We are excited to announce a groundbreaking partnership between the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) and Credential Engine, supported by a generous grant from Walmart. This strategic collaboration aims to enhance the visibility and utility of skills-based ecosystems by integrating competency data from education and training providers, agencies and employers, and states using the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL). This effort positions CTDL as the preferred linked open data language for competency and skills data, benefiting all of C-BEN’s partners and expanding the availability of openly available skills languages for public use.
Through this partnership, C-BEN will advance credential providers’ quality assessments of competencies. Organizations will be able to publish competencies in the Credential Registry and rigorously evaluate those statements using the Quality Framework for Competency-Based Education Programs. Using CTDL consistently will unlock significant value, promoting the widespread use of high-quality competency and skill descriptions. This will encourage the reuse of these descriptions across various contexts, and help organizations reduce the administrative challenges of managing competency and skills data in systems across the skills ecosystem, including education programs, job descriptions, talent management systems, credential descriptions, and learning and employment records.
This initiative is set to influence competency and skills description management practices nationwide by promoting a standard approach to describing, documenting, and utilizing competencies in public and private practices.
We invite all C-BEN members and partners to engage with this exciting initiative and encourage you to take action today! Together, we are forging a new standard of practice for meeting the evolving needs of learners, workers, and employers alike.
Call to action
- Use the Quality Framework for Competency-Based Education Programs.
- Sign up for a Credential Registry account and join as a Friend of C-BEN for free.
- Publish your competency frameworks to the Credential Registry.
About Credential Engine
Credential Engine is a non-profit whose mission is to map the credential landscape with clear and consistent information, fueling the creation of resources that empower people to find the pathways that are best for them. Credential Engine provides a suite of web-based services that creates for the first time a centralized Credential Registry to house up-to-date information about all credentials, the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) a common description language to enable credential comparability, and a platform to support customized applications to search and retrieve information about credentials.
