Background

Digital Promise is a non-profit at the intersection of education leaders, researchers, and technology developers dedicated to improving learning opportunities for all and closing the Digital Learning Gap. One of their major initiatives is the creation and standardization of micro-credentials. Micro-credentials provide educators with competency-based recognition for the skills they learn throughout their careers.

Challenge

Digital Promise had previously created all micro-credentials by hand, which was a painstaking process of back and forth with the client trying to create the credential over google documents. Once the document was finished then each format PDF, DOCX, and HTML had to be created manually. What they needed was a way to automate and standardize as much of this process as possible.

Solution

The tool that was developed to solve their problem was a complex web app. This application needed a user hierarchy to support Digital Promise admins creating user groups and appointing each group an admin to manage the users within their group. The user login flow needed to support Google Oauth as well as credentials specific to their client group. Once invited the users then were given a series of rich-text forms with instructions and documentation as to how to create their micro-credential.

This process was facilitated by a Digital Promise admin that could watch the progress made by their client and offer comments and revisions seamlessly. Upon completion of the series of forms the admin was automatically sent an email to approve the micro-credential as well as three documents generated from the forms. PDF, DOCX, and HTML.

Results

This web app has improved their process from taking months to build a micro-credential to days, as well as increasing quality and standardization. After being in use for one year the builder now hosts hundreds of micro-credentials, created by dozens of organizations including the National Education Association and National Geographic.

Conclusion

The Micro-credential Builder created for Digital Promise is now a highly utilized tool helping to improve teacher recognition and improve student experiences across the US, allowing Digital Promise to realize their goal of bringing technology to education keeping up with the modern era.