The Skills Validation Guidebook (October 2024) aims to inform + empower designers of skill validators, such as educators, instructional designers, and hiring managers, to support stakeholders in the skills-based ecosystem.
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The Skills Validation Guidebook reflects the learnings from Education Design Lab’s XCredit project and the Skills Validation Network as well as recommendations from the field. It provides technical assistance materials to understand skills validation, create quality skills validators, and craft a sustainable skill validation implementation strategy.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: The guidebook aims to inform, empower, and share findings with designers of skill validators, such as educators, instructional designers, and hiring managers, to support stakeholders in the skills-based ecosystem.
THE GOAL: Without the ability to validate skills, employers rely on proxies (such as degrees) to screen for talent, which creates missed opportunities for both employers and opportunity seekers. But these skills are often simply asserted by candidates. Skills must be validated to establish trust and offer demonstrations of what a candidate knows and can do.
WHY IT MATTERS: High-quality skill validators are essential for powering a skills-based ecosystem on behalf of opportunity seekers. We can’t achieve our desired state — an equitable skills-based ecosystem — without a scalable, high-quality set of validation tools and methods in place.
The Skills Validation Network
The Skills Validation Network seeks to enable equitable opportunity for individuals who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) through diverse, proven methods of skills validation, empowering them with valuable credentials in the skills-based economy. Learn more … and sign up.
Download the Guidebook
This guidebook shares 10 steps, including strategies and examples from our work and from across the field, to enable designers to create their own high-quality skills validators.
This publication has been authored by Meghan Raftery, Education Designer. Meghan leads the improvement and expansion of the Lab’s skills validation tools, establishing a new suite of skills validation services, and leading the work of the Skills Validation Network.
Thank you to the Lab team members who are supporting the success of this initiative and the development of this publication, including Nishita Chheda, Tara Laughlin, Naomi Boyer, Faby Gagne, Ayanna Conway, Stephanie Ogilvie Seagle, Gabriel Ramos, and Mariza June Avila.
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