NEW YORK, Aug. 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Council for Aid to Education, Inc. (CAE), a nonprofit developer of assessments that measure students’ academic and career readiness, and strategic partner Edalex earlier this month held a webinar on the importance of essential skills in preparing students for career success, and the use of micro-credentials to demonstrate proficiency in these areas. The July 12 discussion is now available for free on-demand viewing.
Titled “Micro-Credentials & Essential Academic and Career Skills - Measuring Learning Outcomes”, the webinar features panelists Doris Zahner, Ph.D., chief academic officer, CAE; Professor Kevin Ashford-Rowe, pro vice-chancellor digital learning at Queensland University of Technology; and Dan McFadyen, managing director of Edalex. CAE partners with Edalex to deliver evidence-based micro-credentials tied to students’ proficiency on CAE’s Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+).
The webinar addresses the higher-order employability skills - critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication - students must develop to succeed in college and the workforce.
“These skills are consistently ranked by employers as most important, even more valuable than content knowledge. However, they are rarely taught, measured, or reported on transcripts,” said Zahner. “There is a gap between the knowledge students have upon graduation and the skills employees need for success. Our research shows a great opportunity to close that gap and improve outcomes for everyone.”
The panelists also discuss solutions for improving these skills and approaches to allow learners to demonstrate proficiency, such as providing learners with personal micro-credentials for employability skills that hold meaning in job markets.
“When we think about the employability skill shortage we see around the world, even those students who do possess them often don’t have a voice, a way to prove that knowledge,” said McFayden. “Students should be able to demonstrate they have the capabilities to succeed and thrive in the workplace and make a meaningful difference.”
The webinar is available for on-demand viewing. CAE has also created a quick Essential College & Career Readiness Skills checklist to keep these skills top-of-mind for curricula and programming for 2022–23.
About CAE
A nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve student outcomes, CAE develops performance-based and custom assessments that authentically measure students’ essential college and career readiness skills and identify opportunities for student growth. CAE’s Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+) for higher education, College and Career Readiness Assessment (CCRA+) for secondary education, and the new Success Skills Assessment (SSA+) for any level, evaluate the skills educational institutions and employers demand most: critical thinking, problem solving and effective written communication. Based on CAE’s research, these skills are predictive of positive college and career outcomes. CAE also partners with its clients to design innovative performance assessments that measure the constructs vital to students, educators, and institutions, including subject area and grade specific assessments. Since 2002, more than 800,000 students at over 1,300 secondary and higher education institutions globally have completed CAE’s assessments. To learn more, please visit www.cae.org.
About Edalex
Learning gets personal – Unleash the power of your skills data, digital assets and personal credentials. Edalex is an edTech company on a mission to surface learning outcomes, digital assets and the power of individual achievement. Founded in 2016, Edalex develops technology solutions that extract hidden value from educational data to make it accessible and more meaningful. Edalex brings together the team behind the CODiE award-winning openEQUELLA open source platform that centrally houses teaching and learning, research, media and library content. In 2019, Edalex launched Credentialate, the world's first Credential Evidence Platform, that helps discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Credentialate provides a Skills Core that creates order from chaotic data, provides meaningful insight through framework alignment and equips learners with rich personal industry-aligned evidence of their skills and competencies. openRSD was released by Edalex in 2022 to help create, store and share rich skill descriptors (RSDs) and RSD collections. openRSD uses Edalex’s open source technology stack to create locally- and globally-relevant libraries of RSDs that are open to all contributors and consumers. RSDs are the building blocks of a skills-driven labour market. They structure skills data, add context around a particular skill and are both human and machine readable. RSDs bring equity to the learner and the skills ecosystem and provide an even playing field for skills recognition. Visit our website - https://www.edalex.com.
