Accredible Articles

Pursuing a Udacity Nanodegree? We are happy to announce that, as of today, you will be able to take advantage Udacity’s new professional profiles, powered by Accredible! The profiles allow you to showcase your learning, advertise your employment preferences, and share your achievements to potential employers via LinkedIn.

Udacity is using Accredible’s digital certificates to create a clean, comprehensive look into your online learning, making you an accessible and attractive candidate to recruiters. 

Here's what Kathleen Mullaney, Vice President of Careers at Udacity, had to say about the partnership:

"We're excited to partner with Accredible in the effort to help our Nanodegree graduates reach their goals of launching a new career in tech. Profiles give the opportunity for students to share their portfolio of projects, their extended education history and their employment details with companies in a seamless fashion. The Accredible team and their knowledge and enthusiasm for online education shows through with the Profiles and all their products."

Whenever you start a new Nanodegree, a new evidence portfolio within your Udacity profile is automatically created. The portfolio automatically populates with evidence of your learning as you work through your projects and submit your work, leaving you free to focus on learning. Think your portfolios could show even more? Improve them by uploading extra examples of your learning with the easy to use edit tool.

If you haven’t yet enrolled in a Nanodegree, why not start today? Nanodegrees are built and recognized by leading technology companies, designed specifically to advance your career. They teach the skills necessary to excel in technology’s most sought-after positions, and enable you to practice and demonstrate those skills through realistic projects. Nanodegrees available currently include:

Data Analyst

Front-End Web Developer

Full Stack Web Developer

iOS Developer

Introduction to Programming

Happy learning!

Saylor Academy, the provider of high-quality free online courses has partnered with Accredible to issue a new kind of digital portfolio certificate to students upon completion of Saylor.org courses. Accredible’s certificates go beyond the standard PDF certificate, showing what a student has learned by embedding evidence and insights into a clear format optimized for glancability.

Check out what the Saylor Foundation team had to say (hint: they're pretty excited!):

We know that the way we learn is changing. The way employers and recruiters assess learning is changing too. Picture a certificate combining the traditions of a paper certificate with the benefit of deep insights enabled by embedded evidence of learning, participation and achievement. Add in notes, videos, and transcripts as an integral part of the certificate. Envision it providing readers with vital context regarding a student’s unique approaches to learning, working and problem-solving.

Such a certificate is fully within the capabilities of the Information Age. At Accredible, we've made it a reality. Here's what Saylor Academy's new certificates will look like: https://credential.net/10002476

You’ve created an awesome course.  Organized your LMS. Made the decision to issue Accredible Certificates to your students.  

Now, you just have to tell them.

Step One: Plan Your Message

You know why you opted to use Accredible Certificates from a business perspective - but that’s not what your learners want to know.  Think about what matters most to them.

They can easily add their certificate to their LinkedIn profile, so recruiters can see their courses, find themselves impressed, and offering an interview ASAP.

They can embed the URL in their resume, making it easy for employers and recruiters to take a look and be amazed.

They can add other bits of work that they are proud of to showed their application of skills.

They can easily brag about finishing the course on Twitter and Facebook because they are excited about what they’ve accomplished.

These certificates make it easier for potential employers to understand what you know which means it is easier for them to get their dream job.

And, gosh darn it, they look pretty spiffy too!

Make sure you tell them when you will start issuing them and that Accredible will send them an email with all the details they need to claim it.

Step Two: Plan Your Medium

Well, you could tell them in a newsletter. Or in your blog.  Or in a video. Use whatever method your learners have come to expect from you when you share news.  If news is imparted on your landing page or as an internal message that will show upon logging in, let them know there!

Pro Tip: When you send newsletters, subject lines count! Exciting subject lines like “Your Courses are Awesome, So are Accredible Certificates - Let's Talk!” get your email read. When contacting students try something like “A picture is worth a thousand words. These certificates? A million!” to catch their imagination!

If you haven’t started communicating on a regular basis with your learners, find a way that feels good for you.  Our friends at Saylor Academy have decided to host “Office Hours” via Google Hangout as a way to communicate with students.  We’ve included their announcement so you can see one example.

Step Three: Share your message

After their Office Hours, they posted the video to their blog and in a newsletter to their students.  This provides more opportunities for students to get the message in a way that works for them.

Don’t forget to share your messages on Social Media.  People often check their preferred accounts at least once a day - and often more frequently!

Pro Tip: Ask students to follow you on social media - and make it easy with “Follow Us” Links. Share your news in multiple places so your learners have a chance to discover it on their favourite platform!

You’ve created a phenomenal course. You’ve set up a Moodle platform.  You have students signing up.  Great job!

But now your students are asking for certificates. They want to share their successes with friends, family and more importantly, with employers and schools.  You’ve been researching  the options for Moodle plugins. If you’re looking for something more modern than the standard Moodle certificate module, we’ve recently created a plugin for Accredible Certificates on Moodle.

How do I get one of those?

The first step is to ensure your version of Moodle is at least version 2.7.  If not, you will need to update Moodle.  You can get details on upgrading here.

Create an Accredible Account

Once you have the correct version installed, the next step is to create an Accredible account at www.accredible.com/issuer/sign_up.  

You’ll be guided through these on-boarding steps when you sign up:

entering basic organization information for the certificates

choosing a trial plan

customizing the appearance of your certificates

Pro Tip: Sign up to receive the Accredible Newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest news!

Get the Plugin

Next, you need to add the plugin to your Moodle server. Moodle has a good description here of how to install plugins. Accredible’s plugin can be found:

In the Moodle plugins directory  Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins.

Inside the Moodle Downloads site

On our Github

Pro Tip: Name your folder of extracted files “Accredible” - Moodle will look for an “Accredible” folder on installation!

Finally, install the new plugin. Your site should prompt you to do this automatically. If it does not give redirect you to the installation page, you can find it inside Administration > Site Administration > Notifications.  

The Set Up

Before you can issue a certificate, you will need to add an Activity called Accredible Certificates to a course. There are three ways to issue certificates:

MANUAL - Pick student names and manually issue certificates. Only students that need certificates have a checkbox.

AUTO - Choose the Quiz Activity* that represents the final exam, and set a minimum percentage grade requirement. Certificates will be issued automatically, as soon as the student receives a grade above the threshold.

AUTO - Choose multiple Activities* that need to be completed (attempted) for a student to receive their certificate. Activities* don’t have to be completed in order.

*Right now the Quiz Activity type is the only one available.

Pro Tip: We recommend setting up automatic issuing if you can. That way you can focus on getting students to the certificates, rather than giving them certificates.

Pro Tip:  If you want to test that you’ve set up the automatic issuing criteria properly, make sure to test the quizzes as a user enrolled in the course. Admins can test quizzes by default, but you will not receive a certificate unless you are enrolled.

Pro Tip:  If you set both types of auto-issue criteria, completing either will issue a certificate. A student will receive a certificate when they earn a high enough exam grade, or complete every necessary Activity.

As many as 1 in 3 of us will be affected by mental health issues - all of the famous people in the image above have been affected.  Of those who are, 2 out of 3 will never ask for help.  It’s time to end the stigma towards mental issues. To do that, we need to start talking - we cannot afford to avoid the conversation any longer, because this is something that affects all of us.  No one should be left to struggle in silence.

Many groups are trying to start the conversation - like #BellLetsTalk (a Social Media campaign started by Bell Canada),  #StrongerThanStigma (by Bring Change 2 Mind) and #TimetoTalk (by Time to Change, led by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness).  It’s important that you join the conversation and take the time to learn more about Mental Issues and Mental Health.  It could literally save someone’s life.

  The conversation isn’t half as scary as you think!

If you found out that your friend had surgery over the weekend, your first thought would be to ask how they were and if there was anything you could do for them.  When you hear that your friend, family member or co-worker has a mental health problem, ask the same questions! The reality is that anyone can experience mental health issues - and your being able to talk about it is important!

Just letting a friend or co-worker know that you are thinking of them and are available to talk if or when they would like to, makes a big difference.  Often times, just knowing that someone cares enough to reach out helps.

“Over the past thirty years, the rate of suicide among men has been three to four times that of women.  Traditionally, however, men have shied away from talking about their feelings as it is viewed as negative and weak.  In addition to a reluctance to seek help, men have higher levels of isolation, and of drug and alcohol misuse; are at a greater risk for homelessness; display more externalized and destructive behaviors; and are more involved with the criminal justice system.” (Bring Change 2 Mind)

Don’t feel like you have to talk about “the Issue” - just talk to your friend.  After all, no one wants to be defined by a disease.  But if your friend wants to talk about it, don’t brush them off.  It can be quite difficult for one to admit that things aren’t OK in the first place - if they are asking you for help, offer what you can and if it goes beyond what you know or are comfortable with, educate yourself on what help is available.

Two-thirds of people living with a mental illness do not seek help because they fear the stigma.

According to Time-to-Change “Mental health problems are common - but nearly nine out of ten people who experience them say they face stigma and discrimination as a result. This can be even worse than the symptoms themselves.” The WHO calls stigma the “hidden burden” of mental illness.

The stigma of mental issues is not limited to specific countries or cultures, it is a worldwide issue.  

“Every 40 seconds a person dies by suicide somewhere in the world.” (WHO). 

We must reduce the stigma and increase the tolerance and acceptance of getting help to improve that statistic.

What can you do?

Treat everyone with respect

It’s easy to say things like “Cheer up” or “Pull yourself together” - but it doesn’t help.  Try to stay open minded, relaxed and non-judgemental.  Be warm and caring. Listening is more important than understanding at this point!  Keep body language in mind too - watching the time on your phone or the door for a quick escape will be noticed!

Most of all, keep doing things that you would have always done with your friend! Go for dinner, coffee or to a movie. Chat about the dog, the kids or the partners - just as you always would.  When they want to talk about what is bothering them, open your ears and close your lips.  This is not the time for advice, but instead to be a sounding board.

Watch your language

No one wants to be defined by their disease.  Try to use respectful and empowering language.  Phrases like “a person with a mental illness” is far more respectful than “mentally ill”.  Even words like “victim” or “sufferer” takes the control of the disease away from the person who has it.  

Obviously, words like “Crazy”, “Wacko” or “Lunatic” should be left back in the decade they came from.  With 1 in 4 people likely to experience mental illness at some point in their life, we should ensure we use compassionate terms - if nothing else, it might be a term used to describe you someday - and how comfortable would that be for you?

Challenge stigma when you can

An interesting statistic came out from the Canadian Medical Association - Only 49% of Canadians said they would socialize with a friend who has a serious mental illness. You can make a difference by not only being one of that 49% but in encouraging others to look again at their own views of mental issues.  

Michael Landsberg, a well known Canadian Sports Journalist, started the #sicknotweak hashtag to help others who, like him, deal with Depression and Anxiety.  Beyond that, he wanted to help men open up about these issues.   #Sicknotweak helps challenge the stigma 365 days a year.

Men have measurably lower access to the social support of friends, relatives and community (References: R. Boreham and D. Pevalin).

#StrongerThanStigma features four inspirational men who are working to end the stigma of mental illness.  Brandon Marshall (NFL), Ben Scrivens (NHL), Michael Angelakos (lead singer), and Wayne Brady (comedian and actor) share their own “his stories” and encourage men to start the conversation and end the stigma.

Learn Facts about mental health and mental issues

Some interesting facts have been shared over Twitter and Facebook and in many of the Bell Let’s Talk workshops going on today.  Here are a few to put mental illness into perspective on the prevalence, the emotional and financial costs and why it is so important to end the stigma and help those who are struggling:

On any given week, more than 500,000 Canadians will not go to work because of mental illness. (Mental Health Commission of Canada)

In the United States, people with severe mental illness die 25 years earlier than the general population on average. (Time) In Denmark, the life expectancy gap has been shown to be as high as 18.7 years with certain disorders. (Psychiatric News) And the differential in life expectancy is believed to be even wider in developing countries.

Mental health problems and illnesses also account for more than $6 billion in lost productivity costs due to absenteeism and presenteeism. (The Mental Health Commission of Canada)

In the last 45 years suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide. (WHO) More than 90% of people who kill themselves have a diagnosable mental disorder. (NIH)

More than 30% of disability claims and 70% of disability costs are attributed to mental illness. (The Mental Health Commission of Canada)

But all is not lost…

Once depression is recognized, help can make a difference for 80% of people who are affected, allowing them to get back to their regular activities. (CMHA)

Everyone knows the importance of First Aid training, but did you know that there are also Mental Health First Aid Courses that are equally important? MHFA was developed in Australia in 2000 and is now recognized in at least 23 countries.  These courses teach people how to recognise the signs and symptoms of common mental health issues, provide help on a first aid basis and effectively guide those towards the right support services.  Now MHFA courses are available in many countries like Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.

Thanks for joining the conversation with us today!  

There is no need to suffer in silence. If you feel like you are in a crisis situation, reach out - to a friend, a family member, a doctor or a local crisis line.  If this is an emergency, call 911 or your local emergency line.

The only thing dreaded more by a manager than writing an Employee Evaluation or a disciplinary action form is writing the Employee Development Plan (EDP).  It’s enough to keep a manager awake at night - but why?  

In truth, of all the management or leadership development training a manager may take, development plans seldom get more than a 5 minute cursory mention.  To write one well requires a great deal of planning, deep thinking and time from the manager and buy in by the employee.  The pay off is great when executed well - both the planning and the learning.  

In Part One you learned about Planning to Plan and Talking to your Team.  Now it’s time to learn more about dealing with the data, writing the plan, and perhaps more importantly, the execution.

Dealing with Data

You’ve gathered a lot of data - company and individual goals, skills assessments, info on learning styles, obstacles, and more.  How do you deal with it all? One piece at a time.

Create a Simple Form

There are many forms available online that you could use, but a simple spreadsheet will work.  List the big company goals in one column and what skills will be needed to complete in the next.  This will become your template for dealing with the rest of the data.

Now you can start working on one team member at a time.  If they already fulfill the skill requirement, note that.  If not, note what they need to learn to to fulfill it (a course, upgrading, a mentor, etc).  This will allow you to determine what courses or opportunities would be reasonable to bring the skills up to the required level.

Complete the Simple Form

Once you have the basics sorted out (Joe needs a class in Angular Bootstrapping, Sally needs a mentor to review and critique her work, Rob needs to visit an out-of-town factory), you can start finding options that will fulfill those needs.  Perhaps Joe could take an online course, saving the company money on a course from an instructor, Mary could mentor Sally and Rob could make that visit while making sales calls in that area.

Selecting Courses and Certification Standards

On site or off site?  Bring in an expert or use internal resources? In person, online or blended classes?  What will work best?  If you use online courses, how will you know what was covered?  

Will certificates from an online course tell you all you need to know about the work the employee did?  Many times they just state completion - a score might be shown, but not always.  A portfolio is a great way of showing what a person has learned.  Samples of work, notes, scores and more all in one! The downside to portfolios is that it takes time to build.  

A combination of certificate and portfolio that has work shared by the provider might be the optimal choice.  Beyond the Trusted Evidence, employees can add extra information if desired.  You can learn more about course providers who offer these certificates here.

Writing the Plan

So far, you have created a form indicating what skills each person needs to improve, selected a few courses and now you are ready to prioritize and write the plan!

Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize!

What is the right way to prioritize? Do you start with the skills that require the most time and energy to improve or the least?  If you want to keep your employees motivated, give them a mix! Having a few “easy” to complete tasks will boost their confidence, but too many and they will lose interest.  If there are too many “difficult” tasks, they will lose motivation as they will feel like they are spinning their wheels.  Striking a balance of achievable tasks will make the entire process more enjoyable.

SMART Goals

Everyone talks about them - SMART goals.  Everyone also has a slightly different version of the acronym, but basically they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-balanced goals.  Every piece of the EDP becomes a SMART goal.

S - The course to improve the skill

M - The expected grade or outcome (complete the course and deliver a reflections statement)

A - Ensure the course develops skills just a level above where the employee currently sits.

R - Are you as the manager prepared to give this person time every day/week/class to do their prep and assignments?

T - The course must be completed by X Date

Be prepared to state in writing who is responsible for what - booking the class, arranging time in the schedule for course work to be completed, etc. By including these details in the plan, both parties know what they are committing to and will be held accountable for achieving.

Review Time (Part 1)

Before long, you will be ready to sit down with the team member and show them the plan.  But before you get too comfortable with what is written, prepare yourself to meet with them over a draft version.  You might discover that the team member has started taking a class online on their own time that ties into your plan as they realized when doing the skills assessment that they had some opportunities.  Or, you might discover that the week you wanted to send them off to take a course out-of-town was the same week as the 15th anniversary trip they were planning on taking.  With any luck (and buy in!), the team member was brainstorming training opportunities on their own and might have some (better!) ideas.

Once both parties are satisfied with the plan and prepared to commit, you should both sign copies of the plan and keep a copy.  This will help both parties maintain accountability.  

Execution

You’ve researched, reviewed and written the plan. Now it’s time to execute it.

Create an Environment for Learning, Development and Experimentation

The first step has to be made by you, the manager. You need to develop an environment that promotes learning and development.  

Ensure that time is made available to take the courses/training - and that means to write it in on the schedule so that everyone knows from 10AM - 11AM on Wednesday, Fred will be working on a module.

Have the team talk about what they are learning in your meetings.  Encourage them to ask each other questions, to learn from each other.  

Highlight successes - “Mary just completed her Marketing course with a score of 91%!”

Give people an opportunity to use these new skills!

One of the most important things you can do to promote a Learning Environment is to give your team a safe place to try (and possibly fail).  Remember, we learn far more from our failures than we do our successes, by discovering where we went wrong.  These projects may require more oversight by you or others you trust to be mentors, but everyone will learn something from it.  Feedback will be required throughout the process - whenever possible, try not to give statements, but to ask questions that will help the employee discover alternative ways to solve a problem.

Review Time (Part 2)

It is important that you check in with the employee multiple times throughout their EDP.  Find out what is or isn’t working (and ask for ways to improve the process!).  Discover the successes and opportunities the employee faced.  Get insights on the learning process by asking for reflections, certificates, sample work or an Accredible Certificate.  Ensure the progress is occurring according to the timelines listed on the EDP.  Learn what the employee might want to learn about next.  This should not be done in tandem with their Review as this is a separate discussion, although successes and opportunities should be noted on the review.    

The only thing dreaded more by a manager than writing an Employee Evaluation or a disciplinary action form is writing the Employee Development Plan (EDP).  It’s enough to keep a manager awake at night - but why?  

In truth, of all the management or leadership development training a manager may take, development plans seldom get more than a 5 minute cursory mention.  To write one well requires a great deal of planning, deep thinking and time from the manager, and buy in by the employee.  The payoff is great when executed well - both the planning and the learning.  

It’s time to learn a better way of creating an EDP!

Planning to Plan

Anytime a manager sits down to think about EDPs, the first thing that needs to be considered are the needs of of the business.  The needs can vary greatly from business to business but some issues will be universal.

What are the long and short term goals of the business?

If your task is bench building (AKA Succession Planning), you need to have a firm grasp on the company goals or you will develop too many managers and not enough skill specific workers.  Developing a generic list of skills, competencies and basic knowledge requirements will make subsequent tasks easier.

What are the budgetary restrictions?

This is essential! Knowing how much money has been set aside to cover training will let you know how much off site training can occur (sometimes you have to send a sales rep to a factory to appreciate the manufacturing process), how many training seminars that can be hosted in the conference room, and how many free, online courses might be needed to supplement program.  

How much time can be dedicated to the EDP and over what timespan?

Will your company allocate 30 minutes a day or 30 minutes a month to furthering staff education and training? Can this start this month or will it wait until Project X has been signed off as complete?  Will employees have a month or 6 months to complete?

What projects are on the horizon?

If you are planning EDPs to prepare for upcoming projects, you will need to know the projected start date and the skill requirements now.  You need time to evaluate your team, have self evaluations returned, and determine the existing skillset before you can begin to plan.

Talk to Your Team

The quickest way for an EDP to fail is to fail to get your team to buy in.  Employees who buy in will find time to complete their training.  They will maintain a positive attitude about it and encourage others around them to participate and achieve their own goals.

Getting the Buy in

Explaining the whats and whys is a good place to start - but showing the team how it benefits them in a way that holds value for them works best.  Demonstrating your own commitment to the process - from the planning to the execution of your own plan to ensuring they have time to complete their own tasks is paramount.

Personalized Plans

It should be able to go without saying that EDPs must be personalized and take into consideration an individual's pre-existing skillset, but it can’t.  Skill assessments are a necessity in planning an effective EDP.  Assessments should be completed by both the employee and manager and then in a private session, the results should be compared and reviewed.  There are frequently large variances in the results that could and should be discussed - and plans made from there.

Understanding the employee’s goals and motivations will also go far.  If Joe reveals that his long term goal is to own his own business, then providing accounting or marketing courses that fit the business needs but will also help Joe in the future is something he will appreciate.  It will improve Joe’s outlook and buy in.  

Learning Styles

It is important to know if Sally learns better by hands on training or from a book as you are planning her EDP.  Learning styles matter and it is best to set each person up for success while in the planning stages.  Perhaps being mentored by a senior staff member would support Sally to be more confident in her existing knowledge instead of sending her off for yet another class in Data Security.

Potential Barriers

With each team member it is important to determine if there are any potential barriers for the success of the EDP.  Sending a single father out of town for training would be rather stressful if he did not have a support system in place to take care of his child.  That doesn’t mean that the employee doesn’t need to take the course, but it might mean giving adequate time to build such a support system.  This will not only support the EDP process, it will also build company loyalty.  Win-win!

In the Information Age, your certificates should reflect the innovation of your platform and the quality of your courses. Giving your students shareable and LinkedIn-compatible certificates containing deep insights and rich evidence of learning should be easy - and it is with Accredible.

When your students look good, so do you!

Peoples-uni is an open access project that provides low cost, fully-online public health degrees. Its primary mission is to cater for people in developing countries where public health education opportunities are limited.

Meet Dr Richard Heller, a public health expert and long-time proponent of ed tech. Having taught at University of Newcastle, New South Wales for 16 years - where he introduced new distance learning methods - he moved to the University of Manchester and ushered in an innovative online course: Masters of Population Health Evidence.

 After leaving Manchester, Richard put his academic standing and distance learning experience to good use by starting a charitable, independent ed tech project, Peoples-uni. It harnessed public health experts, supportive IT workers and proper accreditation to provide international students with a prestigious, low-cost public health degree.

 Peoples-uni started life in 2006 and, like any organisation, developed year-on-year. “This past year we have been working on a new offshoot: a free, open online course. It won’t be a degree, but students will be able to gain a certificate of completion. It won’t be a MOOC either; we’re not aiming for large numbers, we want to make sure that people in developing countries have access as the footprint of most MOOCS is in the global north.”

 Richard described his plans, but focussed on one significant challenge. “Our partnership with the Manchester Metropolitan U, who provide our accreditation, is ending. We need to look for a new means of accreditation, it could be European.” He emphasised this point, about how involvement with a western accrediting body was important for students in developing countries, “that benchmark of quality is good for graduates.”

 As an international concern, Peoples-uni serves the purpose of engaging people to consider public health matters in their local communities. The dissertation looks at a health issue relevant to the student’s local area, asking them to review current evidence and justify a solution to the problem. Considering the practical impact that such a course makes, Richard described how undertaking courses at Peoples-uni has changed students and the ways in which it inspired them.

 “We did a survey of the first seventy or so graduates, and many of them have told us stories of how it changed their professional and personal lives - it was very heartening to read.” Responding to the suggestion that this could be a new form of international development, Richard was confident, “Certainly. I hope people will grasp that sort of opportunity and build local capacity.”

 The subject of technology disrupting education was put forward, “I think the technology that the internet provides is a fantastic opportunity and I do think education is going to change dramatically. The university system is in pretty bad shape: the biggest problem is the reward system. University faculty are rewarded on their research, not their teaching. There’s a big dissonance between the two, the system needs to reward the teaching.”

Logistically, recruiting quality academic volunteers while ensuring the technology runs smoothly is no small feat, “These two great guys, Omo Oaiya and Alan Barrett did a lot of work with the IT, and a small army of volunteer tutors who have written the modules act as online facilitators. Some have adopted leadership roles in the organisation to ensure sustainability. For the Dissertation, each student has two supervisors: one remote academic and one local.”

In part one, we looked evidence types that are suitable for inclusion on an Accredible certificate, which course providers might either already have available or be able to generate from their own data. A certificate with a good evidence gives employers much deeper insight into the skills and knowledge of a learner, and reflects well on the quality and value of your courses.

In this follow-up, we will explore opportunities to procure evidence from the design of your courses and your students themselves. Let’s explore what kind of evidence you might want to include on an Accredible certificate.

User-created content

One of the most unique and exciting elements of the Accredible certificate is that even if you have chosen not to include a particular form of evidence, the students themselves can upload new evidence items to their personal certificate after it has been issued. If a student is particularly proud of a certain piece of work, or a certain forum post, or have tracked their own working hours, they can easily add it to their evidence portfolio to ensure that their certificates best reflect their learning - and the quality of your course.

Students are of course reminded to follow the honour code of their platforms and to not post the answers to quizzes or exams.

Uploading work

Work samples are excellent pieces of evidence to include in a certificate, and choosing which work to upload is definitely worth thinking about in order to get the best out of Accredible certificates. This doesn’t just have to be essays, but can also include videos of students performing or presenting their work, images, graphs and results. This gives any third party viewer a real live example of what your student can do: an invaluable aid for any recruiter, employer or institution.

This doesn’t even mean necessarily mean that you open yourself up to plagiarism. In many cases, sharing the outputs of a particular assignment (ie. the output of a program that your students have coded) does not reveal the complete solution to that assignment.

From a course-design perspective, your instructors might also wish to consider what types of assignments are best suited to demonstrating the skills of your learners. Just one assignment that involves something that students can create themselves and then display goes a long way towards boosting the quality of their evidence portfolios.

Notes and diagrams

Taking notes as a concept is introduced is one of the simplest, most basic and most effective learning techniques. And many people like to organise their notes and make them look beautiful - so rather than these being filed away at the end of the course, why not encourage your students to upload them to their Accredible certificates?

Of course, beyond basic pen and paper notes many students make mind maps, diagrams and illustrations. Others may annotate texts (or annotate the notes that you provide), arrange and organise key information in innovative ways, or develop clever mnemonics. All these materials are valuable artefacts of learning in motion, excellent pieces of evidence for any interested observer to look at when searching for insight into what your students have learned. They make a deeply informative - and potentially very aesthetically pleasing - addition to any Accredible evidence portfolio.

Course diaries and blogs are also amazing evidence that students might wish to include, giving the certificate’s audience a personal account of their thoughts, highlights and ideas throughout the learning experience. It can also help students organise their thoughts, make connections and assist their recollection of key material later.

Videos and podcasts

“You don’t really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother.” Unknown

In a similar vein, making the effort to attempt to explain a concept to someone else is often a fantastic test of understanding, and a good starting point for organising knowledge of a subject. Doing so lets your students realise where their knowledge is lacking, and the process of trying to decompose the subject in order to explain it is instructional in and of itself.

An excellent supplementary exercise for students, therefore is to produce videos or audio recordings of themselves explaining key concepts, or giving in-depth summaries of topics. In addition to illustrating the depth of a student’s understanding to a viewer or listener, it lets them showcase their skills in communicating their knowledge, an ever more critical skill in the modern world. And like a written reflective statement, video and audio presentations can cultivate similar metacognitive benefits, prompting a student to reflect on and consolidate their learning experiences. After all, reflection is reflection whether it is written or spoken (or performed via interpretive dance, if you’re thinking about it hard enough).

In a course design context, some courses present the task of communicating a course concept in a video as a bonus assignment, which is also something to consider.

Reflective statements

“Attendance at a course, or a conference, is no guarantee that learning has taken place. A reflective statement can therefore be a better indicator of learning than an attendance certificate.” The Royal College of Surgeons of England

Reflective statements are popular in medical and many other types of education, and you too could derive benefit from encouraging them in your own courses. Depending on how in-depth you wish to go, they allow students to think back over what they have learned, demonstrate important metacognitive skills, refresh their memory of the material and recount their own observations and experiences. Crucially, it can stimulate students to identify and consider global themes, common elements, general lessons and connections between different pieces of information, a process essential to mastering any subject.

You could make writing a reflective statement an official part of your courses (and attach them to your certificates automatically), or just encourage students to write and upload them to their certificates after they have been issued. Either way, a reflective statement recording the personal experiences of the learner adds significant value to any evidence portfolio, providing readers with deep insight into what the student has learned and understood.

The sky's the limit

Your learners may have other, even more innovative and unusual ideas as to how to best reflect the fruits of their learning to employers. Your learners can then share these ideas and collaborate with one another to create a better, deeper and more informative best practice for improving their certificate evidence portfolios. You can help this process along by promoting and rewarding the best ideas and encouraging the continued discussion.

At Accredible, we appreciate that creating courses is hard work. Between coming up with the outline and objectives, storyboarding and gathering research and materials, writing scripts, recording lectures and producing materials and assignments, building an educational experience is an intensive process.

Our mission is to ensure that employers, colleges and other third parties see the fruits of your hard work each and every time they glance at the certificates of your students. We want your students’ certificates to showcase the quality and depth of the learning experience that you provide. We want your students to market your courses every time they show someone else the certificates they attained. And with Accredible certificates, they can.

At the core of the Accredible certificate is the idea of the evidence portfolio. Third parties glancing at the certificate can see evidence that supports a learner’s credibility - and that of you, the provider - and have the ability to browse a selection of informative learning outputs, additional information, supplementary work and materials that gives them arbitrarily deep insight into what that learner has done during the course.

Each evidence item comes with two easily digestible insights that assist in quickly grasping the key facts about it. And our credibility consultants are always on hand to help you shape the data you collect into the perfect evidence items for your platform and your course, and to tailor-design evidence item types to underline the credibility of your learning experience.

With that in mind, let’s explore what kind of evidence you might want to include on an Accredible certificate:

Syllabi and outlines

Exactly what it says on the tin: it can sometimes be enlightening to include a detailed syllabus or outline of what exactly your students should be learning during a course. Viewers can glance at these and affirm that yes, they understand the objectives of your course and the knowledge and skills that the owner of the certificate should be expected to have.

Results

There are ways you can be more innovative with scores and results:

Can you track how your learners have improved throughout your courses?

Can you break down scores into different tasks and sub-areas?

Can you explain the specific assignments that the students were scored on?

The beauty of Accredible certificates is that they allow a viewer to go into arbitrary depth. So why not allow them to delve deep into how your students grades and results break down.

Activity and attendance

Some platforms collect data on when and which lectures are watched, and when and how students are interacting with the material. If you collect this data, logging the hours a student spent on various kinds of learning and assessment can be an interesting contribution to an Accredible evidence portfolio.

It can give employers an indication of how experienced and familiar an applicant is likely to be with certain topics: there’s likely to be a big difference between a learner that has spent 10 hours coding, and one that has spent 500 hours coding. If you can collect this kind of data, it might be worth considering. Timing is also relevant, and for activities that take place over long periods of time - like sculpting - it’s often also worth considering making time-lapses.

Peer-to-peer interactions and forum participation

An often overlooked piece of information - which many platforms collect and which can be very handy when generating Accredible certificates - is data about how a student has interacted with other students, course forums or discussion boards. Some may have karma, point or badge systems too, which can in turn provide other insights into how your student interacts with their course community.

There is a social element to learning. Many students are highly active on the forums, help others out and involve themselves in deep discussions. If you can capture these moments, you can reward those students in a unique way by letting them carry those stories away with them to share with the world after they finish the course.

Putting learning into action

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” Richard Feynman

Situations where a student puts their learning into practice are perfect sources of evidence for Accredible certificates. Projects are perfect for this, and evidence might include reports and summaries, code samples, images and graphs, external links, videos, audio, schematics, work samples, designs or detailed explanations. There are many, many other possible examples: when it comes to project-based evidence, the sky's the limit. And this can give readers deep insight into a student’s ability to master and apply their learning in a deep way.

Why did a student do this task one way and not another? How efficiently and how creatively did they solve the problems they were faced with? What concepts did the student leverage in order to implement their solutions? Answers to these questions are solid gold for employers. Not only does it directly demonstrate depth of comprehension, but it gives unparalleled insight into the unique character, strengths, weaknesses, personality and approach of an applicant.

Two students may earn identical university degrees, yet each may differ wildly in their preferences, trademark approaches, their unique specialties, the cognitive tools that they use and their methodological habits when decomposing problems. Often, identical certificates do not reflect the individuality and divergent skill sets of their holders.

Your students are all unique. With Accredible, you can issue certificates that truly capture those subtle distinctions while shining a light on the key benefits of your platform and courses. Your Accredible certificates will delight recruiters, accentuate the value you create, and greatly bolster the credibility of your courses and students.

What the Accredible API can do for you and how to get started

What are Accredible Certificates? You have the ability to issue a PDF certificate for your students, but what if you could give your students something more? Accredible’s “certificates as a service” allows you to issue interactive portfolio certificates via a quick and easy API. Accredible’s certificates are designed to showcase the learning and expertise gained from an online course with features that are aimed to address the challenges of verifying and vouching for online learning. The Accredible Certificate has an evidence portfolio that is optimized for 9 modular items, each containing an icon and insights. We will work with you to develop your data into quality evidence items that are searchable and make your students better recruitment candidates.

How Does Integration Work?

We have five easy methods to start issuing certificates right away. Integrate us into your existing learning platform with one of our plugins, or with a bespoke technical integration. You can even upload a spreadsheet of your learners’ achievements.

What’s the process?

To begin, we recommend that you simply issue some certificates with minimal information. These can be issued via the API or by uploading a CSV spreadsheet of data. Once issued, the certificates can be reviewed and edited prior to publishing. After publication, an email is  automatically sent to your students with instructions on how to claim the certificate.

Initial certificates will be basic and not have much evidence on them. Our credibility consultants are available to help you refine the data you have into evidence items to add to the certificate until you are satisfied with the results. The next steps are to issue certificates to your past students, and then to complete the set-up process by automating the system so that new students graduating from your courses automatically receive certificates.

Why Accredible Certificates?

Accredible Certificates continue to give you control of your certificates - even after issuing. You can retract certificates or update names and other data after the fact through the Management Console.

Accredible Certificates will cost you less than printing paper certificates (range from free to 20 cents each).

Accredible Certificates create a personal narrative for learners. No two certificates need be the same as each student can add supplementary evidence to build their own credibility while highlighting their own strengths.

Accredible Certificates help spread your brand message - learners can add certificates to LinkedIn’s Certifications section on their profile with one click. Get your name on their profiles easily!

Accredible Certificates allows you to reconnect with former students when retroactively issuing a digital portfolio certificate. Bring those students back into the fold for far less than the average advertising campaign would cost!automating the system so that new students graduating from your courses automatically receive certificates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Accredible integrate with my existing learning management system (LMS)?

Accredible currently offers plugins for Moodle, Open edX, and WordPress, so if you are using one of those platforms, integration is especially easy. Our API also allows other LMSs to issue certificates automatically.  Contact us for more details.

Can Accredible’s certificates be issued automatically?

Absolutely! If you integrate with Accredible, certificates can be issued automatically every time a student finishes a course.

Where are the certificates hosted?

Accredible takes care of the hosting needs and costs, and ensures that your students can retrieve their certificates any time. Students are also able to print or save a PDF version of their certificates.

Who handles learner customer support?

The Accredible customer support team is available via email at [email protected] and will handle all customer support issues regarding Accredible certificates. This service is free of charge.

Where can I get more technical help integrating the Accredible API?

Our development team is happy to work closely with you via phone, email or Skype to help with the process of integration and for ongoing technical support (free of charge).

What does an Accredible Certificate look like?

The design and features of Accredible’s Certificates are highly configurable for your information and branding.

Certificate URL - Your certificates can live at accredible.com, credentials.net or your own domain.

Your Branding - From colours to logos and everything in between - your certificates reflect your brand.

Certificate Management - Issue, Retract, Change and Delete as necessary. You retain control of your certificates like never before via the Management Console.

Insights - At a glance, employers can learn about your course and the students’ work but retain the option of looking deeper.

Evidence Based - Issue certificates with verified evidence pre-embedded. This could be anything from assignments to exam grades - our Credibility Consultants would be happy to review the coursework and make recommendations. Additionally, students can also upload their own work once the certificate has been issued.

References - For additional credibility, references can be automatically issued along with the certificate (i.e. Finished in the top 10% of students)

Ready to chat?

1. Showcase the quality of your students’ learning - and the success of your courses - directly to the world with professional, interactive certificates that accentuate the unique strengths of your platform. Existing students are your best source of new students - so let them market your courses for you.

2. Include more information in a certificate than ever before! Create evidence items that make every aspect of your students’ learning instantly comprehensible and issue certificates that will delight recruiters with their depth of insight into your students’ unique strengths and approaches. Give your courses and students a truly unique degree of evidence-backed credibility.

3. Get started right away with ease. A simple three-step integration process, dedicated plug-ins for common LMSs and the option to have us create certificates for you from a CSV spreadsheet will have you issuing certificates in no time, whatever your platform.

4. Work directly with our team of credibility consultants and developers, and use our fully-customizable design to make your certificates exactly the way you want them. Harness the unique data that your platform provides to create stunning evidence items.

5. Enjoy more control over your certificates than ever before, with the ability to update, add to and revoke them in real time whenever necessary. Monitor and manage all of your certificates in a personal admin dashboard and collect more data on the outcomes of your courses than previously possible.

6. Reconnect with your past learners - even years after your course, with certificates that give you an enduring link to their future success. Allow your users to upload their own evidence to co-create a first class certificate you can both be proud of.

7. High value at low cost! Our issuer packages include hosting at our site, your branding and logos, the full suite of evidence items, the ability to add them to a LinkedIn profile and the option to convert them to PDFs for printing at any point.

Just ten short years ago, to get a great education a student had to attend lectures in a physical classroom for four years just to get a piece of paper that was backed by a University.  

Then MOOCs and online learning happened.

Learning providers created phenomenal courses that allowed students to learn from home, at their own pace, on their own time.  We saw a boom in self learning.  What we didn’t see was a boom in the acceptance of that self learning by employers.  

Why would people spend the money and time to attend university?  Credibility.  A degree has an institution vouching for their knowledge but self learning has only had the occasional PDF certificate acknowledging that hard work.  2014 saw our team at Accredible working hard to ensure that online courses carry the same value as traditional education routes. With the latest version of our product we have made this possible.

We have created a way to allow you to directly showcase your students’ learning to the world in the most beautifully designed, clear and understandable way yet. Our evidence items focus in on specific elements of their learning to make them instantly comprehensible.  Our certificates convey the value of your offered education to employers and other institutions. This is achieved by creating certificates that include their best attributes, from test scores to strong collaboration skills.

Introducing the Accredible Certificate

The design and features of Accredible’s Certificates are highly configurable.

Certificate URL - Your certificates can live at accredible.com, credentials.net or your own domain.

Your Branding - From colours to logos and everything in between - your certificates reflect your brand.

Certificate Management - Issue, Retract, Change and Delete as necessary.  You retain control of your certificates like never before via the Management Console.

Insights - At a glance, employers can learn about your course and the students’ work but retain the option of looking deeper.

Evidence Based - Issue certificates with verified evidence pre-embedded.  This could be  anything from assignments to exam grades - our Credibility Consultants would be happy to review the coursework and make recommendations.  Additionally, students can also upload their own work once the certificate has been issued.

References - For additional credibility, references can be automatically issued along with the certificate (i.e. Finished in the top 10% of students)

Art students have the chance to include their best pieces, humanities students their best group discussions and developers their best code. Proud achievements are unique to each student, and we all know they’re not limited to test scores, that’s why your students can tailor their Accredible certificate to display the moments where their intellect shone above the rest.

No matter what they’re studying, where, when or why, Accredible Certificates will help your students to always look their best!

Why use Accredible Certificates?

Accredible Certificates continue to give you control of your certificates - even after issuing.  You can retract certificates or update names and other data after the fact through the Management Console - something that has never been possible before!

Accredible Certificates will cost you less than printing paper certificates - with a plan that suits your budget.

Accredible Certificates create a personal narrative for learners.  No two certificates need be the same as each student can add supplementary evidence to build their own credibility while highlighting their own strengths.

Accredible Certificates help spread your brand message - learners can add certificates to LinkedIn’s Certifications section on their profile with one click.   Get your name on their profiles easily!

Accredible Certificates allows you to reconnect with former students when retroactively issuing a digital portfolio certificate.  Bring those students back into the fold for far less than the average advertising campaign would cost!

Arian Allenson Valdez won the #Awesome Slates Contest for the “Best Self-Paced Learning” with an outstanding demonstration of how he’s taken on the challenge of a full CS curriculum from Harvard. A self-described learner with “unquenchable curiosity,” Arian shares that he hopes to use Accredible to track his progress towards becoming a modern day Renaissance man — a secret ambition of all of ours, no? Read more to find out how Arian’s making it happen.

Accredible: You’ve taken a number of courses ranging from computer science and programming topics to even courses about Greek heroes. How do you decide on what courses to take?

Arian: I have, from an early age, known that my unquenchable curiosity will result in lifelong learning. My resolve is simple – to diversify as much as possible, to be a renaissance man in this day and age. I love tackling subjects where I could be ‘rusty’ at, and personally enjoy almost all of them! Except Chemistry.

“My resolve is simple – to diversify as much as possible, to be a renaissance man in this day and age.”

This is perhaps not readily obvious from my course choices (they are mostly after all CS courses), but that is because for this particular year, I am completing the Harvard Challenge, where I try to complete the whole coursework of a Harvard CS concentrator in one year. This is directly inspired from Scott Young’s MIT Challenge. There are a lot of differences in the way we tackle the courses, but the idea is the same:4 year curriculum in one year.

Accredible: What is your usual learning process like? (For example: do you like to watch things first & make notes? Try it out? etc.) And how does Accredible fit into your learning process?

Arian: I am almost always more efficient if I am using text, that is why, if possible I use a text-based only approach. Reading a video transcript is not terribly unheard of a strategy for me. However, there are cases where this can be quite detrimental to learning, so using one’s best judgement is still important. And besides, watching video lectures are always fun when quirky things happen! (Seeing Prof. Lewin of MIT carrying that huge femur bone at the start of his physics class is awe-inspiring, and Sir Malan misspelling ‘caterpillar’ and the reactions afterward made me laugh!).

I actually use Accredible as a macro strategy. Accredible is a journal of your learning. I think it would be quite beautiful to see one day a slate showing a video of someone barely hitting the right keys in the piano, while another shows the same person playing grand pieces! Looking back and seeing the growth in skill and knowledge would be priceless!

Accredible: What do you do when you’re struggling with learning something? What advice do you have for people who want to stay motivated? 

Arian: As a person with ‘unquenchable curiosity’ the fact that I’m struggling in learning something is an end for itself for me to stay motivated in learning that! That’s not to say I don’t struggle and lose motivation though.

“the fact that I’m struggling in learning something is an end for itself for me to stay motivated”

For people who have a problem in learning something, then I would say the foundations were probably not solid enough. There are exceptions, but most of the time, DO make sure that you have a solid base for learning. I made this mistake in the past, where I was very curious about Quantum Mechanics and decided to study about it without having the necessary prerequisites (I was in grade school at the time!) While I did learn a few concepts here and there, the efficiency was appallingly bad. I would have learned more in the same amount of time if I studied the prerequisite first and then moved on.

Although we featured major MOOC platforms Coursera, Udacity, and edX in the last post, today we’d like to introduce you to a few more great learning platforms that will help you enrich your knowledge. Read on to discover more about a growing network of MOOC providers: 

NovoEd

Started as a Stanford MOOCs experiment (Stanford Venture Lab), NovoEd now is an independent MOOC platform, currently offering 9 classes. Unlike the courses from many other platforms, NovoEd courses are about more than just reading, watching videos and taking quizzes. Their emphasis is on collaboration and learning by doing.

The most famous courses, Crash Course on Creativity and Technology Entrepreneurship at NovoEd.

  In the class Technology Entrepreneurship, for example, you need to find a team with which you will create a marketing plan, first prototypes, and even start your own startup. Assignments are unique since you are getting practical knowledge and developing new skills instead of simply remembering facts and recalling concepts.

Many NovoEd professors,- such as Chuck Eesley of TechEntr – are fantastic at keeping in touch via social media, watching and participating in discussions via Facebook and Twitter. Whilst students are discouraged from contacting them directly, most professors seem happy to participate in discussions.

Open Learning

Although Open Learning is a relatively new edtech startup from Australia (founded by Adam Brimo and Richard Buckland), it is already a very promising place for studying. Courses are created by professionals and teachers. Freedom of expression and a rich library of available tools allow them to make a unique experience for students.

The most popular courses started recently in OpenLearning.

Students have opportunities to engage with learning and the community in new ways: tracking progress, earning badges and blogging about your thoughts, ideas and experiences helps to enrich your learning experience. Getting lost is impossible because course structure, profiles,and notifications are easy to learn and use.

Since Open Learning is a new platform, there are only a few courses on offer. However, the courses are very diverse in terms of time to complete (for example, Entrepreneurship by Taylor’s University takes 17 weeks whilst Service Marketing – The Next Level only takes 3 weeks). Content also varies heavily,from the ubiquitousWeb Design and Development to the unique Observing and Analysing Performance in Sport.

In our list of MOOCs, Open Learning is the youngest platform. However, as it introduces new ways of teaching, studying and is evolving quickly, so might stumble upon a fascinating adventure whilst exploring it.

Saylor Foundation

The Saylor Foundation has a long history. It was established in 1999 by the prominent entrepreneur, founder and CEO of BI company MicroStrategy Michael J. Saylor and in 2008 switched focus to providing free, open, university-like classes for people around the world.

Saylor University’s Areas of Study.

Currently, you can find more than 200 different courses on saylor.org. There are two key features that really make Saylor stand out: lots of courses on Humanities and Business and the level of courses are higher and more college-like. All courses are self-paced but a time-advisory system helps you to plan your studies. Moreover, after completion you can go to a testing center and get credits for most of their courses.

Saylor Foundation is a great platform if you want to study at your own pace, seek knowledge at a higher-than-introductory level and have good organizational skills.

Hint for high school students: you can find a helpful course, SAT prep, on Saylor.

  Udemy

In 2010, the Udemy learning platform was launched by Eren Ball, Oktay Calgar, and Gagan Biyany. Its slogan “The Academy of You” perfectly describes Udemy’s philosophy and its courses: everyone can create a course for others to learn from. Due to this, the courses are very diverse: from Organic Chemistry to Makeup Techniques and Applications. Moreover, most of the courses on Udemy are unique and don’t fit traditional academic characteristics. Where else on the web can you find such courses as How to Train Puppy?,Learn How to Juggle or Adapting Novel to Screenplay?

Featured and new courses worth taking a look in Udemy.

All courses are self-paced but most of them are not free. However, prices vary and if you find a course unsatisfactory, you can always request a refund during first 30 days without providing any explanation. Don’t have time or money to take course right now? No worries, Udemy has a Wishlist feature that allows you to save and try the course later.

Udemy is transforming education by making it peer-to-peer and going beyond traditional academic subjects.

Open Learning Initiative

The Open Learning Initiative was started in 2001 as a grant-funded project by the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. Since then, 6 charity organizations, including The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have supported them. What makes this platform unique is the integration of Carnegie Mellon’s expertise in cognitive tutoring into online courses. The idea of Metacognition (“Thinking about thinking”) helps people to study effectively.

Example of Learn by Doing at Open Learning Initiative.

Although the course database is not yet very large, existing courses involve more than just reading or watching content. Student activities such as “Learn by Doing” and “Did I get this?” as well as great course feedback will help you study more effectively and have fun along the way. Moreover, many traditional universities and some MOOCs (Introduction to Psychology as a Science by GeorgiaTech for example) decided to use the OLI as supportive material to enrich student’s experience and create higher engagement.

What is a Startup?

Although the term “startup” has become so ubiquitous it’s bandied about without a hyphen (shocking), few people we’ve asked seem to agree on what a startup is. The popularized fairytale of startups begins with “Once upon a time in a garage…” and ends with “They made millions of dollars and lived happily ever after.” Few startups grow to Google or Facebook level proportions, but one thing is very clear from even the fairytale version of reality: startups are defined by their ability to grow rapidly: in team size, user base, and (optimally) profit.

By definition, startups are starting something, and usually, we think of startups as starting something new, or at least providing a unique spin on an existing product or service. Startups are typically fairly small; most startups have a team of 5 or more people, and run off of roughly $1 million in funding, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.

Angels and VCs and Bootstrapping… Oh my!

Whenever the founders of a startup decide they have an idea they want to create, they have to consider where they’ll be working, who they’ll be working with, and what they’ll need to make their vision a reality. All of these questions really boil down to: where is the money coming from? Startups have three options:

(1) Bootstrapping: “Bootstrapping” simply indicates that the founders are funding the company themselves. The reality of this is that founders have harassed their family and friends enough to provide some initial funds, or that the founders have left a relatively high-paying and stable job to give everything they’ve got to make their idea a success.

(2) Angels: Angel investors are individual investors or a small group of investors that can provide initial funding to startups in exchange for some equity. Since angels are usually only accountable to themselves, they often invest in startups they personally feel connected to, whether because of the problem the startup is trying to solve is something they also feel strongly about or because they know the people involved in the startup on a more personal level. Angel investors are often entrepreneurs themselves or have played a role in other startups previously.

(3) Venture Capitalist (VCs): VCs are institutional investors that manage clients’ assets and invest them in early stage startups in exchange for some equity. They can typically afford to invest more than angel investors, but contrary to popular belief, only 1-2% of startups are VC-funded. VCs have to think big-picture and are generally more interested in startups addressing large scale problems. Find out more about more in this nifty video.

VCs and angels play an important role outside of simply financing early stage startups; they also provide valuable advice and direction to the company. As you might imagine, having too many VCs and angels taking an active role in the direction of the company might not always yield the best results, but generally because of their experience and network, they are valuable resource for startups to gain a stronger foothold in their industry.

Startup Life