Got Proof? How to Ensure Your Credentials Hold Value

Jennifer Bailey

A 3-Point Checklist for Skill Mastery Validation

The demand for upskilling and reskilling has never been more critical. Within a decade, it’s expected technology will reshape more than one billion jobs worldwide, requiring as many individuals to retrain and reskill by 2030.¹

In response, the world of credentials is rapidly evolving. In the U.S., there are now nearly one million unique education credentials, including non-degree badges, certificates, licenses, apprenticeships, industry certifications, and micro-credentials.²

Recent data reflects the surging popularity of these credentials:

45% of U.S. workers now hold some form of an alternative credential³
49% of U.S. workers who have not yet acquired an alternative credential have considered earning one⁴
the digital badge market is poised for a 22.5% growth between 2023 and 2028, with a projected value of $80 billion by 2030.⁵

This rise in credentials underscores the pivotal role they play in validating skills in a rapidly changing job market.

Why Skill Validation Matters

The significance of skill validation in credentialing cannot be overstated. With standards still evolving, organizations are responsible for valuing and validating this growing form of learning. However, many organizations lack concrete proof regarding learners’ ability to retain and apply the knowledge and skills tied to their credentials.

Organizations prioritizing skill mastery validation in their credentialing processes hold a tangible competitive edge. Authenticating the skills that credentials represent can bolster brand loyalty and enhance credibility, directly contributing to a positive return on investment.

3-Point Checklist to Ensure Your Credentials Hold Value

      ✔ Set clear, aligned learning objectives

      ✔ Give real-time, relevant feedback

      ✔ Ensure consistent, unbiased evaluations

3 Steps to Validate Skill Mastery

Mere issuance of credentials is no longer sufficient. The success of your credentialing program hinges not only on the quality of training but also on the tangible proof of its impact. Here, we present a 3-point checklist for substantiating genuine skill mastery and enhancing your credentialing program.

1. Establish Clear, Aligned Learning Objectives

Effective assessments begin with defined learning objectives. These objectives form the foundation for your credentialing program, facilitating deliberate practice, relevant feedback, and meaningful assessments.

First, create clear, customized objectives rooted in your course materials, including training documents, video transcripts, and assessment rubrics. These objectives:

Provide learners with unambiguous guidance, ensuring they understand where to focus during practice.
Create a uniform learning experience for all participants.
Prevent misalignment between course content and assessment criteria.
Maintain consistency by subjecting all learners to the same predefined objectives, ensuring fairness and transparency.

2. Offer Real-Time, Relevant Feedback

The next step involves providing learners with timely, actionable feedback on practice assignments and assessments guided by your learning objectives. This process reinforces comprehension of course content, enabling learners to refine and master their skills through continuous practice. Moreover, it instills instructor confidence in learners’ assessment readiness.

Providing timely, aligned feedback:

Encourages learners to persist until they achieve excellence.
Boosts learner confidence by illuminating their strengths and areas for improvement.
Sustains learner engagement and motivation.

3. Ensure Consistent, Unbiased Evaluations

Lastly, establish a consistent and fair evaluation process based on your learning objectives to enhance the value and credibility of your credentials. By evaluating each learner’s skills and comprehension against your objectives, instructors can grade with confidence.

Basing your assessments on learning objectives:

Boosts the credibility of your evaluations, ensuring all learners are graded against the same criteria.
Helps validate learners’ mastery of the required skills.

Selecting the Ideal Skills Development & Assessment Tools

Traditional assessment methods, such as multiple-choice tests and quizzes, often fall short when meeting today’s credibility, scalability, and value demands. Organizations find it challenging to verify the real-world readiness of their learners, instructors grapple with manual grading, and learners aspire for genuine recognition and feedback that prepares them for real-world challenges.

AI-powered solutions are swiftly emerging to bridge this gap, offering innovative tools to enhance assessment and credentialing processes for organizations.

Get Evidence of Skill Mastery with New Bongo Features

Bongo is delighted to unveil a groundbreaking feature set that employs a patent-pending threefold assessment approach, offering tangible proof of skill mastery. Our skills development tool elevates credentialing programs using learner-created video submissions as concrete evidence of skill mastery.

Bongo’s distinctive approach ensures every issued credential is supported by video proof of genuine skill mastery, combining efficiency with undeniable validation. The new features include:

Automated Learning Objectives: Bongo rapidly generates core learning objectives from provided course materials, saving instructors time and effort. It establishes precise assessment criteria for learners and instructors aligned with organizational goals.

Content-Smart AI Coach: An AI-driven tool that provides learners with real-time feedback on video assignments, ensuring depth of content understanding and presentation effectiveness. It reinforces learner comprehension of course material by aligning feedback with learning objectives.

Automated Smart Scoring: An automated grading system evaluates learners’ final video submissions against each learning objective to ensure consistent and unbiased evaluations. This approach showcases proof of mastery and frees instructors from the time-consuming manual grading process.

Bongo combines the efficiency of automation with the depth of human expertise. Our AI ensures fast, consistent assessment processes while seamlessly integrating human proficiency at any stage, providing organizations the best of both worlds. Plus, our privacy-first, zero-shot AI model training approach ensures the confidentiality and security of all data, reflecting our unwavering commitment to data protection.

With Bongo, credentials become tangible proof of skill readiness, accelerating learner growth and enhancing an organization’s credibility and scalability.

Sources:

¹https://www.weforum.org/impact/reskilling-revolution/