It has now been almost 3 years since the European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, launched the European Digital Credentials for Learning (EDC) in an online event in which more than 1,500 people took part. 

The EDC infrastructure has been made available by the European Commission to provide organisations with free tools to issue digital learning credentials in a standard European format. In three years, EDC has evolved from small scale pilots to successful implementations across Europe. At the time of writing, over 35,000 European Digital Credentials for Learning have been issued to learners’ Europass wallets. Current implementers of EDC include universities and vocational education providers, university alliances, Erasmus+ projects, as well as national implementations of the EDC infrastructure. 

To celebrate this achievement, on 16 October the EDC Team hosted a webinar with over 400 registrations from all EU countries and further, and more than 220 attending on the day. 

The webinar started with a policy introduction from the European Commission, followed by a presentation of the key milestones reached over the past three years working on the European Digital Credentials for Learning standards, testimonials from key implementers and a Q&A.

Four key EDC implementers shared their experiences: 

• Universidad Carlos III de Madrid: CertiDigital: Digital Credentials with European Formats for Spanish Universities
• University of Malta - The University of Malta’s Journey with European Digital Credentials for Learning
• Nuremberg Institute of Technology: EDC for the implementation of Digital Micro-Credentials – A Use Case of MC4Data in the Higher Education Context
• Spanish Service for the Internationalisation of Education - Another way of implementing EDCs: issuing attendance certificates

The implementers stressed the importance of common standards and a common European approach, the added value of the common infrastructure under the Europass platform and the benefits in terms of data privacy. They highlighted the need to work further on the acceptance of digital credentials by learners, employers, and education and training providers.

The Q&A had a variety of questions, mostly around standards and standardization, the links between EDC and other digitalization initiatives, and the opportunity of VET/adult learning/skills academies/non-formal learning actors to make use of the EDC infrastructure. If you want to know more about the questions raised during the Webinar – join our Futurium group where we will be publishing a Q&A document.

Curious to know more? Watch the full webinar.

Download the presentation slides:

• Webinar 3 years of EDC.pdf
• Certidigital Slides.pdf
• Using EDC for the implementation of Digital Micro-Credentials.pdf