<ildiko_mazar> Good morning, good afternoon everyone, welcome to today's W3C Verifiable Credentials for Education task force call, on Monday, September the 23rd. Let's get started with the housekeeping items. IP Note: Anyone can participate in these calls. However, all substantive contributions to any Credentials Community Group Work Items must originate from members of the CCG with full IPR agreements signed. You can find the link to this in the meeting invites, but please note that you'll need to have a W3C account, but if you don't have one yet, it is also easy to register one online. Moving on to call notes. Please note that these meetings are recorded. We have a robot transcriber and we also make audio and video recordings, that are archived and available online. If you want to speak, please raise your hand, or add yourself to the queue by typing “q+” in the chat. And please be brief if you have a question to ask, we want to maximise the time for conversations. Thank you. Now to Introductions & Reintroductions. If we have any new people in the call, or somebody would like to reintroduce themselves, please feel free to take the floor. If nobody wants to take the floor, we can move on to announcements and reminders. Anyone has events or things that happened that people should be aware of, again, please queue yourself up and share the news with us. Now to the main agenda topic, that is Micro-Credentials from a University Alliance - the ECIU experience. I would like to welcome and invite our guest speaker Johan Peterson to take the floor.
<tallted_//_ted_thibodeau_(he/him)_(openlinksw.com)> A link to this deck (here, during the session, or later, via email to the group) will be very helpful.
<ildiko_mazar> That's an interesting question, i.e. whether a MC can have a qualification framework level or not. We can put a pin in this for a later discussion.
<sheela_kiiskila> currently in EU Commission recommendation it says to add it with the words "if possible" :)
<ildiko_mazar> What mechanism do you apply to transform textual information into attributes? What level and who's responsible for entering the data into the system?
<sheela_kiiskila> Usually the education specialist from each university works with the teachers to understand the learning outcomes and either together or with information from the teacher, tag the learning outcomes with the competences from our taxonomy as well as ESCO skills. The specialists are usually the people who enter into the conductor
Sheela_Kiiskila: Sure uh 1 thing I would add if anybody is considering doing this is um. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Try to consider the amount of work that uh that is needed um. ✪
<phil_long> The e-seal appears to be a physicial device that is propreitary and therefore the e-seal process, which appears to be the writing of the proof process is a commercial monooply. Is that accurate?
Sheela_Kiiskila: I because especially uh you know when you add new features uh it's not just about issuing the micro credentials as ecio we decided that okay we also want to help the Learners by telling them what competences and what skills they are learning in each of these micro credentials and um while it's a really great idea and uh you know when we see the results and everything it looks awesome and EDC already has a way to include uh Esco skills but um it it was a lot of work for uh all the universities because locally in most of the universities are almost all the universities while they do have uh learning outcomes you know as a a study program or a um this but for they usually don't have learning outcomes written for every single course. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Because we needed the learning outcomes for every single course and then uh somebody has to tag them saying okay this learning outcome belongs to this competence from our taxonomy and this learning outcomes will also give these particular Esco skills that knowledge usually is with the teacher right the teacher is the only 1 who knows what skills they are teaching the students. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: But the teachers don't have time to you know do all of this for a or entirely different organization apart from teaching you know in their own University and these courses and you know a whole bunch of other things so we have education Specialists who usually enter the data into our ECI system because uh everything has to be in our platform and uh while doing it so now uh we were training them how to use the system how to do the tagging you know what are these Esco skills how can they get if we we are missing somehow do they get them from the um actual Esco framework itself but also then the education Specialists also have to go and work with the teacher so now there's a process but it took time it took a long time for everybody to uh get the process right and so now we have a nice process it is still extra work for the teacher as well as the specialist but at least uh the education specialist. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Per course and when then when a new course is offered then they have to do it again so we really need to understand uh how much work is involved and uh you know get Buy in from everybody and uh training is absolutely. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: It also helps with the um trust when you use all the standardized uh uh things like what we are doing with the eqf uh levels and uh uh you know having learning outcomes for everything and using the Esco framework which is a um you know uh standardized framework then it helps with the trust to okay ah yeah okay if you are using those levels you know within Europe all the universities know what eqf levels are if it says eqf level 7 it means that that course is at a master student level uh so it's uh it's known very well so it increases the um Trust. ✪
Phil Long: Yes um well the my first question thank you you answered it for me the other question that I had which is more General is it appears as though the signature process that the ecl process sounds like it must be done by an actual piece of Hardware that is certified um by the by the EU and that there there's no standard set of uh proof methods that 1 can um demonstrate compliance with for uh signing these documents electronically directly by the algorithms of associated with them is that correct. ✪
Phil Long: Thank you that that answers the question that makes it difficult for individuals organizations to comply with the particular specification of pki. ✪
Phil Long: Certified and then just do it themselves that that's that's the their security is uh in requires the physicality of the of the check. ✪
<ildiko_mazar> BTW, @Phil_Long, very often (like in the very case of ECIU) a mandated issuer (i.e. ECIU) can use their eSeal to issue credentials on behalf of other education providers / awarding bodies.
Sheela_Kiiskila: Yeah I think I muted and was talking. ✪
Phil Long: So when we started the project we actually. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: When we started the project we actually had uh all the partners participate in the early adopter program and we asked every single partner explain to them the different levels of the uh e sales and asked what they would think what they would feel comfortable with using and it was a unanimous uh this thing amongst the partners saying uh we prefer to have the qualified because that will give us more Trust. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Um we are uh we are still waiting for more information and to see um we have 1 um. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Um yesterday I think I got an update saying that they are looking into it in within the university uh to see what to do because all the uh most of the well we issue micro credentials only for the formal learning opportunities right they have they they have ects they have all the other stuff so uh we still feel like you know we should and but it depends on if Netherlands all the micro credentials coming from Netherlands we cannot issue. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Um at at that point you know we leave it to our you know uh you know 10 pay grades higher than us to make the decision but if the decision is that we cannot include then you know we'll probably bring it up with um uh you guys and uh you commission to see okay either the recommendation needs to be changed or uh it needs to be put in a different way because um at that point we are we'll follow as much as possible but if it is not possible to add eqf levels. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Uh also because ECI is a foundation from Netherlands. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: We are not yet sure if that would affect uh that uh we cannot add that to any of the micro credentials. ✪
<phil_long> Are micro-credentials something that can be issued for the completion of an individual course in a degree program. Can they be used in that way?
Sheela_Kiiskila: To as talking about you know we want to do as much standard as possible. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Yeah yes all our micro credentials that we issue are uh single courses um they could be challenges that are coming from cities or the industry itself but there are quite a few courses that are actually uh courses of from the study program that we offer as micro credentials as well. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: And yes you can you can do it Standalone for every single course in a study program you can issue a micro credential in today. ✪
<phil_long> They can be shorter modules too, as well yes?
Phil Long: Never no worries I was just wanting to see whether there was a granularity associated with the amount of learning expected the time involved the depth of it Etc before a microcredential is considered appropriate to apply or whether that's in the. ✪
Phil Long: Jurisdiction or the Judgment of the individual Institution. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: For now um because we give this for mostly um formal learning opportunities which are which usually carry ects um. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: In the description that's different. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: Um we do have a recognition Accord uh among all our universities uh saying that uh the learning opportunities that are offered by 1 University are recognized in the others. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: But there is a um uh caveat right it depends on the study program it depends on uh if a student is coming from say engineering and they are taking some other course that cannot be part of the uh their study program they might not get credit towards the their uh studies or towards their degree or diploma but they'll still get recognized as as a course the data tcts and the um and the ects also recognized it might or might not apply to towards their degree that's a different issue. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: But in all our um Johan do we have the recognition Accord also as a URL attached to every micro credential. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: It has been an immensely satisfying project. ✪
Sheela_Kiiskila: With Johan and team working on this I mean seeing the progress and having a whole product ready that you know from beginning to end you can put in the courses you can students can learn from it and microcredential gets issued to them. ✪