IREC’s New Dynamic Digital Credentials: A Game Changer for Instructors and Employers
Step into any clean energy training classroom and several things should stand out. Remember the days of lecture, drill, and practice? Gone.
Today, trainers utilize instructional design principles and educational technology to engage students and help them learn skills quickly. The class is focused on allowing students to demonstrate their skill and knowledge mastery, which translates to quality performance on the job. Trainers incorporate multimedia into their lessons, using images, videos, social media and simulations. This is 21st-century learning.
These same trainers need a way to express their professional qualifications in today’s digital world. Digital badges and credentials are used worldwide to show validated accomplishments. IREC recently created a new application for this technology, launching a digital credentialing initiative for our certified clean energy instructors and master trainers. It’s a 21st-century way to provide increased value for the credential holder, and to help these industry-recognized trainers broadcast their achievements.
These trainers have earned the most highly regarded third-party endorsement of their knowledge and instructional skills. Now they can display that unique qualification easily in a virtual format.
In today’s competitive marketplace, it is important to clearly distinguish accomplishments and showcase skills. This digital credential, which incorporates information about how and when the trainer earned the credential, can make a valid credential more understandable and relevant to employers, funders, students and other stakeholders. A digital credential is an online representation of the earner’s demonstrated industry-specific skills; with specifics employers look for and value. When the earner shares the credential on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or a website, one click allows someone to validate the accomplishment in real time and better understand the value this credential holder brings.
Digital credentials were first introduced in 2011 through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The movement has been steadily growing ever since. Digital credential earners can proudly display the specifics of their achievements to the widest audience yet. Employers and recruiters can easily verify credentials, and the issuing body, to identify candidates, make more confident hiring decisions, and reduce training costs.
IREC is demonstrating, and collaborating with others to follow, a path to make digital credentials a visible and valuable option for showcasing quality training in the clean energy industry. By issuing digital credentials, IREC joins many schools and universities, government agencies including NASA, NOAA, and the New York City Department of Education, and corporations such as IBM, to help earners engage in lifelong learning, and to effectively market themselves in today’s competitive marketplace.
