There are many great vendors in the digital credentialing space. And as consumers, it can be confusing for us to piece together how they overlap, interconnect, and sometimes to even distinguish whether they are complementary or competitive. This ecosystem map is a valuable tool for understanding who some of the partners are and, more importantly, what roles they play."
— Noah Geisel, Micro-Credential Program Manager at University of Colorado Boulder
While there are 100 logos represented in this report, we intentionally worked off a narrow definition of the “LER Ecosystem” as the companies and organizations that issue, share, and consume these data standards:
These data standards enable records of learning and achievement to be mobilized to help individuals better understand their skills and qualifications, communicate those to interested parties, and be discovered on their terms by organizations that can offer them earning or learning opportunities.
The Verifiable Credential data standard from W3C is another important data standard in the Learning and Employment Record ecosystem. Both Open Badges 3.0 and Comprehensive Learner Records 2.0 are wrapped in this data standard to maximize portability and verification that does not rely on links back to issuing technology. However, the Verifiable Credential standard enables a much larger ecosystem than this report covers so it is not used as a criteria for inclusion.
The Learner and Employment Record-Resume Standard has not yet been implemented at scale across the LER Ecosystem. We expect that to change in 2025!
Learning and Employment Records are evolving at the intersection of five larger ecosystems in 2025:
This LER Ecosystem Report reflects the intersection of these ecosystems through the research conducted, the logos included in the report, and the analysis contained herein.
This report is organized to represent how individuals (a.k.a. learners and earners) have their achievements, experiences, skills, and qualifications recognized by organizational issuers, assume agency (control) over these official records, move those records between systems, and ultimately receive value from those records as different types of organizations such as employers, educational institutions, career-related technology platforms, and government agencies consume these records.
For example, let’s say Jessica attends community college where she earns a series of credentials representing learning achievements, skill attainment, and a professional certification. She is issued these credentials from her community college as open badges through an open badge-issuing platform. She then takes agency over these records and stores them in her credential wallet. Jessica imports these open badges into a LER resume builder to build a profile around this data by adding self-attested information about her work experience and her knowledge of skills she has built through her lifetime of learning both in the classroom, on the job, and through her volunteer work. She submits this Learning and Employment record to an employer in the talent marketplace who can review her full profile, verify her official learning records, and decide if she is qualified to interview for a job. In this way, the employer has “consumed” this data and acted upon it. This spectrum of activity is covered in the SmartReport.
The infographics include four macro categories and twenty-eight micro categories to organize the types of organizations involved in this ecosystem into common groups based on their contributions to the issuance, sharing, and consumption of the three relevant data standards.
This report also features the many different types of organizations that contribute to a vibrant LER ecosystem. This includes organizations that help organizational issuers develop their LER capabilities, organizations that provide tools to enhance LERs, and organizations that evangelize the LER ecosystem to key stakeholders. These organizations are featured in the teal categories at the bottom of infographic #2 and are aligned with the four macro-categories they most directly support.
The 28 sub-categories will be defined later in this report.
The SmartReport from SmartResume contributes to a deeper understanding of the credentialing ecosystem in the United States higher education, K-12, and many other sectors and provides valuable insights into where the LER ecosystem stands today and predictions for the future. 1EdTech is proud to support the enablement of learner portability through our open standards and specifications and by contributing to this report."
Rob Coyle, Technical Program Manager, Digital Credentials, 1EdTech
We have issued a Creative Commons license to these infographics to encourage widespread usage of this information. We ask that you preserve this information in its current form and link back to it when you share it. It’s impossible to fully define the infographics within the infographics themselves, so the information below is meant to clarify and enhance this ecosystem map. The logos on this report reflect our collective understanding of the organizations that materially contribute to the growth and adoption of verifiable credentials standards and to the vision of a learning and employment record-fueled ecosystem that improves the livelihoods of the individuals it serves. We will continue to update this report in the years to come and welcome additional feedback. You can contact our team by emailing info@smartresume.com.
We conducted interviews and collected data, knowledge, and input from thirty-six subject matter experts from every corner of the LER Ecosystem. What we learned in these conversations led to a complete overhaul of the report to make it as up-to-date, accurate, and helpful as possible. We could not produce this work without contributions from:
Higher education holds a significant historical place in the innovation and launch of the Learning and Employment Record Ecosystem. Open Badges was launched by the Mozilla Foundation in 2012 which is considered the origin moment of this ecosystem. In 2014 1EdTech and AACRAO began collaboration on the extended transcript which would become Comprehensive Learner Records. The Mozilla Foundation asked 1EdTech to take over the Open Badge Standard in 2016. 1EdTech began working with the W3C Foundation to align and merge the Open Badge and CLR standards with the Verifiable Credential Standard in 2020. Higher Education standards bodies have championed the principles behind recognizing the “whole learner”, embraced the idea that all learning should count, launched the standards to support these ideas, and have implemented, tested, and scaled credential issuance over the past decade.
And yet, since the inception of this report, higher education institutions have been among the most challenging categories to represent visually in our ecosystem participant infographics. Industry experts estimate that hundreds of institutions across the United States are issuing Open Badges and Comprehensive Learner Records to their students. Many of these institutions were early adopters whose pioneering efforts helped shape the technologies powering today’s LER ecosystem. Historically, deciding which logos to feature in our reports each year relied on subjective judgment. This year, we aimed to move beyond this inexact approach by developing a new, data-driven infographic that reflects the breadth of LER participation among U.S. higher education institutions.
To achieve this, we collaborated with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) to design and administer a survey targeting LER practitioners in higher education. The survey sought to capture data on the steps institutions are taking to support students with LER credentials. Specifically, it gathered insights into institutional sentiment and measured the infrastructure in place to enable students to use LERs to advance their educational and career goals. AACRAO plans to publish the survey findings in 2025, and we are profoundly grateful for this partnership, particularly the leadership of Mike Simmons, whose contributions made this initiative possible.
As part of SmartResume’s analysis of the survey data, we focused on institutional actions that contribute to a robust credentialing strategy. These strategies aim to help students effectively leverage their credentials to enhance educational opportunities and improve employability. To quantify these efforts, SmartResume developed a scoring rubric to assess the extent of LER infrastructure implemented at each institution. The scoring rubric, detailed below for transparency, evaluates various dimensions of LER support and integration.
Using this rubric, SmartResume plotted each institution’s logo on a graph comparing their “Level of LER Implementation” to the percentage of current students issued LER credentials, such as Open Badges or Comprehensive Learner Records. This visualization yielded a compelling LER adoption curve: institutions with more advanced LER infrastructure were consistently associated with a higher percentage of credentialed students.
From SmartResume’s perspective, this curve not only reflects the current state of LER adoption but also offers predictive insights. Institutions investing in comprehensive LER infrastructure could see significant year-over-year growth in the percentage of students credentialed. Moving forward, we will continue our partnership with AACRAO to recirculate the survey in 2025, enabling us to track institutional progress and further refine our understanding of LER adoption trends over time.
Each institution’s total points were divided by the best possible score of 20 to determine their “Level of LER Implementation.” This level of implementation reflects the amount of best practices SmartResume has identified by speaking to higher education LER implementation experts that a school has put into practice.
Our research with LER subject matter experts revealed a number of exciting stories about ecosystem momentum that we encapsulate in our top trends article each year. This is some of our most exciting content in this report and is accessible here.
Our full report on these LER trends is available here.
This year we made a concerted effort to only include what is already happening in this LER ecosystem report and not what it is in development. But it is fun to have an eye on the future, so here are three trends we predict will emerge in 2025 and be featured in next year’s report!
To read more about these predictions with insights from our contributors click here.
Post-Secondary Education: These are academic, credit-based, accredited institutions that recognize different types of learning (including non-credit-based learning) and student achievement by issuing verifiable credentials.
Logos included in infographic #2: University of Phoenix, Broward College, Purdue Global, Western Governors University, Arizona State University
Logos included in infographic #3: University of Minnesota, Central New Mexico Community College, University of Nevada Las Vegas, St. John’s University, University of Missouri, University of IOWA, New York Academy of Art, Georgia Technical University, Idaho State University, Grand Valley State University, Michigan State University, Wichita State University, Great Bay Community College, Dallas College, University of Georgia, Michigan University, Earlham College, University of Maryland Global Campus, University of Texas at Austin, University of North Carolina Charlotte, Bowdoin College, The College System of Tennessee, University of Maryland Baltimore County, The University of Texas System, University of Arizona, Texas State Technical College, Northeastern University, Northern Michigan University, Bristol Community College, Broward College, Arizona State University, University of Phoenix, Maricopa Community Colleges, Western Governors University, Purdue Global
Youth & Secondary Education: This includes high schools, high school technology platforms, and organizations that provide education, training, and skill development opportunities to people under 18.
Logos included: SchooLinks, Scouts, STEM.org, Mastery Transcript Consortium
MOOCs & Learning Experience Platforms: Massive Online Open Course providers and Learning Experience Platforms offer online learning to the public and enable learners to manage their own learning experiences.
Logos Included: Degreed, Codecademy, Coursera, Skillsoft
Skills Assessment & Validation: These organizations do not provide education or training but instead focus on accessing the skills, knowledge or abilities that individuals are able to demonstrate. The platforms shown in this report issue verifiable credentials directly to the individual to certify the skills they have validated.
Logos Included: Manufacturing Institute, Bioscience Core Skills Institute, AON, ACT, Education Design Lab
Licensing & Professional Associations: Organizations that advance a particular profession, support the interest of people working in that profession, or certify the expertise of professionals in specific occupations.
Logos Included: Society of Human Resource Managers, CompTIA, Digital Marketing Institute, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Institute of Industry & Systems Engineers
Licensing & Professional Associations: Organizations that advance a particular profession, support the interest of people working in that profession, or certify the expertise of professionals in a specific profession.
Logos included: SHRM, CompTIA, HRCI, ATD, AICPA
Government: Departments or divisions of government that either issue verifiable credentials to individuals, most often as official records (e.g. licenses, identification cards, etc.), or that help other branches of government implement verifiable credentials.
Logos included: US Air Force, State of California Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Homelands Security, Utah Division of Technology Service, Colorado Department of Transportation
Workforce & Skill Development: Workforce Development organizations work to fill specific employer hiring needs by understanding gaps between open jobs and people in a region who are qualified to fill those positions. They then identify people who want to elevate their careers, provide training to those individuals, and provide placement services to match those individuals with a network of employers. Skill Development organizations serve a similar but less end-to-end role in training people to develop specific skills.
Logos included: Manufacturing Institute, Hire Heroes USA, Junior Achievement USA, IBM SkillsBuild, CAEL
Employers: This sub-category is for employers who build training programs that include verifiable credentials and who create advancement opportunities for employees through these credentials. This also includes employers who issue verifiable credentials for employment records such as jobs held, or achievements made.
Logos included: Lowe’s, IBM, Walmart, GONG
Issuer Enablement: Organizations and Associations that help other organizations navigate their entry into issuing Open Badges or Comprehensive Learner Records, develop LER expertise, and scale their credential-issuing operations. This support may come in the form of guides and resources, education, and consultation.
Logos included: CredLens (from Strada Education), Credential As You Go, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, University Professional and Continue Education Association, Competency-Based Education Network
Issuer Consulting Services: Consulting services that provide hands-on project management, strategic support, and implementation services to credential-issuing organizations.
Logos included: Micro-Credential Multiverse, Education Design Lab, Skybridge Skills
Open Badge Issuing Platforms: These platforms help organizations create credentials in the 1EdTech Open Badge format (v2 or v3), issue those credentials to badge earners, and track outcomes. Platforms in this category provide all required technology and may offer professional services to build and implement credential programs.
Logos included: Accredible, Credly, Instructure, Sertifier, Trusted Learner Network, Participate, Proof of Knowledge, Greenlight Credentials, Territorium
CLR Issuing Platforms: These platforms help organizations create credentials in the 1EdTech Comprehensive Learner Record format (v1 or v2), issue those CLRs to credential earners, and track outcomes. Platforms in this category provide all required technology and may offer professional services to build and implement credential programs.
Logos included: Territorium, Level Data
Open Source Issuing Tech: Open source resources that enable a credential issuing organization to bring their credential issuing technology in-house. This requires the credential issuing organization to host the technology on their own servers, and to have technical expertise (which they can source from a third party) to implement and maintain that technology. This can result in a lower cost per credential issued if implemented successfully. (New to SmartReport in 2025)
Logos included: Open Credential Publisher (from Level Data), Digital Credentials Consortium, Badge Engine by Digital Promise, Open Recognition Community Act, SpruceID
Metadata Frameworks/Libraries: These semantic layers provide a linked data structure to include rich information about a credential within the LER technical standards. This data may include a rich skill description to articulate specifics about skills obtained by a learner in earning a credential, or information about how long it took to earn a credential, the transfer value of a credential, and how it prepares the learner to earn other credentials.
Logos included: Credential Engine, Open Skills Network, OpenRSD
Ecosystem Development: Catalysts that bring together participants from across the LER ecosystem to advance the issuance, sharing, and consumption of verifiable credentials and LERs. These organizations often focus on data interoperability, equitable design, stakeholder education, scale and reach, aligning processes and systems, or regional adoption of LERs.
Logos included: T3 Innovation Network, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Jobs For The Future, Society of Human Resources Managers, Digital Promise, Digital Bazaar, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, National Governors Association, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, SkillsFWD, National Association of Workforce Boards, Education Design Lab.
Credential Management: Credential management tools provide a consumer application to store and share LER credentials. Consumers can aggregate their LER credentials in one place and share them from these tools with other applications or directly with other individuals or organizations. In our research, we found varying opinions on the term “credential wallet” which led us to broaden the category to focus on the tools individuals can use to manage their Open Badges and Comprehensive Learner Records and move them across the LER ecosystem.
Credential management tools are evolving faster than other areas of the LER ecosystem. Here is how we see the segmentation of these tools at this moment in time, we are confident these definitions and segmentation will likely change next year:
LER Resume Builders: These platforms enable individuals to sync their LER data from credential-issuing platforms and credential wallets or to upload/link to their LER data to create a comprehensive resume. This enables job seekers to format their data to employer requirements while preserving the benefits of LER data overall. These platforms design the output to be shared easily with employers either directly or through the various recruiting and hiring tools they leverage. LER Resume Builders often have integrations directly with LER Talent Marketplaces to power the profiles of those marketplaces with a comprehensive profile. (New to SmartReport in 2025)
Logos included: SmartResume, LER.me
Verifiable Credential Exchange Network: A purpose-built decentralized protocol and blockchain network that serves an ecosystem of organizations and individuals as an infrastructure for the exchange of verifiable, trusted, and globally interoperable self-sovereign career credentials. These enable ecosystem participants to easily connect their systems to the network and become fully interoperable with all other ecosystem participants.
Logos included: Trusted Learner Network, Velocity Network
LER Tech Standards: Technical standards define norms and requirements for how data needs to be structured to be interoperable across different technologies. These technical standards describe a method for packaging information about accomplishments, embedding it into portable files, and including resources for web-based validation and verification. These tech standards may also have to do with interoperability requirements designed to push the LER marketplace to align with requirements of major institutional customers (e.g. the Federal Government).
Logos included: Trusted Learner Network, Velocity Network
HR Information Systems & Applicant Tracking Systems: Human resources information systems help businesses meet core HR needs, manage and serve their employees, and track employee performance and development. ATS stands for Applicant Tracking Systems, which helps employers manage their hiring process from inbound applications to tracking applicants through the interview process, to hiring. Some HRIS and ATS platforms plan to ingest LER data to drive better decision-making for their core capabilities. Yet at this time these platforms have not integrated LER data. They are a key category we will track over time.
Logos included: None at this time
Job Boards: Job boards advertise open jobs as job posts that describe the job and the qualifications for that job. Job boards may enable job seekers to enhance their job seeker profiles with LER data to stand out to employers and to be better matched to jobs.
Logos included: UpWork
Verifier Software: Verifier software is an emerging technology category in the LER ecosystem. As the adoption of Open Badges v3, Comprehensive Learner Records v2, and Verifiable Credentials continues, more LER data can be verified without a call back to the originating issuer platform. This is privacy-preserving as the verification of these credentials and the data they contain can be done without going back to the issuer which means only the credential holder is aware of how they use these credentials. Verifier software can be embedded in different platforms so that those platforms can unpack LER data and translate it into language or code native to that platform to incorporate data into the platform. Many companies on the consumption and portability side of the LER ecosystem have verifier software built into their platforms. This emerging category is software designed to be built into platforms that wish to consume LER data and is provided as a service. (New to SmartReport in 2025)
Logos included: OpenCred (from Digital Bazaar), Verifier Plus from Digital Credentials Consortium, State of Utah Verified Credential (representing a Verifier Software implementation based on SpruceID’s SpruceKit)
LER Talent Marketplaces: In a LER Talent Marketplace job seekers can curate a resume that features LER data, define their job and career objectives, opt-in to being discoverable to employers, browse job opportunities, and submit their resumes to employers. Employers can promote their jobs, search for job seekers with specific skills and qualifications, and communicate with job seekers. The LER data in these marketplaces helps create richer resumes with deeper data on skills and qualifications. Employers can verify LER data in real time in these marketplaces bringing efficiencies to the hiring process. LER Talent Marketplaces are consumer-facing brands.
Logos included: Alabama Talent Triad, Junior Achievement USA, Bioscience Core Skills Institute, Idaho’s SkillStack, SmartResume, Montana Skills Match Job Market, Sun Devil Talent Marketplace (from Arizona State University)
Talent Marketplace Tech Platforms: These tech platforms power the underlying technology infrastructure of a LER Talent Marketplace. These tech providers develop the LER data capabilities, and matching technology, and design the job seeker and employer user experience. They then partner with the consumer-facing brand marketplace operator that markets these services to job seekers and employers and operates the day-to-day management of the marketplace to maximize job placement outcomes.
Logos included: SmartResume, EBSCOed, iQ4
Background Screening: Background Screening companies in the LER ecosystem leverage LER data in their process of verifying information about individuals. They provide a service to employers to verify the authenticity of claims made by potential employees and to check for additional information that’s important to their hiring process. Background screening technologies that leverage LER data can take the verification time for these pieces of information from days down to seconds.
Logos included: Cisive
Pathway & Career Planning Platforms: These platforms help individuals identify their career goals, provide context on their education and career to date, and upload LER data to the platform to receive recommendations. Individuals can use these platforms to understand how to develop needed skills and qualifications for specific career paths or can discover career path opportunities based on their existing skills and qualifications. By importing LER data into these platforms the quality of the recommendations improves and the amount of time needed to input information is significantly reduced. To meet the requirements for inclusion in this category an individual must be able to upload their LER data from a credential wallet or multiple issuing platforms.
Logos included: Accredible, Instructure, iQ4
Quality Frameworks: These organizations and initiatives are positioned to help increase trust in LERs by either embedding benchmarked data and metrics on the quality of individual credentials into the metadata or by certifying the credential issuers and providers themselves. These organizations and initiatives are relatively new but intend to create data that can be contained within verifiable credentials to drive better decision-making by the VC consumption enablement layer of the ecosystem. They are also developing other related resources and content to better inform learners about their educational and professional development options.
Logos included: Credential Lab from the Higher Learning Commission, Education Quality Outcomes Standards Board, 1EdTech TrustEd Credential
Trust Registries: Trust registries have two components. The first is a list of credential issuers and verifiers that the registry considers “trustworthy” meaning that they have quality standards in place to create confidence in the assertions made in those credentials and have controls in place to make sure that only qualified individuals are issued those credentials. This form of trust registry is often associated with a “private” network of credential issuers by the registry itself is open to the public. The second component is a governance structure that manages the revocation of credentials and publishes operating rules for all members of the trust registry.
Logos included: Trusted Learner Network, Velocity Network
The Top 10 LER Trends of 2025 - A deep dive into the trends uncovered while researching this report.
Predicting Three New Trends That Will Emerge In 2025 - a look ahead
T3 Innovation Networks LER for SBHA Toolkit - An implementation resource for implementing Learning and Employment Records and Skills Based Hiring and Advancement. Lots of resources here!
Learn & Work Ecosystem Library - a web-based library that collects, curates, and coordinates resources to support the learn-and-work-ecosystem
T3 Network’s LER Ecosystem Map - a tool for all those involved, and those who want to be involved, in building this LER future.
Credential As You Go - a library of resources to guide development of LER issuing capabilities
Credential Engine’s Counting Credentials Report - a view into the growth of credential programs and LER data in the United States.
Why OB3 Matters - a perspective from We Are Open - a write up of the many advantages of the Open Badge 3.0 spec.
2025 SmartReport v.2.0 - The LER Ecosystem © 2025 by Ian Davidson is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0
