This article was submitted by Glen Moriarty of NIXTY.
Accreditation is at the core of granting credit and/or certification. Third party accreditation bodies review colleges and universities to insure that they have adequate finances, appropriate facilities, and qualified professors. Institutional accreditation has worked fairly well for many institutions in the developed world, but is now beginning to be called into question. Is it the best option? Are there other possibilities? Is there a solution that might be a better fit for the globalized world?
Institutional accreditation is an expensive undertaking that might not be as relevant, necessary, or affordable for some fields and those in late-developing countries. What is needed is a more streamlined approach to certifying knowledge and warranting competency.
Certifications provide one such avenue. Their value is inherently tied to the individuals or organization doing the certification. These people or institutions are vouching for the students they are vetting through the process of endorsing their learning. In addition to certificates, related indicators of competency include work examples, academic/work history, and recommendations from trusted others. In the open education space, these variables and others are collectively grouped under the title of open accreditation.
Teachers Without Borders provides ones brilliant example of open accreditation at work. They have created a series of 5 courses on NIXTY titled “Certificate of Teaching Mastery.” TWBs Director, Konrad Glogowski, has indicated that this certificate is often the difference between being hired or not hired for educators in sub-Saharan Africa. TWB’s courses are not institutionally accredited. However, they do provide a measure of competence. What’s more, because they are based on OER, they can readily be tailored to different languages and contexts.
While designing our open education platform, NIXTY, we started from the belief that the future of education will be marked by openness, collaboration, and certification. We considered a lot of options, bearing in mind that some type of certification is desirable from the learner’s point of view. In our final design, open courses are streamlined and optimized; eportfolios illustrate open accreditation via resumes, recommendations, reputation points, work displays, and courses completed; and each course has an editable “Certificate of Completion” that can be printed and/or stored in the person’s eportfolio. You can see how these work together in the video below:
Certification is one of the keys to making open education more valuable to learners. If you have thoughts, questions, or feedback, please leave a comment below or email me at: glen at nixty dot com. This is an exciting time to be a part of the open education movement. Thank you!