Service: Cross-border micro-credentials

Universities do not have digital records for students especially for courses obtained across borders. This means that a large amount of manual work is needed. Tampere University in Finland & Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, are part of the university network ECIU, however, student accreditation such
 as micro-credentials from courses (i.e. micro-modules or ECIU challenges) are not transferable between the two universities, making it very hard for students to take necessary courses abroad. Additionally, the current course accreditation system is missing any records of skills and/or achievements acquired by the students. Both universities are taking leading positions towards building micro-accreditations standards. With such semantic models, universities across the EU could easily and in the uniform manner exchange academic information. Although, even having agreed a common data model there is still a need for a network or infrastructure that would allow the delivery of credentials that everyone can trust by default and be certain that they are authentic and legally binding. Moreover, such data transfer should address GDPR and EIDAS requirements, and students need to have mobility and interoperability. That is how it was decided to participate in the E BSI Early adopters Multi-university pilot. EBSI not only provides a trusted network by using blockchain technology, but ensures GDPR and EIDAS compliance and has a governance framework agreed between all Member States that ensures trust and reliability. The project team decided to use “Self Sovereign Identity” or “SSI” to create transferable and verifiable micro credentials for students of both universities. This user-centric solution will allow students to hold records of their obtained courses, share these records and to have them verified by the university in which they’d like to enroll.