Certification and Continuous Learning Expands in the Digital Age

A majority of professionals now say that continuous learning is essential to keep pace with business disruptions and new job demands. In response, the continuing education field, including certification programs, is rapidly adopting digital innovations to offer career-long learning opportunities, as well as to help professionals verify and tout their extra-learning achievements.

Today, 63 percent of full-time workers consider themselves "professional learners" and have taken a course or gotten extra training in the past 12 months, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center study, Lifelong Learning and Technology. Top reasons:

• To maintain or improve job skills (87 percent).
• To get a license or certification needed for the job (57 percent).
• To help get a raise or promotion (39 percent).
• To get a new job (21 percent).
• To avoid downsizing (12 percent).

"The days where learning ended with college graduation are long gone," writes Mary Kyle in GoCertify.. "The adoption of an attitude of lifelong learning is a must for those seeking to retain peak skills and remain at the top of their profession."

Digital Credentials Change the Game

New digital and mobile capabilities, including Microsoft’s recent purchase of LinkedIn, have the potential to change the lifelong learning landscape, including how people are recognized for achievements that extend beyond formal education and degrees.

"The explosion in credentials is upending long-held notions about the value of a college degree," agrees The Chronicle of Higher Education writer Goldie Blumenstyk, in When a Degree Is Just the Beginning. "Many of these credentials are in digital formats that can be easily shared among students, educators and employers in new kinds of e-portfolios or on commercial sites like LinkedIn."

Still, according to the Pew research, many adults are just beginning to get acquainted with the new digital platforms of a rapidly expanding educational ecosystem. For example:

• Digital badges that demonstrate someone’s mastery of an idea, skill or professional competency ― 83 percent of adults do not have much awareness of these.
• Massive open online courses (MOOCs) that are being offered by universities and companies ― 80 percent of adults do not have much awareness of these.
• Distance learning – 61 percent of adults have little or no awareness of this concept.

However, adoption is likely to increase rapidly as new digital platforms become more mainstream, predicts a Deloitte University Press report, The Lifetime Learner:

"This rich ecosystem of semi-structured, unorthodox learning providers is emerging at the edges of the current postsecondary world, with innovations that challenge the structure and even existence of traditional education institutions. These challengers are extending the education space beyond grades, degrees, and certificates to provide lifelong learning in a variety of formats and levels of effectiveness."

Already emerging are highly networked, "social learning communities" and "creation spaces" that allow learners to work collaboratively to not just take in content but to become content creators as a way of gaining new insights. The use of digital badges and other technologies is also expanding to "warrant" or authenticate certifications, learning experiences and even job achievements.

For example, Mozilla Development Network recognizes people for skills they earn online and offline and beyond their time at universities. Websites such as Degreed touts: "The future doesn’t care how you became an expert," and validates a range of learning experience. Accredible is an "edtech" service that allows you to demonstrate achievements, including self-directed learning, by creating personalized certificates.

Networked Credentials and HR

"The value of paper degrees will inevitably decline when employers or other evaluators avail themselves of more efficient and holistic ways for applicants to demonstrate aptitude and skill," writes Michael Staton, a partner at Learn Capital, in Harvard Business Review. "Evaluative information like work samples, personal representations, peer and manager reviews, shared content, and scores and badges are creating new signals of aptitude and different types of credentials."

HR professionals, who are already at the center of change and transformation in their own organizations, are wise to keep abreast of disruption in the continuous learning and certification space. On a personal level, your future career brand is likely going to need more proof of a valid professional certification (check that box if you’re already HRCI-certified) and completion of extra-learning opportunities (one of many reasons that HRCI requires recertification).

As an HR professional, keep in mind that new technologies are also likely to create new models and opportunities for evaluating talent. It will be up to HR leaders and their organizations to analyze digital credentials and decide how much they predict future job performance for various roles.