Professional Development

New Partnership Will Provide Micro-Credentials to Teachers

• By Michael Hart
• 11/11/15

A new partnership between a company that provides professional development for educators and a nonprofit that attempts to foster innovation in educational opportunities will provide teachers with a wide variety of micro-credentials.

BloomBoard, a technology platform that helps teachers set their professional development goals and then recommends third-party providers to help meet them, will work with Digital Promise, the nonprofit working to accelerate innovation in education, to create the micro-credentialing system.

Micro-credentials are meant to recognize teachers' professional development and efforts to expand their knowledge base and teaching methods. Educators will apply for and earn the credentials through an online system that offers criteria about the tasks required to earn them. Once earned, they can add the credentials to their portfolio, carry those on to other positions or share what they learned with their fellow educators.

"Teachers develop skills throughout the course of their careers and micro-credentials are a way to both support and strengthen professional practice," said Digital Promise President and CEO Karen Cator.

Digital Promise will identify and curate the micro-credentials while BloomBoard will provide the access teachers need to the content.

"We're always looking for new ways to support personal learning and professional growth for teachers," said BloomBoard CEO and Co-Founder Jason Lange.

The first set of about 100 micro-credentials includes topics like deeper learning, data literacy and teacher leadership. To meet the criteria for attaining the micro-credentials, similar to badges, teachers will have access to BloomBoard's library of professional development resources.

The two partners demonstrated the need for the micro-credentialing system with the results of a recent report by Digital Promise that found that nearly 70 percent of educators surveyed said they want more professional learning activities.