Badge Summit Preview: Brooke Lipsitz
The Trusted Steward Managing the Trust Learner Network
With a key role in multiple Badge Summit sessions this year, Arizona State University (ASU)’s Brooke Lipsitz, Product Manager of the Trusted Learner Network (TLN), is a presenter we’re excited to see this year!
Why? Because Brooke is the linchpin behind the development of the TLN, helping to build an ecosystem built on trust, with the learner at the center. [Full disclosure: I’m a fanboy as well as member of the Governing Body.]
Her passion for the work and dedication to the community is evident when you speak with her, and her ability to explain complex technology in user-friendly ways is a super power. And as you’ll see in our conversation, Brooke recognizes how her own journey helps her to relate to her users’ needs and experiences in ways that make her uniquely qualified for leading work rooted in recognition and storytelling.
I connected with Brooke to learn about her background, discuss the TLN’s technology, governance and community pillars, and ask what’s in store for the TLN beyond its groundbreaking first five years.
How did you get involved in the Trusted Learner Network and the digital credentialing community?
My journey has been a combination of formal educational experience and on-the-job training.
When I finished undergrad, we were experiencing recessions regionally and nationally, and the idea of continuing in higher education was daunting. I wanted to get more experience in the professional world, thinking growth would happen naturally.
Over the years, I noticed that some learners and earners were at a disadvantage — they were leaving skills and competencies behind in their positions and struggled to articulate their experience comprehensively.
I’m both an example and outspoken advocate who serves as a reminder that everyone’s education and career path look different, and I’m here to amplify the messaging that verifiable credentials and LERs are effective tools anyone can utilize to leverage their narrative.
After gaining skills in a variety of positions, from supporting clinical mental health research to serving as a client and volunteer manager and working in corporate technology, I realized I wanted to align my interests and values. I made my way back into the nonprofit sector as a funder and state-wide program manager, but after COVID-19 happened, it was time for me to mesh my passion to assist the community with technology.
I learned about the TLN’s Product Manager position, which is more than just a typical product manager role. In this case, my breadth of experience helped me stand out, and I’ve brought with me a unique collection of knowledge that’s added value to our work.
For those who are new to the digital credentials space, what do they need to know about the life cycle of Learning and Employment Records (LERs)?
LERs allow learners/earners to share their stories in a digitally verifiable format and are intended to complement resumes via credentials and badges that detail accomplishments over a lifetime. It’s important that learners–at any point in their lifelong journey–can understand the value of their achievements and speak to them intelligibly, whether it’s for their continuing education or for their career.
And how does the Trusted Learner Network fit into this cycle and ecosystem?
The TLN creates a secure, digital repository for learners and earners to request, house, and share their verifiable credentials with higher education institutions, value-added services, and future employers. From the TLN repository, learners can push their credentials at their discretion when they’re ready, making them portable right in their pocket. The ability to share digital learning and employment credentials supports the learner/earner’‘s ability to communicate a more holistic view of the educational journey.
In other words, the TLN aims to facilitate movement around obstacles that the most marginalized of learners face when they’re forced to adhere to long-standing systems of record verification that turn into insurmountable roadblocks.
I’m both an example and outspoken advocate who serves as a reminder that everyone’s education and career path look different, and I’m here to amplify the messaging that verifiable credentials and LERs are effective tools anyone can utilize to leverage their narrative.
Why is accessibility important to you? The TLN?
The TLN is being built to serve all learners and earners, no matter where they are on their lifelong learner journey. For me, accessibility is important because sometimes technology can lose sight of the fact that all people have critical value, and in my past and present work, I’ve often been the human connection between people and technology. I strive to make technologies that are inclusive to fill that gap.
Empowering learners isn’t just important to me, it’s vital to everything we’re doing at the TLN. We’re building a system that empowers users to consent to sharing their credentials with the tap of a finger. When we’re able to remove barriers that may block students from accessing this information, we’re increasing their agency and probability of degree completion and job advancement.
Why is trust required when it comes to digital credentialing for learners?
BL: First of all, trust is part of our name and what we do daily! As earners receive new digital credentials to store and share, a key value proposition of the TLN is trust: users will know that credentials managed on the TLN benefit from an added layer of reliability that assures consumers that the credentials are trustworthy. We ensure this through our combination of secure technologies and a governance structure that confirms institutions on the TLN are who they say they are.
Trust for us means:
- Being transparent: Our work is open source — students won’t need to buy anything to use the technology and its services — it is being built to share and easily interpret.
- Giving power to students: The learner will decide what they do with their credentials and who they want to see them. They can register or revoke sharing consent at any point in time.
- Verifiability and Credibility: for credentials to have value, they must mean what they represent and there must be assurances that they come from directly from the stated source to the individual that earned them. This space is tough to navigate in a new digital technology paradigm.
- Keeping student data secure and accurate: Because data on the TLN is constructed using distributed ledger technology, it is highly durable, auditable and cannot be manipulated or changed.
Tell us about the technology that enables the TLN to operate.
The TLN is a standalone, web-accessible application that will provide learners with the autonomy to choose how they manage and share credentials securely. It acts as an insurance policy for record management when other applications and devices are lost, switched, or sunsetted. [Check out the TLN tech stack for a more comprehensive explanation of how the technology supports and injects trust.]
When we’re able to remove barriers that may block students from accessing this information, we’re increasing their agency and probability of degree completion and job advancement.
Our Governing Body guides the technology governance, ensuring that the handling and administration of students’ credentials is always the TLN’s top priority.
Our Architecture Advisors guide the technological considerations as we build and refine the product suite, and consider new or alternative features.
The Governing Body, Architecture Advisors, and TLN team work in tandem to ensure institutions, credential providers, and end-users are securely exchanging information within the TLN’s blockchain-powered infrastructure.
What can the community anticipate from the TLN for the next 5 years?
We want this network to grow and serve many communities, institutions and learners (and millions of credentials). In five years, ASU students and beyond will be maximizing TLN’s technology features, which will seamlessly integrate with ASU Pocket. Additionally, our TLN community will grow to include more institutions and service providers, expanding our network of experts, practitioners and digital credentialing evangelists.
What are you looking forward to at the Badge Summit this year?
BL: Like the TLN Unconference, the Badge Summit is fun and community-focused — I love working with others on what the future of the digital ecosystem will look like and how we can make a difference. I look forward to sharing the TLN’s work by presenting at two sessions this year, and I can’t wait to see familiar faces while in Boulder and meet some new community members, too!
The 2024 Badge Summit will be August 5–7 in Boulder, Colorado, and online August 20. Registration is live at www.thebadgesummit.com where you can also get more information about the conference and see content from previous years. If you’ve got awesome work to share, please connect and share with us on LinkedIn so we can amplify how you too are changing the world!
To learn more about the TLN, visit their website and sign up for their newsletter!
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