EdCircuit Staff 
Connecting Learners and Employers Via Badges and Pathways 
Concentric Sky, developers of Badgr, and Portfolium, the world’s fastest growing learning and career development network, are partnering to build a system in which learners and employers can be closely matched along specific skills and/or credentials through the use of open standards.
November 8, 2017 – Concentric Sky, developers of Badgr, and Portfolium, the world’s fastest growing learning and career development network, are partnering to build a system in which learners and employers can be closely matched along specific skills and/or credentials through the use of open standards.
This partnership gives Portfolium users the flexibility to showcase their competencies and accomplishments while also providing verifiable artifacts of their work in the form of Open Badges and Open Pathways.
Open Badges communicate skills and achievements by providing visual symbols of accomplishments packed with verifiable data and evidence that can be shared across the web.
The Portfolium and Badgr integration works for learners, educators and employers. With this partnership, students can share verifiable, standards-aligned digital credentials directly into an ePortfolio as evidence of their work. This allows them to showcase their work with customized views to educators, potential employers, committees and others.
“Portfolium’s mission is to connect learning with opportunity by exposing the hidden skills of learners. Badgr helps us close the skills credential gap to make this mission come true. We expect millions of learners to add Badgr credentials to their Portfolium profiles, strengthening the quality and quantity of matches we can help make between learners and jobs,” said Adam Markowitz, CEO at Portfolium.
Via an integration with Concentric Sky’s Pathways system, students will be able to share views of their progress on learning pathways as an item in their portfolio, allowing students to showcase their future learning goals. Pathways also create the ability for a learner to demonstrate how specific badges satisfy elements of competency frameworks and other education standards.
Employers and hiring managers can easily engage with a student’s verifiable credentials, competencies, and pathways in their ePortfolio. This new approach to communication about competencies and evidence of competencies will help better connect learners with employers.
“We’re excited to be partnering with Portfolium to advance the field of competency-based hiring. This collaboration will provide extraordinary opportunities to connect learners and employers in new ways as we work together to reimagine the nexus of education and the workforce.” — Wayne Skipper, CEO of Concentric Sky.
To learn more about this partnership, you’re invited to join Concentric Sky and Portfolium for an informational webinar, Thursday, November 16th at 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET. The webinar will feature Wayne Skipper, CEO at Concentric Sky, and Jim Milton from Portfolium, alongside Daniel T. Hickey, Professor of Learning Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington.
About Concentric Sky
Concentric Sky is an award-winning software development firm founded in 2005. Our partners include a number of prominent organizations such as The World Bank, The United Nations, NASA, NSF and NIH, as well as major publishers such as Encyclopedia Britannica, National Geographic and Cengage Learning. Badgr is a registered trademark of Concentric Sky. Badgr is a registered trademark of Concentric Sky.
About Portfolium
Portfolium is the world’s fastest growing learning and career development network. 2,000+ colleges, universities and high schools use Portfolium to manage and align competency assessment, student success, and career readiness programs.
Portfolium’s academic solutions plug students into an open ecosystem of employers, mentors, educators, and peers around the world. Our 3.5M+ users are linked to internships, jobs, and lifelong learning opportunities via ePortfolios that showcase their proven competencies. To learn more about Portfolium’s network for learners and solutions for educators, visit: https://portfolium.com
Original Press Release PRWeb
Further Reading
- Portland Business Journal – Eugene, a growing hub for educational technologies
- The Register-Guard – Sky high goals
- edCircuit – Concentric Sky and SURFnet Announce Collaboration to Explore the Digital Learning Environments of the Future
