Bridging the Gap between Learner-Workers and Employers
In a dynamic, ever-changing labor market, learners need access to educational programming options that match their career goals and allow for just-in-time skill development. They also need to be able to tell a compelling story about the skills they have and showcase their unique talent brand. Employers need better insights into their current workforce as well as the external talent pipeline. They need more transparency into the skills an individual has based on their experience and credentials, and they need faster, more automated ways to match high-qualified candidates with high-value jobs.
Learning and Employment Record
To increase the portability and usability of learner credentials, WGU has begun implementing Learning and Employment Record (LER) technology. As defined by the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board Digital Infrastructure Working Group (2019), an LER is “a system that contains verifiable information about a person’s achievements spanning an inclusive range of contexts, whether educational or training processes, formal or informal, classroom-based or workplace-based, LERs can seamlessly record, verify, transmit, and interpret information about learning achievements between learning institutions, businesses, and individuals.”
As our efforts in this area expand, WGU will instantiate learners’ credentials to their Learning and Employment Record which will enable advanced capabilities for every learner to curate and share their achievements with prospective employers. The LER also provides more efficient mechanisms for employers to search for talent within the LER ecosystem as learners opt-in to making their credentials and related skills discoverable.
Achievement Wallet
Building on the culminating capabilities of a systematic skills architecture, skills-denominated achievements, and LER technology WGU has deployed its initial prototype for an Achievement Wallet.
The Achievement Wallet is an interoperable, learner-facing application technology that provides learners with the ability to curate, customize, and share achievements from their LER with prospective employers or other education institutions.
The Achievement Wallet provides students with the ability to showcase their unique talent brand, based on the credentials they hold and the skills they have demonstrated. Because of the power of the skills architecture and skills-denominated achievements within WGU credentials, the Achievement Wallet also has compassing capabilities to reveal both career and educational pathway insights to a learner based on their current skillset, career goals, and educational aspirations.
Providing a Wallet to All Learner-Workers
Working in partnership with a broad array of organizations, WGU is charging ahead towards a future of a national, open infrastructure that will provide a wallet to all learner-workers. We believe that empowering our learners with the ownership of their record, providing clear pathways to opportunity, allowing employers to locate job-ready candidates, and providing a wrap-around community of care services providers, we can transform the talent pipeline needed in our dynamic economy and, most importantly, change the lives of individuals and their families.
Recognized and featured at the National Governors Association meeting in October 2021, hear what WGU and just some of our partners have to say:
Badges
Some WGU learners are already receiving digital achievements that will surface in the Achievement Wallet once we make it available to all WGU students.
For more information, see what others are saying about this important work:
