12-01, 11:15–11:45 (Europe/Berlin), Stage 1, Leibniz-Saal, BBAW
Credential evaluators both send and receive student data. We have to be able to accommodate paper and digital documents in various formats. We play a key role in learner mobility and provide a way for educational achievements to be recognized across borders. The presenter will discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by the work of credential evaluators and our impact on learner mobility.
Credential evaluation has been around as long as learners have been using educational achievement for employment, further education, immigration, professional licensure, and other purposes. Despite this, the assessment process can be an afterthought in discussions about student data. As part of the trust network, we play a key role in learner mobility. In many cases, the learner or issuing institution shares the learner’s credentials with the evaluator. Sometimes the evaluator works at a receiving institution, but often it is a third party who receives the credentials and then performs an assessment, and finally produces a report stating the comparability of the education from one system to another.
The format in which the evaluator receives documents varies from paper to data, with many variations in between, including verification, PDFs, and scans. We need to have processes in place to confirm the authenticity of the documents, prepare an assessment, and issue a report. In this session, the presenter will briefly describe the evaluation process, and the challenges faced in obtaining authentic credentials, as well as ways reports are issued – via portals, APIs, and old-fashioned paper. Networks that include credential evaluators allow learners to exercise their self-sovereign identity in deciding how to use and share assessments and get academic achievements recognized across borders.
A great deal of flexibility is required, particularly in the case of refugees and other displaced people. Evaluators employ digital solutions to provide more options for learners with difficulty accessing documentation of their credentials.
The presenter will provide topics for discussion, including: Who owns the assessment? Can it expire if policies or conclusions change? What can we do to support lifelong learning? What is the assessor’s role in ensuring authenticity of credentials? What is the role of the credential evaluator in the age of regional and global conventions?
Participants will have an understanding of the role of assessment in the learner journey.
Margaret Wenger has worked at Educational Credential Evaluators, Inc., a non-profit credential evaluation agency located in the US, since 1990, currently holding the position of Senior Director of Evaluation. As SDE, Meg leads evaluation policy development, new evaluator training, and coordinates quality assurance efforts. She is the author of ECE Presents: The Educational System of Tunisia and The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Its Educational System and Methods of Evaluation, as well as contributing to the NAFSA Guide to Educational Systems Around the World (1998 and 2009) and other publications. She has given workshops at number of international conferences including NAFSA, NAGAP, CGS, and EAIE. She chairs TAICEP’s (The Association for International Credential Evaluation Professionals) task force on Digital Student Data and serves on the board of directors of the Groningen Declaration Network.