Considering the Dimensions of Trust, Privacy, and Technology Innovations to Enable Quality-Assured Credential Assessment Practice

Today’s higher education assessment practices for admission and transfer have been impacted significantly in the past several years by evolutions in technology and learner privacy rights. These changes are putting the learner at the center, introducing concepts such as the right to selective disclosure which results in the learner choosing what data is shared with whom, and subsequently creating additional trust considerations in the assessment of academic documents for admission and transfer into colleges, institutes, and universities. The core approach to credential assessment continues to include reviewing past verifiable and documented evidence of learning achievement; however, digitization and related technological advances now include a growing focus on new ways to access and present the credentials and their underlying data using digital credentialing formats and putting much greater emphasis on self-sovereign identity principles. New third-party networks are emerging that provide capacity for institutions to share documents more efficiently and securely in trusted and more open ecosystems. The outcome is causing a transformational disruption that is shifting the dimensions of trust in credential assessment practice for admission and transfer into higher education.