All Your Diplomas in One Place
It's not only high-tech toys that the modern technology gives us, but also some new ways to make our daily routine easier - like, for example, numerous ways to get education via the Internet, from the comfort of your own warm bed, regardless of your age and location. Online learning is much cheaper compared with the old-fashioned personal day-to-day attendance; besides, it provides you with freedom of movement since you can study anywhere you want. The only restriction left is how and when you get to pass your exams and tests. Online courses are available at many universities: Harvard, Walden, American University Washington DC, University of Illinois, National American University, University of Oxford, and many others; and each finished course gets you a diploma of a certain kind. But where do you store your diplomas from online courses?
A group of people has thought about this, and the team created Degreed - a free service aimed to “score and validate your lifelong education” from both accredited and non-accredited sources. According to the home page of the project, each user will get a Degreed Score, quantifying their lifelong education in two types of numbers: Credit Hours and Mastery Levels. You and other people to whom you give access to your page will be able to see your degree in each taken discipline. So this is going to be like one continuously updating digital online diploma featuring your real knowledge, no matter the source. The idea behind the project is similar to the FICO score, which aggregates your credit history regardless of the banks your credits came from; the important thing is how many times you took credits, of what kind, and how well you payed them out.
The idea of jail-breaking your degree and getting the Digital Lifelong Diploma seems to be an interesting one; and if I get it right from the video (you can see it below), Degreed will also provide you with the possibility to attend those online courses and presentations. I still have several questions after watching the trailer, though. Will the “attended” courses be added to my list automatically (in the final version), or I will have to do it manually? Will adding a course to the progress bar only be possible after you complete the said course? Not to mention the questions about how it all is supposed to work, and how it is to be kept safe, both in terms of your personal data and cheating protection. Unfortunately, all of these questions will remain unanswered until the service launches. Still, I prefer to be optimistic about Degreed, as I believe that it will be a good way to track your online studies and keep your diplomas in one place.
Nice idea!