Key Points
- Credential standards work together, not in competition. Open Badges 3.0, CLR 2.0, CASE, and LER-RS each play a unique role in recognizing achievements, structuring learner records, defining competencies, and connecting to hiring systems.
- By adopting these standards, institutions can issue credentials that are verifiable, portable across platforms, and aligned with both educational outcomes and workforce needs.
- When credentials are machine-readable, interoperable, and tied to a common language of skills, they empower learners to carry their verified achievements and help employers more easily identify qualified candidates.
As institutions across K–12 and higher education lean into digital credentials to better recognize learning and connect learners to opportunities, we continue to see questions arise about how the standards fit together. One question we received after announcing a partnership with HR Open captured the challenge nicely:
“I’m confused about what LER-RS (a Learning and Employment Resume standard from HR Open) adds to the capabilities already provided by Open Badges and CLR.”
It’s a fair question that reflects growing interest in how education and employment systems can align more effectively.
The short answer: Open Badges 3.0, CLR 2.0, CASE, and LER-RS are not competing technologies. They are complementary components of a connected ecosystem that enables verifiable, transferable learning records to support learners in both academic and workforce contexts.
Let’s walk through what each standard contributes and how they work together.
Open Badges 3.0: Recognizing Individual Achievements
1EdTech's Open Badges 3.0 standard builds on earlier badge formats and adopts the W3C Verifiable Credentials model. This makes credentials secure, interoperable, and future-ready. A badge can represent any type of recognition, including a microcredential, certification, skill, competency, learning outcome, or other type of achievement, and most importantly, it is portable across systems. Open Badges are also a great way to showcase evidence of learning.
For institutions, districts, and other learning and training providers, Open Badges 3.0 offers a flexible and trustworthy way to recognize learning that happens inside and outside the classroom.
CLR 2.0: Structuring the Learner Record
1EdTech's Comprehensive Learner Record Standard™ (CLR Standard®) provides a machine-readable, standards-based format to capture a broader set of verified achievements. It supports everything from traditional higher education and K-12 transcripts to course outcomes and co-curricular experiences to competencies and skills. CLRs can also carry Open Badges and show the alignment between all the items contained in them.
CLR is particularly well-suited to transcripts and transcript innovation. It helps institutions tell the whole story of what a learner knows and can do, structured in a way that is consistent and transferable.
CASE: Connecting to the Language of Learning
1EdTech's Competency and Academic Standards Exchange® or CASE® standard plays a foundational role by providing a consistent, interoperable way to publish and manage learning objectives, competencies, and skill frameworks.
CASE ensures that when you describe a skill in a badge or CLR, it’s tied to a defined concept with an identifier that systems can understand. That enables alignment across courses, credentials, assessments, and even job requirements.
CASE creates a system of record for outcomes, competencies, and skills that is machine-actionable and referenceable across the ecosystem, ensuring a consistent vocabulary of learning.
LER-RS: Aligning with the Language of Employment
The Learning and Employment Record Resume Standard (LER-RS), developed by the HR Open Standards Consortium, focuses on the data structures that employment systems use, such as resumes, job descriptions, qualifications, and competencies.
While badges and CLRs document and provide evidence of learning, experiences and competencies, LER-RS ensures these credentials can be used in hiring contexts. It creates a common language between learning records and hiring systems, allowing the credentials and all the evidence contained in them to flow more seamlessly into workforce applications. As a result, employers can more easily identify candidates whose verified skills and experiences align directly with their workforce needs.
The Ecosystem in Action
When these standards are used together, institutions can issue credentials that are recognizable, portable, and aligned to real-world needs:
- CASE defines what’s being learned
- Open Badges 3.0 issues portable recognition for those achievements
- CLR 2.0 organizes them into a full learning and employment record
- LER-RS enables that record to be understood and used in employment systems
Together, they enable institutions to deliver on the promise of trusted, learner-owned digital credentials that improve equity, mobility, and opportunity.
By adopting and aligning these standards, districts and institutions are better positioned to:
- Empower learners to carry their verified achievements with them
- Ensure credentials reflect skills that are relevant and understandable across sectors
- Connect to a growing ecosystem of verifiers, platforms, institutions, and employers
- Build a digital credential strategy that can grow with your needs
As the credentialing landscape continues to evolve, the institutions and districts that lead will be those who can align trusted learning data with real-world opportunity.
1EdTech remains committed to helping institutions, districts, and learning providers implement these standards effectively. We’re working closely with partners to ensure they remain open, interoperable, and responsive to educational and workforce needs.
Let’s continue building this bridge together.
Would you be interested in learning more about digital credentials?
Join us at the next Digital Credentials Summit, February 18-20, 2026, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Download the Six Steps for a Successful Credentialing Program report.
Learn about the TrustEd Credentials Coalition.
Read more about the Three Pillars of the 1EdTech Digital Credentials Ecosystem.
About the Author
Rob Coyle
As 1EdTech’s program manager for digital credentials, Rob Coyle is committed to expanding the success of digital credentials with Open Badges and the Comprehensive Learner Record Standard to support learning and acknowledge the skills and competencies mastered through formal and informal education and life experiences. Rob recognizes the limitless opportunities that arise from meaningful discussions between education institutions, edtech suppliers, and learning providers to understand the needs of all stakeholders.
Rob brings his experience working with a wide variety of educators and edtech suppliers from K-12, higher education, and corporate training and development. Rob’s career as a teacher and collaborator with other educators allowed him to help learners acquire knowledge and develop new skills through meaningful learning experiences in various disciplines. Rob is an avid supporter of meeting learners where they are and recognizing that not all learning occurs in a classroom with a textbook. These experiences made Rob an avid supporter of the open community, including open-source technologies and open education resources.
Rob graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, with a Master of Education degree focused on education administration and edtech administration.
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