From February 2021, the ACT takes another step down the digitisation and innovation road, with the launch of digital credentials for our students. This exciting opportunity to move the award, and recognition, of our qualifications to the digital space has been on our roadmap for a while, but the impact of COVID-19 and the challenges of this new virtual world we are living in helped to accelerate our move towards this new and exciting space.
Digital credentials are badges and/or eCertificates which provide proof of qualification, competence, skills, accomplishment and quality. They are easily shared on all social media platforms and allow individuals to publicly share their achievements, while also potentially building up a bank of credentials that can demonstrate their commitment to personal development and continued learning. The difference between digital credentials and a student’s transcript is that instead of a list of qualifications and learning the student has undertaken, the digital credential also shares the skills and knowledge that a student has acquired – it better communicates their capabilities – and in a way that is easily verifiable by an employer. The move to digital credentials provides more opportunities for our students to back up skill assertions with evidence, which is publicly recognised and valued. Credentials will also over time become better signals of capabilities and, as they become more portable, will make employment more equitable.
To make this a reality for our students and members, the ACT has partnered with Accredible, the world’s most comprehensive digital credential platform. Accredible issues more than one million secure, verifiable, and sharable credentials each month for leading organizations like Google, McGraw-Hill, the Corporate Finance Institute, and now the ACT. Their system uses Blockchain technology to ensure credentials are secure, and they take the security and privacy of personal data very seriously, only holding and storing essential data required to maintain the uniqueness of each record.
Digital badging will be rolled out across a number of areas within the ACT, not just for our qualifications. We are also looking at issuing them for eLearning, training, events and membership over the course of this year, however, qualifications will be the first to go live.
To start, students who completed any ACT qualification in 2020 and January 2021, excluding the Award in Cash Management Fundamentals and Certificate in International Cash Management (due to changes with the cash management qualification suite), will receive a digital badge/eCertificate for the qualifications they achieved in 2020 and early 2021 (for Certificate in Treasury Fundamentals and the new Award in International Cash Management). From February onwards, students who achieve a qualification will automatically be sent their digital credentials within two weeks of receiving their results. Emails will be sent to all students with information on how to access, download and share their credentials. We would encourage you all to open the emails, have a look and a browse, play around with the system and share your achievements with family, friends, colleagues and on social media. If you do share on LinkedIn, please include the #actupdate hashtag. More information can be found on our website here.
We hope that many of you will take the opportunity to embrace and engage with this new technology and share your amazing achievements. Completing any of the ACT qualifications takes hard work and demonstrates your commitment to your own personal development and to maintaining the highest standards of the treasury profession. In these times, when it is sometimes hard to see the positives, it is even more important that we share and celebrate individual excellence.
If you have any questions at all about digital credentials please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me or with my team at assessment@treasurers.org.
Janet Legge - Director of Awarding Body
