By Alex Kaplan, Project Infuse Advisor, AACRAO
Innovative credentials are becoming essential tools for helping learners clearly communicate their skills and experiences. For AACRAO members, this shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity: to modernize credentialing systems in ways that are more aligned with learner mobility, employer expectations, and institutional mission.
However, the path to implementation remains steep for many institutions—especially those serving underrepresented populations or operating with limited resources—due to cost constraints, technical hurdles, and siloed data systems.
AACRAO launched Project Infuse, a transformative initiative to build a public good, interoperable digital credentialing infrastructure that unlocks opportunities for learners and supports institutions in aligning education with workforce needs. The project is designed to address key challenges institutions face in moving towards the digital future, given that registrars and admissions officers are essential stewards of the data required to make Infuse a success.
Artificial intelligence is expected to be one of Infuse’s core enabling technologies, enabling both the realization of this vision at scale and the enhancement of its power, ultimately simplifying how institutions can benefit. Ethical considerations and data governance are foundational to Infuse. AI models deployed by Infuse are designed to be fair and bias-free, employing transparent decision-making and data anonymization techniques to maintain compliance and protect student privacy.
Transforming Challenges
Project Infuse is tackling some of the toughest hurdles colleges face in transitioning to a digital future. Currently, converting traditional credentials, such as transcripts or badges, into digital, machine-readable formats is complicated and costly. The hurdles to a future with innovative credentials will be significantly reduced by utilizing these tools and approaches summarized below:
Infuse aims to demonstrate how AI can streamline this conversion process, thereby significantly easing the financial and administrative pressures associated with these conversions.
Infuse will utilize AI to bridge the gap between traditional credentials and the specific skills that employers are interested in. We expect the AI will accurately identify and communicate student competencies and keep curricula aligned with evolving job market demands.
Infuse will explore advanced AI techniques to standardize credentials into a unified competency framework to resolve longstanding issues with data interoperability.
Infuse will evaluate leveraging blockchain combined with AI, recognizing the importance of data security and chain of trust. Ensuring that credentials are verifiable, secure, and compliant with critical privacy standards, such as FERPA and FCRA, will be essential in maintaining institutional and student trust.
Powering A New Future
Making credentials clearer to understand, more insightful to users, and more valuable than academic records alone. One of the most exciting aspects of Project Infuse is its strategic use of AI to address real-world challenges important to registrars. For instance, when properly managed, AI can analyze students’ academic records, certifications, extracurriculars, and work experiences to build detailed and personalized student skill profiles.
Simplifying to make sharing information easier between schools, employers, and other credential databases. Infuse also uses AI to match credentials with widely accepted frameworks like Open Badges and Credential Engine, aligning student qualifications directly with the skills employers are seeking. This mapping could also serve to streamline credit transfers. Through AI-powered data normalization, Infuse will seamlessly translate various credential standards into a unified, understandable format.
Ensuring that academic programs stay relevant to job market trends. Infuse enhances career advising by using AI to optimize resumes, perform labor market analyses, and smartly match students to job opportunities, giving registrars better tools to guide students. Further, the AI continuously updates curricula through dynamic skill taxonomies and real-time recommendations. AI simplifies the mapping of courses and competencies, analyzing syllabi and aligning them with recognized industry standards to keep educational offerings practical and impactful.
The Partnerships for Progress
Infuse will leverage and integrate existing and new AI tools to achieve its objectives. AACRAO’s broad partnerships with other nonprofits and the education technology industry are key assets in the path forward. In addition, we will learn from previous work done in this space and are working with a broad group of stakeholders. Key amongst this group are:
The Infuse Team
The AACRAO Infuse project team includes Dr. Mike Simmons and veteran AACRAO team members Mark McConahay and Michelle Mott.
We are also pleased to announce that Alex Kaplan has joined AACRAO as an advisor to support the Infuse initiative. He comes to us having recently retired from a 20-year career at IBM, where he worked at the intersection of education and HR technology, helping organizations utilize advanced technologies to fulfill their missions. While at IBM, he led its work with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, which created the movement for Learning and Employment Records. Kaplan was an integral thought leader on LERs and digital credentials.
During his tenure at IBM Research, he was involved in many early-stage and innovative projects, including AI tutors for textbooks in collaboration with Pearson, AI tools to improve early childhood education in collaboration with Sesame Street, and personalized learning tools for K-12 classroom teachers in collaboration with Apple.
Infusing the Vision
Project Infuse is a visionary initiative for AACRAO and its members to actively participate in shaping the future of digital credentialing. By harnessing AI's power and our robust partnerships, the Infuse initiative will offer students clear, actionable insights into their educational achievements, dramatically enhancing their career prospects.
The thoughtful integration of AI will ensure credentials are meaningful, interoperable, secure, and directly relevant to real-world employment needs, positioning registrars as central players in advancing institutional missions and empowering student success.