Connecting Continuing Education to the Learn-and-Work Ecosystem
IACET is helping bring continuing education and training into the same digital standards ecosystem used across K-12 education, higher education, workforce development, and digital credentialing.
By publishing the ANSI/IACET Standard for Continuing Education and Training in CASE® format, IACET is making the framework digitally referenceable, machine-readable, and interoperable across systems and platforms.
What Is CASE®?
CASE®, or Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange®, is an interoperability standard developed by 1EdTech, a global, non-profit memember organization setting technical standards for Education Technology (EdTech). It provides a consistent way for academic standards, competencies, skills, and related frameworks to be identified, referenced, exchanged, and used across technology systems.
Instead of relying only on static documents such as PDFs, spreadsheets, or word-processing files, CASE assigns persistent identifiers to individual elements within a framework. These identifiers allow software platforms and organizations to reference the same standard with greater precision and consistency.
Why IACET Published Its Standard in CASE
Continuing education and training is sometimes described as "non-credit" learning. In practice, it represents a major third sector of education, serving adult learners after K-12 education and degree-granting higher education.
IACET’s network includes more than 650 Accredited Providers operating across hundreds of industries and dozens of countries. In the first six months of 2026 alone, those providers facilitated 873,945 learning experiences, reached approximately 6.5 million learners, and awarded 2.9 million accredited Continuing Education Units.
Despite the scale and importance of the sector, continuing education standards have historically been distributed primarily through static documents. Publishing the ANSI/IACET Standard in CASE® format creates a foundation for connecting continuing education and training to the broader digital education and workforce ecosystem.
For the first time, a continuing education and training accreditation standard can be referenced with the same precision and interoperability as academic standards used in K-12 and higher education.
About the ANSI/IACET Standard
The ANSI/IACET Standard for Continuing Education and Training is process-focused and content-agnostic.
It does not prescribe what an organization must teach. Instead, it establishes requirements for how continuing education and training are designed, developed, delivered, evaluated, documented, and continuously improved.
This allows the Standard to support organizations across a wide range of sectors, including:
- Healthcare
- Engineering
- K-12 professional development
- Early childhood education
- Construction and occupational safety
- Government
- Corporate learning and development
- Manufacturing
- Technology
- Professional and technical training
Connecting Education and the Workforce
CASE® was created to address interoperability challenges involving academic standards and competencies. The workforce learning ecosystem faces many of the same challenges.
Standards, competencies, learning outcomes, and credentials must often be interpreted and transferred across multiple organizations, platforms, licensing systems, credentialing systems, and employers.
IACET sits at a unique intersection within that ecosystem. Our Accredited Providers serve learners who are entering, participating in, and advancing through the workforce. Their learning may support professional licensure, industry certification, regulatory compliance, career advancement, or ongoing professional development.
Bringing the ANSI/IACET Standard into CASE® helps create a more continuous connection among classroom learning, career preparation, workplace learning, and lifelong professional development.
Why Interoperability Matters
Interoperability allows different systems and organizations to reference and exchange information consistently.
For continuing education and training, this may create opportunities to:
- Reference specific elements of the ANSI/IACET Standard using persistent digital identifiers
- Connect learning outcomes and credential metadata to applicable quality standards
- Improve transparency and traceability within digital credentials
- Support alignment among education, workforce, licensing, and certification frameworks
- Reduce ambiguity when standards are interpreted across different systems
- Enable more machine-verifiable relationships among standards, competencies, credentials, and learning experiences
What This Could Mean for IACET Accredited Providers
Publishing the Standard in CASE® does not change the requirements of IACET Accreditation, and it does not create any new immediate obligations for Accredited Providers.
It does, however, establish infrastructure that may support future tools and services.
Over time, Accredited Providers may be able to align learning outcomes, program information, and credential metadata directly to specific elements of the ANSI/IACET Standard. This could create stronger and more transparent connections between the learning an organization delivers and the quality processes used to support it.
Supporting Digital Credentials
IACET sees CASE® as a potential foundation for how the ANSI/IACET Standard is referenced within digital credentialing ecosystems.
This is especially relevant as IACET develops organizational credentials through the IACET Distinction Series, including distinctions related to emerging areas such as generative artificial intelligence and open digital credentials.
As digital credentialing ecosystems continue to mature, machine-readable standards may help establish clearer relationships among:
- The organization issuing a credential
- The learning experience represented by the credential
- The competencies or outcomes demonstrated
- The quality standards followed by the issuing organization
- The external requirements of employers, regulators, licensing boards, and certification bodies
Supporting Cross-Framework Alignment
IACET maintains crosswalks and alignment resources that compare the ANSI/IACET Standard with other professional and industry frameworks.
These include frameworks associated with engineering licensure, early childhood education, teacher professional development, talent development, and professional training management.
Today, these relationships are generally represented through static crosswalk documents. CASE® creates a potential pathway for expressing those alignments in a machine-readable and interoperable format.
This could make it easier for systems to identify where requirements correspond, overlap, or differ across frameworks.
A Foundation for the Future
IACET views this work as foundational infrastructure.
Our goal is to ensure that continuing education and training is not treated as a separate ecosystem operating alongside K-12 education, higher education, and workforce development. It should be architecturally connected to them.
By making the ANSI/IACET Standard digitally referenceable today, IACET is preparing the framework to participate in future credentialing, workforce, regulatory, and learning systems without requiring a retroactive redesign.
IACET and the CASE® Global Ecosystem
IACET is proud to participate as an early pilot organization in the CASE Global Ecosystem and to be among the first organizations to complete a continuing education and training framework in this space.
Our participation reflects a simple belief: continuing education and training belongs in the same interoperability conversation as K-12 education and higher education.
We are grateful to 1EdTech and its partners for including IACET in this work, and we look forward to demonstrating how digitally accessible standards can strengthen the connection between education, credentials, workforce development, and lifelong learning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does publishing the Standard in CASE change the ANSI/IACET Standard?
No. CASE provides a digital structure for referencing and exchanging the Standard. It does not alter the content, requirements, or authority of the ANSI/IACET Standard.
Does this create new requirements for IACET Accredited Providers?
No. Accredited Providers are not currently required to use CASE identifiers or change their learning systems as a result of this initiative.
Is CASE a credentialing platform?
No. CASE is an interoperability standard. It allows standards, competencies, and frameworks to be referenced consistently across compatible systems and platforms.
Why is this important for continuing education?
Continuing education supports licensure, certification, compliance, professional development, and career advancement across nearly every industry. Digitally referenceable standards can help make those learning experiences and credentials more transparent, portable, and interoperable.
Will IACET use CASE in future digital credentials?
IACET is exploring how CASE identifiers may support future organizational credentials, provider alignments, credential metadata, and cross-framework relationships.