EBSI projects
Micro-credentials
Helping lifelong learners, from students to workers, achieve their professional ambitions by giving them access to recognised micro-credentials for their educational achievements.
The vision
A consortium led by 4+ universities, 4+ IT solutions providers and a research centre - from France, Spain, and Romania.
Together, they are pioneering the future of micro-credentials in Europe by developing a presentation and verification platform using eDiplomas to achieve cross-university education mobility to facilitate the cross-border issuance, recognition, and acceptance of educational digital certificates.
Public Administrations
Universities
Private Organisations
IT Providers
Micro-credentials
Participating countries:
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Government ministries:
Universities: (Issuers of educational credentials)
IT providers:
Others:
Infrastructure:
The challenge
Missed opportunities for certifying skills outside of the Education framework.
A challenge facing the current education system is its tendency to overlook the diverse achievements of learners, particularly when it comes to micro-credentials. Despite learners demonstrating a range of valuable skills and interests by completing courses, programmes or trainings, their accomplishments are often unnoticed. This lack of recognition not only hampers learners' ability to showcase their competencies but also limits their opportunities for admission to relevant programs, especially within the framework of European mobility.
The opportunity
Enabling the recognition of life-long learning with EBSI.
Micro-credentials, owned by the learner, provide a unique opportunity for individuals to showcase their skills in a portable and shareable format. Whether as standalone achievements or combined into comprehensive bundles, micro-credentials offer a dynamic representation of an individual's capabilities.
For this, a Web3 presentation and verification infrastructure for micro-credentials brings together three main technologies:
- Digital Wallets: used by learners and institutions to receive, store, and send credentials on the move.
- Verifiable Credentials: for formatting, presenting, and exchanging credential data in a machine-friendly way.
- Blockchain: for delivering a highly secure, resilient, and decentralised way of verifying credential information.
The project
New standards for valued and personalised training paths.
When leveraging EBSI, this opportunity transforms into a powerful catalyst for recognising and valuing individual achievements. It will allow life-long learners to ensure that their educational- and professional-gained skills, represented as micro-credentials, can be shared and recognised across borders and institutions. A team of education ministries and universities across Europe envision this project as a way to reshape the learning environment in Europe and demonstrate how learners can benefit from micro-credentials.
EBSI allows the Micro-credentials project to design, build, and operate the next generation of decentralised services. The objective of this project is to enhance the learner experience by allowing them to:
- Store and share micro-credentials.
- Receive seamless recognition of their student credentials from universities, eliminating administrative processes.
- Ensure citizen-centric privacy through Web3 security and user-side selective disclosure.
- Set new standards for decentralised and secure credentials, promoting mobility, and addressing the needs of workers for life-long education and learning..
The scenario
Discover the scenarios.
1. Entrepreneurship profile building by accumulating micro-credentials across borders.
Eva, a student at the University of Strasbourg, is pursuing an entrepreneurship programme with the dream of either establishing her own startup or working as a C-level executive.
- Eva is 1 issued micro-credentials from the Faculty of Law, Political Science, and Management at the University of Strasbourg, acknowledging her achievements within her master’s degree in digital law. The credentials include her status in the Student Entrepreneur Programme, her status as a student entrepreneur, participation in a hackathon, and the completion of online courses.
- Eva securely 2 stores all four verifiable credentials in her digital wallet.
- Eager to broaden her academic and entrepreneurial horizons, Eva 3 presents her credentials to the University of Deusto (ES) as part of her application for the Santander Digital Transformation of SMEs Programme and Incubator Programme. The university and incubator programme are able to 4 verify her micro-credentials against the EBSI ledger.
- After the successful completion of the programme, the University of Deusto and Santander 5 issue her an additional micro-credential, recognising her participation in the Entrepreneur/Incubator Programme. Eva 6 stores it in her wallet.
- Eva, armed with these additional credentials, travels to Romania and 7 presents her credentials to the Politehnica University of Timisoara (RO) as part of an admissions process into a master's program.
- Once enrolled, Evaattends a Blockchain MOOC event at the Politehnica University of Timisoara(RO), an entrepreneurship module at the Ioan Slavici University of Timisoara(RO), and an ethics module at OncoGen (RO). Once completed, she is 8 issued micro-credentials for all three achievements.
- Eva then applies for an internship at Lideea (RO), 9 presenting her credentials gained from her entrepreneurship programme. Lideea is then able to 10 verify them against the EBSI ledger.
- Subsequently to the completion of the internship, Lideea 11 issues Eva an Internship Certificate. Eva now 12 stores her credentials from the entrepreneurship programme and internship in her private wallet which she can use for any future educational purposes.
The project plan
Current implementation stage and plan.
Next steps
Mobilisation of the ecosystem is key to driving adoption.
Achieving the goals of this project demands a strategic and operational paradigm shift, mobilising a vast ecosystem involving legal entities, ministries, educational institutions, and learners. The creation of a cohesive digital infrastructure necessitates common guidelines, including a new identification system and authentication service for seamless integration between different types of educational institutions.
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