Signals: Credentials
Designing credentials that recognize diverse forms of learning and preparation beyond traditional grades.
For Whom: Signals
Getting Smart Resources
Expanding Access, Value and Experiences Through Credentials
This resource from Getting Smart examines how credentials beyond traditional diplomas can expand opportunity and signal learner achievement in more meaningful ways. It explores the growing ecosystem of badges, certifications, micro-credentials, and alternative pathways that communicate student skills and competencies to employers, higher education institutions, and communities. The resource offers practitioners and school leaders a framework for thinking about how credential design and recognition can better reflect what students actually know and can do, particularly for learners underserved by conventional transcript-based systems. For educators pursuing innovation, it matters because rethinking credentialing is central to building more equitable, transparent, and future-ready learning systems that connect school experiences to real-world value.
A New Infrastructure for Learning Credentials (
A New Infrastructure for Learning Credentials” from Getting Smart examines the evolving landscape of learner recognition beyond traditional diplomas and transcripts, exploring how emerging credential systems can more accurately capture the full range of student skills, competencies, and experiences. The resource investigates digital badges, micro-credentials, and interoperable credential frameworks that allow learners to document and communicate learning from multiple contexts, including work-based, community, and non-traditional settings. For practitioners and school leaders, it offers a practical lens on how schools can begin redesigning their recognition systems to reflect what students actually know and can do, rather than seat time or course completion alone. This matters because credential infrastructure directly shapes college admissions, workforce entry, and equity—students whose strengths fall outside conventional grading systems are often rendered invisible, and new credentialing approaches offer a concrete mechanism for changing that.
New Pathways: Credentialed Learning
New Pathways: Credentialed Learning” is a resource from Getting Smart that examines the evolving landscape of alternative credentials and non-traditional pathways for recognizing student learning beyond conventional transcripts and diplomas. It explores how stackable credentials, microcredentials, badges, and competency-based recognition systems are being designed and implemented across K-12 and postsecondary contexts to better capture the full range of what learners know and can do. The resource offers practitioners and school leaders concrete signals about where credentialing innovation is heading, drawing on emerging models from schools, districts, and workforce partners who are rethinking how learning gets validated and communicated. For education transformation, this matters because the traditional transcript fails to represent skills, dispositions, and experiences that employers and colleges increasingly value, making credentialing reform a critical lever for equity and student agency.
Town Hall Recap: The Landscape of Credentialing Experiences
This resource from Getting Smart is a recap of a town hall discussion focused on the evolving landscape of credentialing experiences in education. It captures key insights, perspectives, and conversations from practitioners, innovators, and leaders examining how credentials beyond traditional transcripts and diplomas can better signal learner skills, competencies, and experiences to colleges and employers. The resource offers a snapshot of where the field currently stands, surfacing emerging models, challenges, and opportunities in alternative and stackable credentialing systems. For practitioners and school leaders pursuing learning innovation, it provides a grounding in the broader credentialing movement, helping them understand how shifts in how learning is recognized and communicated can drive more equitable, competency-based pathways for students.
Technology We Need: Documenting the complete Learner Record
Technology We Need: Documenting the Complete Learner Record” is a resource from Getting Smart that examines the technological infrastructure required to capture and communicate a comprehensive picture of student learning beyond traditional transcripts and grades. It explores emerging credentialing systems, tools, and platforms that can document skills, competencies, experiences, and achievements across a learner’s full educational journey. The resource is particularly relevant for school leaders and practitioners working to shift from seat-time-based accountability toward mastery and competency-based models, where richer learner data becomes essential for student agency and equitable opportunity. For those navigating the growing landscape of digital credentials, badges, and learner profiles, this piece offers grounding in both the practical possibilities and the systemic challenges of implementing a more complete learner record at scale.
Podcast: Ryan Lufkin on Instructure, Acquisition and The Future of Credentialing
This Getting Smart podcast episode features Ryan Lufkin of Instructure discussing the company’s strategic acquisitions and their implications for the future of digital credentialing in education. Lufkin explores how Instructure’s expanding portfolio positions it to connect learning management systems with verifiable credentials, giving institutions new ways to recognize and communicate learner achievement. The conversation is particularly relevant for school leaders and practitioners navigating the shift toward competency-based and stackable credentialing systems, offering insight into how edtech infrastructure is evolving to support these models. For those tracking how platforms, data, and credentials intersect, this episode provides a grounded, industry-level perspective on where the credentialing landscape is heading and what that means for designing learning systems that are both flexible and future-ready.
TownHall Recap: Badging & Credentialing (
This resource is a recap from Getting Smart’s TownHall series focused on badging and credentialing as alternative or supplementary forms of recognizing student learning. It likely summarizes key discussions, insights, and practitioner perspectives on how digital badges and micro-credentials can signal competencies that traditional transcripts and letter grades often fail to capture. The resource is relevant for school leaders and educators looking to broaden how student achievement is documented and communicated to colleges, employers, and other stakeholders. As competency-based and personalized learning models gain traction, credentialing systems become a critical infrastructure question, and this recap offers accessible, practitioner-grounded thinking on how schools can begin or refine that work.
A Community Micro-Credentials Effort Connects Students to Local Employers
This Getting Smart resource examines a community-based micro-credentials initiative that creates direct pathways between students and local employers by offering stackable, competency-based credentials tied to real workforce needs. It explores how regional partnerships between schools, businesses, and community organizations can validate student skills in ways that traditional transcripts fail to capture, making learning visible and meaningful beyond the classroom. The resource highlights practical models for designing and implementing micro-credential systems that reflect local labor market demands while expanding equitable access to career pathways. For practitioners and school leaders, it offers a concrete example of how credential innovation can serve as a lever for systemic transformation—aligning educational outcomes with community economic priorities and giving students tangible, employer-recognized evidence of their capabilities.
States Partner on Micro-Credentials to Personalize Teacher Learning
This Getting Smart resource examines how state education agencies are collaborating to develop micro-credentials as a flexible, competency-based approach to professional learning for teachers. It explores how these stackable, targeted credentials allow educators to demonstrate mastery of specific skills on their own timeline, moving away from traditional seat-time models toward evidence-based recognition of professional growth. The resource details how interstate partnerships are expanding the ecosystem of available micro-credentials, making personalized teacher development more scalable and portable across systems. For practitioners and school leaders, this matters because it signals a broader shift in how educator effectiveness is defined, recognized, and supported — with direct implications for hiring, retention, coaching structures, and how schools design professional learning pathways that actually respond to individual teacher needs.
Digital Credentials: A Better Way to Capture and Communicate Learning
Digital Credentials: A Better Way to Capture and Communicate Learning, published by Getting Smart, examines how digital badges and micro-credentials can more accurately represent what students know and can do beyond traditional transcripts and letter grades. The resource explores how schools and districts can design and implement credentialing systems that recognize a broader range of competencies, skills, and achievements, including those developed through project-based learning, extracurriculars, and work-based experiences. It offers practical framing for practitioners and leaders on how digital credentials function as verifiable, shareable signals of learning that can follow students into higher education and the workforce. For educators pursuing competency-based or personalized learning models, this resource matters because it directly addresses the gap between what schools are teaching and what current assessment and reporting systems are able to communicate to outside stakeholders.
Expanding Access, Value and Experiences Through Credentials
This resource from Getting Smart examines how credentials beyond traditional diplomas can expand opportunity and signal learner achievement in more meaningful ways. It explores the growing ecosystem of badges, certifications, micro-credentials, and alternative pathways that communicate student skills and competencies to employers, higher education institutions, and communities. The resource offers practitioners and school leaders a framework for thinking about how credential design and recognition can better reflect what students actually know and can do, particularly for learners underserved by conventional transcript-based systems. For educators pursuing innovation, it matters because rethinking credentialing is central to building more equitable, transparent, and future-ready learning systems that connect school experiences to real-world value.
How to Credential?
How to Credential?” from Getting Smart is a resource examining the evolving landscape of alternative credentialing in education, exploring how schools, districts, and learning organizations can design and implement meaningful credential systems beyond traditional transcripts and diplomas. It offers practitioners and school leaders practical frameworks for thinking about how learning can be recognized, validated, and communicated through badges, microcredentials, competency-based records, and other emerging signal systems. The resource addresses a critical gap in education transformation: the misalignment between what students actually know and can do and what conventional credentials capture and convey to colleges, employers, and the broader world. For leaders redesigning learning models, this resource provides a foundation for understanding credentialing not just as an administrative function but as a strategic tool for equity, learner agency, and systemic change.
What to Credential?
What to Credential?” is a resource from Getting Smart that examines the growing movement to expand credentialing beyond traditional academic transcripts to include skills, competencies, and experiences that better reflect a learner’s full range of capabilities. It offers practitioners and school leaders a framework for thinking critically about which learning outcomes are worth formally recognizing, how to design meaningful credential systems, and what criteria should guide those decisions. The resource engages with questions about employer value, learner equity, and institutional credibility that are central to making alternative credentials actionable rather than symbolic. For educators driving innovation, this matters because credentialing is ultimately a signal system—and rethinking what gets signaled, and to whom, is foundational to building education models that serve all learners and align with real-world pathways.
Badging and Micro-Credentialing: How Education and Employment Can Benefit from Using Skills Profiles
This Getting Smart resource examines how digital badges and micro-credentials can create more precise, stackable signals of learner competency that go beyond traditional transcripts and degrees. It explores how skills profiles built through badging systems can bridge the gap between educational achievement and workforce readiness, giving employers clearer insight into what candidates actually know and can do. The resource is particularly relevant for school and district leaders considering how to redesign recognition and credentialing systems to better reflect mastery-based or competency-based learning progressions. For practitioners driving learning innovation, it offers a practical framework for understanding how micro-credentialing can motivate learners, validate non-traditional learning experiences, and strengthen connections between education pathways and employment outcomes.
Additional Resources
Going Beyond the Traditional: Next Gen Credentials and Flexible Learning Pathways
Aurora Institute
The Aurora Institute’s “Going Beyond the Traditional: Next Gen Credentials and Flexible Learning Pathways” is a resource examining how competency-based and alternative credentialing systems can replace or complement traditional seat-time and grade-based measures of student achievement. It explores next-generation credential models—including digital badges, micro-credentials, and learner profiles—that capture a broader and more accurate picture of what students know and can do. The resource provides practitioners and school leaders with frameworks and examples for designing credentialing systems that recognize diverse learning experiences, whether in-person, online, or through work-based and community settings. For educators driving transformation, it matters because rigid credentialing structures remain one of the most significant systemic barriers to truly personalized, competency-based learning—and this resource directly confronts that challenge with actionable alternatives.
Designing a Rigorous Micro-Credential Assessment Process to Verify Mastery of Competencies: Key Considerations
US Dept of Ed
This resource from the U.S. Department of Education examines how to build rigorous assessment processes within micro-credential systems to ensure learners have genuinely mastered specific competencies rather than simply completed coursework. It outlines key design considerations for developing assessments that are valid, reliable, and defensible — addressing issues such as evidence standards, evaluator calibration, and the criteria needed to make mastery determinations meaningful. The resource is particularly relevant for schools and districts exploring competency-based pathways, alternative credentialing, or professional learning systems that need to move beyond seat-time measures. For education leaders, it offers a practical framework for ensuring that micro-credentials carry real signal value — meaning they communicate something trustworthy and actionable about what a learner knows and can do. As interest in stackable credentials and personalized learning grows, this kind of assessment infrastructure guidance is essential for preventing credentialing from becoming a superficial exercise.