ePIC

DP – Well, thank you – It’s a labour of love. I’ve spent far too much time on it, but it’s hard to stop.

Chapter 7 – The Future of Open Recognition: AI Technology, Skills Literacy, and Lifelong Learning

DMcF – Wonderful, wonderful – look, there’s so many more topics I would love to dive into, but we’re almost out of time, so I’ll ask you as a badge nerd to gaze into your crystal ball. So I always love to ask the questions at the end around predictions. So, in terms of, open recognition and again, the past 15 years of badging technology, but obviously recognition goes well back before that. But then looking forward, so where do you think we’ll be with open recognition in the next three, five years – pick a timeframe, yeah.

DP – Well, I was working on a project a couple of years back for ILO, the International Training Center of the ILO, and recommending that they add… Well, they asked for it, recommending a sort of a non-formal, informal add-on to their sort of credentialing framework, which is not ECTS. But, you know, quite formal. So I was doing that, and laying it on there and I was talking about – then basically there was a presentation around it and I developed a slide that I still use that I was just using in a webinar for the C3 webinar series back in March. 

And basically, it puts the different players out there. You have the individuals, you know, individuals – candidates, you have employers, you have educators. And I included policymakers and funders, and they all have, you know, we’re all trying to make the world a better place. And we all have these ideas about how things can be structured. And yet, you know, Margo and Wendy Palmer, her colleague Wendy Palmer, like talking about the messy middle of this, just, you know, this mess. So I think what’s really exciting is the AI part of that because I was looking forward to AI is sort of helping that with, you know, things trained with some structure. So for example, competency frameworks, you know, the skills from the Australian training system and things like that. But then the mess of whatever you’re doing and ways of interpreting that. So finding your way in that messy middle, I’m starting to see that, with the SkillsAware. It’s early days yet, right? It’s not perfect yet. I think things are going to happen in smaller areas first and sort of expand out from there with really good use cases and ways of learning from that. But I think a lot of it is more than technologies. 

People have to understand. It’s that skills literacy issue, in other words, talking about skills, talking about performance in a way that makes sense, that’s not based on a course, it’s based on, okay, what have you done? What can you do for me and how can you demonstrate that and how can you, once you’re with me, how can you get better at what you’re doing? And can I help you? Can I help you do that? So, for example, we’re working with a manufacturing consortium here in Canada, and they have this, what’s sometimes called Work Applied Learning, which is basically we’re making an improvement in the workplace we’re going to build a team around it. So it could be what they sometimes call a Kaizen blitz in manufacturing, right? You get a team, you identify a problem – current state, future state – okay, let’s solve those problems and people come away from it having learned a ton – the company is better, so it’s learnt, yeah, and it’s authentic. It’s not just a course. So that’s my dream. And I’m starting to see it starting to see it happen, as I’ve been saying.

DMcF – That’s wonderful – and again, you’ve touched on this as well. But then looking at individuals and their journey from the learn to earn lifecycle and process – and it is a lifelong, or it should be a lifelong one, like lifewide, so where do you see – yeah, what would you love to see for Canada as well as putting a global lens on that?

DP – More heutagogues. And the fact that most people won’t know what I meant when I said that is a case in point. A heutagogue is somebody who can navigate their own learning, knows where they’re at, have gone through that, knows themselves, knows where they want to go, knows what can help get them there, knows where they need the help, where they can do it themselves and can work up to it. Now, in Canada, it’s more of a mess because, you know, the British North America Act means we have 13 different jurisdictions for education. So we don’t have a qualifications framework that works across the country. So things like that. But what I would love to see in actually wearing my CAPLA hat, we’re hopeful that we can look into the feasibility of it is applying a practical competency framework like the one in Scotland, the SCQF, because it spans academia and the workplace, and bringing some elements of that to provide a structure in Canada where things can be placed.

So my colleague Jeff Griffiths, who’s with the Canada West Foundation, wrote back in 2017, you can sort of match up and you can migrate your skills because you have this overarching framework and people kind of know where you’re at, and people are talking somewhat the same language and / or using crosswalks.

DMcF – Brilliant, brilliant – well, I love that vision and thank you so much for sharing your history and what you’re working on today and your dreams for the future. And certainly, yeah, it’s very exciting for me to learn a number of things today and I really appreciate that and wonderful to have you as a friend and partner. So thank you so much for your time.

DP – And maybe I can lure you to Europe one of these days.

DMcF – Well, we’ll see. We’ll see. Yes. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much for your time, Don.

DP – Thanks very much Dan.