This weekend, I finally had my opportunity to dig into the new education credentialing website Degreed.com. I had read about Degreed a few months ago and have anxiously been awaiting the day when the site would go into beta.
For those who aren’t familiar with Degreed.com, here’s a blurb from the About page of their site:
Degreed is a free service that scores and validates your lifelong education from both accredited (i.e. Harvard) and non-accredited (i.e. iTunesU, Lynda.com, Khan Academy, etc.) sources.
The creation of this site is great news for learners like myself who have a mix of accredited and non-accredited educational experience. I have long felt that the almighty college degree is antiquated; fortunately, it may soon be possible to compile a reputable credential based on successful learning in multiple environments. The future of education isn’t just a matter of lowering costs…it also requires a new system of measuring all-around learning and experiences, and Degreed is the first to take a stab at it.
Upon logging in, I was able to build a profile (name, bio, Twitter account, etc.) and begin building my educational history. At this point I was only able to add my courses taken at Penn State World Campus; University of the People, Codeacademy, and Khan Academy are not listed as providers yet. But my understanding is that they will be. Once I had entered some courses, I was given a score of 6 (not sure how that’s derived yet) and I could also see my “progress” toward “degrees” in psychology, biology, etc. based upon the courses that I had taken. I’ve been told that new features are continually being added into the site, so I’m sure that it will all make more sense shortly.
Again, I can’t express just how excited I am by Degreed. As a student at University of the People I am getting a tuition-free education, and with Degreed I will be able to catalog my learning from all sources so that peers, employers, etc. can get a truly accurate representation of my educational repertoire. Edupunk, indeed!
Thanks for the early interest and support of Degreed.