BESTR

IT'S THE ITALIAN DIGITAL CREDENTIALING PLATFORM TO VALORIZE COMPETENCIES GROWING IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM AND CONNECT THEM WITH EMPLOYERS.

What competencies are implied by a degree course in Philosophy? How can the value of a specific degree be explained to an employer? How can the value of extracurricular activities, of research and collaboration be expressed? How can technology support students and academics in sharing their competencies with colleagues, companies and other institutions? How can one be sure of competencies and certifications declared in curricula without contacting every issuing institution?

Bestr proposes digital credentials: digital verifiable documents where the issuing organization describes a competency and how it has been acquired for a specific learner.

A digital credential is a visual and digital recommendation letter, to be inserted directly in one's own resumè.

WORK, TRAINING, CREDENTIALS

University, research and territory - with a common language

Higher education, research and companies create a valuable ecosystem, constantly building the competencies useful to the country.

With Bestr's digital credentials, it is possible to describe such competencies, describe how they are build and assessed and allow those who need it to evaluate them efficiently and securely, leveraging assessments performed by other entities.

Beyond CV, before CV: Digital Credentials

Bestr allows going beyond the usual resumè, full of unverifiable claims, rarely read attachments and implicatoin that might not be clear to all readers. With digital credentials, training institutions and colleagues of a learner have a voice directly in his/her resumè, becoming testimonials of the learner in a digital precise shareable verifiable way.

There are many digital credentialing standards to describe competencies developed by learners and assessed by institutions, each with its own specificities in terms of security, verifiability, shareability, actual contents. According to the specific competency or certification that needs to be expressed, some standards can be better than others. Bestr supports different digital credentialing standards, all of them open.

OPEN BADGES

Open Badge is a technological open standard, initiated by Mozilla Foundation (OBI - Open Badges Infrastructure) and developed by an active international community. The Open Badge standard is used all over the world in the most different organizations.

Open Badges look like images, readable by every computer, but those images also contain metadata about the competencies that each specific badge represents and about the person that owns it. Every badge is unique and, if read by a system that supports OBI, tells the story of its owner: name and surname, the date of acquisition, the competency that it represents, in which way this competency has been acquired and assessed, who assessed it and, in case, for how long that competency is valid. All verifiable in real time from every system supporting OBI.

An Open Badge has a strong communication power due to the visual component represented by the image. An Open Badge is portable because any system supporting the standard can read its metadata: thus it can be verified by calling upon the platform who issued it.

Open Badges have been the first standard adopted by Bestr to represent competencies.

BLOCKCERTS

Some competencies or titles are particularly relevant and need to be always easily and securely verifiable – even over a long period of time. This is why organizations on Bestr can issue Blockcerts besides Open Badges.

Blockcerts is an open standard designed by MIT Media Lab to digitally express a certificate and record it on a blockchain, so that it is always verifiable without any need to call for the issuing organization or platform.

The Blockcerts standard builds on the Open Badge 2.0 standard and connects it to blockchain technologies. Bestr writes its Blockcerts on the public Ethereum blockchain, using hashing and merkle-tree systems to ensure the lowest number of transactions and the highest level of privacy.

Bestr is the first italian platform implementing the Blockcerts standard. Thus Bestr becomes a Digital Credentialing System, where titles and competencies can be represented with the most apt digital tool. Blockcerts are available on Bestr since 2019, you can see all the issuing organizations in the Blockcerts Public Key Registry

CINECA AND BESTR

Cineca is the main Italian interuniversity Consortium. It has been established in 1969 in order to be able to access to exceptional supercomputing resources inaccessible to the individual institution.

Cineca's mission is to provide the technological tools needed by the research and the structural development of Italy. Cineca now speaks to univerisities, research centers, business companies - and million of students, researchers, teachers and administrative assistants that are daily users of Cineca systems.

International studies underline the huge skill gap between the competencies required by the job market and the ones proved by the educational institutions. This is a main problem in many countries - especially Europe. Cineca took this into high consideration and identified in the digital credentialing system the tool that technology can provide to enable the interaction among relevant stakeholders.

This is how Bestr was born, the first italian platform for Digital Credentialing.

JOINING BESTR

Are you a University or a Research Body?

Valorize your learning offer, the competencies of your teachers researchers and staff, your activities with the territory.
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Are you a company or a recruiter?

Find out how digital credentials can make your daily work easier.
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Are you a learner?

Gather your digital credentials and use them to make your resumè more relevant.
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University and Research Body

Bestr is for Universities and Research Bodies providing real learning - not just transcripts. Because thay can express the value hidden behind a degree, behind extracurricular activities, behind publications - thus improving how the institution is perceived and contributing to their learners' employability.

Valorize

Highlight competencies that students develop for their degree: unbundle the degree and make it clear what competencies it implies.

Complete

Highlight transversal competencies that grow in your institution.

Certify

Provide your students with digital secure portable certificates - talking certificates.

Recognize

Recognize automatically in the student's career those of his/her experiences that you deem valuable.

About the person

Digital credentials can include unique meaningful details, specific for a single learner: the topic of the thesis, performance data, project material.

Integrate

Provide information about your learner directly from you information system.

Companies

Bestr is for companies needing and building valuable competencies.

Clear competencies

Read digital credentials presented by candidates to know which competencies they have been recognized by their training institutions.

Verified competencies

Use Badges and Blockcerts to verify your candidates' competencies: digital credentials are instantly verifiable.

About the person

Digital credentials can include unique meaningful details, specific for a single learner: the topic of the thesis, performance data, project material.

100% digital

Instantly autonomously verify the authenticity of a certificate - whenever you want.

Trust network

If you don't know the issuing organization, you can refer to the endorsements made by other organizations.

Endorsing Badges

Find Badges describing the competences you need - and endorse them.

Learner

A learner is always learning, always growing, always going forward on a professional path.
The life-long & life-wide learner is the core of Bestr: at the university or on the job, at school or for fun, the learner gets competencies continuously - on Bestr they can be valorized and certified, independently from the learning context, as the learner meets companies and trainers who value them.

Opportunities

It will be easier for employers and institutions to understand the value of your competencies.

Portfolio

Describe your professional profile based on competencies and evidences.

Verifiability

With digital credentials your competencies are easily verifiable.

About the person

Digital credentials can include unique meaningful details about yourself.