The CertiDigital Brochure is a layout and illustrated version of the Technical Report of the project, a document that served for its design in terms of objectives, scope, collaborations and actions necessary for its implementation. At the same time, the Brochure provides the background and context, both at European and national level, necessary to understand the role that digital educational credentials can play at the present time.
An example of this context is the Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027), where the European Union is exploring how best to address the challenges and opportunities related to digital transformation in education. Action 3 of this Plan explicitly called for the provision of a framework for the issuance of digitally certified qualifications and validation of digitally acquired competences that are trusted, multilingual and fully aligned with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and the Multilingual European Classification of Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO).
The Brochure develops the objectives of the CertiDigital project for the creation of a digital credential service that will provide an open and scalable infrastructure deployed in RedIRIS and a software development published as open source. In this way, the results of the project can be reused by any institution of the Spanish University System (SUE), regardless of their human and material resources, thus creating economies of scale.
The project will provide universities with the means to implement a series of university digital credential use cases aligned with the European Learning Model (ELM). The issuance of credentials in CertiDigital will be aligned with two European technologies:
- European Digital Credentials for Learning (EDC), as part of a centralized and consumable scenario from the Europass platform.
- European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), which is based on blockchain technology and therefore poses a decentralized scenario.
The document details the organizational proposal of the project, as well as its realization and planning through work packages and main actions to be implemented by the various universities of the consortium. The work packages are distributed in 3 main areas:
- Governance/Organization, which contemplates the actions necessary to address the coordination, management and monitoring of the project, together with the study and development of the academic and legal aspects that will guarantee a positive impact of the project.
- Technical Development, which includes the definition of the data model based on ELM, the necessary software development for the adaptation of the issuance and consumption of digital credentials to the university context, and the interconnection with existing software platforms in the different universities.
- Implementation, support and training, which consists of the identification, development and evaluation of the different pilot use cases, such as, for example, the generation of digital credentials for the training of university staff (PAS/PDI); and also the training and change management necessary to prepare both the staff and the academic, administrative and technological procedures involved in the project. This also includes updating, maintenance and technical support services.
The CertiDigital Brochure is available for free download in both Spanish and English at the following link. If you have found this document useful or have any suggestions, please contact us.