Non-Profit Educational Assessments Provider and Global Micro-Credential Evidence Platform Partner to Help Students Bridge the Gap between Education and Employment

November 9, 2020, NEW YORK – The Council for Aid to Education, Inc. (CAE), a non-profit provider of performance-based assessments that authentically measure essential college and career skills, has partnered with Edalex, the Australian edtech developers of Credentialate, a Credential Evidence Platform. Through the relationship, the companies will assess and validate students’ attainment of the skills essential for success in college and career – critical thinking, problem-solving and written communication.

Students across the globe will earn tiered credentials – proficient, accomplished, and advanced – based on their performance on CAE’s flagship assessments: CLA+, CWRA+ and SSA+. CAE’s mastery levels are based on standard setting studies established by leading educators and employers. Credentialing provides an objective measure of these real-world skills that students can share with educational institutions and prospective employers.

“Often unmeasured and difficult to verify, the skills our assessments evaluate are the same ones the majority of managers believe recent college graduates lack: critical thinking, problemsolving, and written communication,” said Bob Yayac, president and CEO, CAE. “CAE’s assessments paired with Edalex’s Credential Evidence Platform will help students demonstrate their strengths in these skills. Employers and educational institutions can evaluate the credential and supporting evidence to determine appropriateness of fit.”

Edalex’s role as the industry partner for a skills-based micro-credential research project at a leading Australian university helped inform the design of Credentialate, which securely extracts, analyzes and presents personalized qualitative and quantitative evidence with the digital credentials.

Unlike more common testing instruments – which tend to be multiple choice and focus on content knowledge – CAE develops performance-based tasks that allow students to demonstrate their ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information and, ultimately, develop and effectively communicate a solution to a problem.

“Personalized, evidence-backed credentials based on CAE’s performance-based assessments allow students to demonstrate their critical 21st century skills,” said Dan McFadyen, managing director of Edalex. “Credentialate is a natural fit to extend CAE’s globally-recognized assessments and to make the assessment results more tangible for students, educational institutions and employers.”

About Edalex
Edalex is an edtech company on a mission to surface learning outcomes, digital assets and the power of individual achievement. Founded in 2016, Edalex develops technology solutions that extract hidden value from educational data to make it accessible and more meaningful. In 2019, Edalex launched Credentialate – a Credential Evidence Platform that increases the power and meaning of digital badges and the ability to analyze performance against learning outcomes like never before. Learn more at: edalex.com.