Synergies at EDEN19

Ferenc Tatrai, Senior Advisor of the consortium member EDEN, presented the OEPass project in the conference’s Synergy session, pointing out its natural synergy with its “twin” project MicroHE.

As part of the OEPass project, the Learning Passport was also introduced.

He emphasized that an improved version of the Learning Passport is ready for public testing – everybody is welcome to experiment with the tool and determine its usefulness by filling in the online form. The OEPass partnership also welcomes feedback on how well the Learning Passport facilitates the recognition and transferability of non-traditional learning experiences.

The OEPass project creates a standard format for describing open education and virtual mobility experiences in terms of ECTS which:

  • Addresses common criticisms (lack of trust) of open education, in particular with respect to student assessment and identity;
  • Is scalable to hundreds or thousands of students through automatic issuing and verification of certificates;
  • Can capture a wide range of non-formal and formal open education experiences.

The most significant public results of the project are identified as follows.

  • Proposal of a concept of quality assurance whereby credentials would be assessed in terms of their transparency, portability, recognition by employers and academia, stackability and a number of other factors. It will also propose an initial quality-hierarchy for the most common open education credentials currently being offered.
  • Proposal of a standard format for describing open education and virtual mobility experiences in terms of ECTS called Learning Passport, capturing a wide range of non-formal and formal open education experiences.
  • Elaboration of an outline an ontology for the recognition of open learning, together with a meta-data standard and technology roadmap, which would allow for the automatic exchange of credit between European Higher Education Institutions.

The session audience received the direct link to the online form to experience the credential documentation first hand and to determine the main advantages of, as well as the difficulties in, using the Learning Passport.

Jochen  Ehrenreich, the co-author of the presentation supported the discussion on the subject of micro-credentials.