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Lithuanian OEPass Multiplier Event

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The third official OEPass multiplier event was organised by the Lithuanian Distance and e-Learning Association on the 27th of September, 2019. There are 50 Lithuanian educational institutions (universities, colleges, adult learning centres, etc.) in the membership of the Association. The educators from these institutions were invited to participate in the event, leading to the attendance of more than 25 participants at the event.

The OEPass project results, and their applicability for other educational institutions, were presented and discussed. Thus the results of event may be summarised as follows:

  • The OEPass Learning Passport is a useful tool for the representatives of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as it is a tool for today’s learners to gather and provide institutions with the evidence of learning; it is a tool for institutions to analyse what kind of information may be provided by learners; and also to guide learners that when selecting open learning opportunities they need to focus not only on the topic of a MOOC, but also to think how it might be recognised in their formal learning records.
  • Other types of institutions (Schools, VET centres and teacher qualification centres) found the Learning Passport too complicated to be used in their daily activities due to its availability only in English (that is not spoken by the majority of older teachers) and due to the fact that their programmes are relatively short and former recognition possibilities are not a necessity.
  • All institutions’ representatives were glad to learn about the classification of education credentials. The quality criteria for credentials attracted most attention from the institutions which focus on open course preparations.
  • The technological roadmap of open credentials was an interesting outcome for the event participants, but as most of them are not IT experts but teachers working in online learning, it drew less focus and led to limited discussion.

First testing of the Learning Passport

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It is a pleasure to announce that the first phase of testing the Learning Passport was successfully completed by mid-October 2018.

The purpose of the OEPass Learning Passport is to systematically collect a set of precisely defined data and information about open education experiences which were identified as decisive factors for their recognition. The form’s content is closely related to the ESCO classification of European skills, competences, qualifications and occupations.

The draft template of the Learning Passport is intended to test with real education providers as to what extent their existing (micro-)qualifications can be transparently classified for subsequent recognition by third parties (i.e. by other Higher Education Institutions and/or prospective employers). For the purposes of this piloting exercise, a credential is defined as a certification of a qualification.

During the course of the internal testing, each project partner filled in the form by means of a real online course at his or her institution. The provided feedback is now evaluated in a feedback loop. The Learning Passport will be adjusted in the next steps and will be presented to the public soon.

 

First draft of the Learning Passport

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No common European format exists for describing qualifications and their learning outcomes: this hinders their comparability. We aim to create a standard format for documenting micro-credentials in terms of tokens such as ECTS using existing recognition tools and create a full-system for issuing, verifying and sharing micro-credentials, including methods and technology.

The first draft of the Learning Passport is based on a specific and limited-scale use-case for micro-credentials and it uses a specific set of meta-data extended from the ESCO ontology concept.

ESCO, a Europe-wide initiative, is the multilingual classification of skills, competencies, qualifications and occupations. It identifies and categorizes all of those which are relevant for the EU labour market and education and training, in 25 European languages. The system provides occupational profiles showing the relationships between occupations, skills, competences and qualifications – an ontology, taxonomy or a classification.

By introducing a standard terminology for occupations, skills, competences and qualifications, ESCO helps education and training systems and the labour market to better identify and manage the availability of required skills, competences and qualifications (Orlic, Crnko, Camillieri 2018).

In line with the ESCO mentality, the OEPass Learning Passport consists of information identifying the

  • awarding body (name, public key, etc.),
  • educational credential (e.g. title, definition, ECTS, ways to acquire),
  • credential type (title, definition, credit system issuer, etc.),
  • holder of the educational credential and their accomplishment (name, grade, credits awarded, student identification number, etc.), and
  • evidence (release date, modification date, etc.).

The final Learning Passport version will be uploaded here, after internal tests and a round of external pilots.