What is the step-by-step guide and why use it?

What is the step-by-step guide?

CICIC’s step-by-step guide on how to assess an academic credential issued outside Canada (step-by-step guide) is:

• an online tool accessible to academic credential assessors, providing practical guidance in their daily work. It describes six main steps to be taken by the evaluators of an assessing organization or competent recognition authority to complete an assessment procedure: receive documents for assessment; confirm the status of the educational institution and its credential programs; authenticate the documents; compare the academic credential to those found in Canada; decide on the assessment outcome; and communicate the result to the applicant;
• based on principles of CICIC’s Pan-Canadian Quality Assurance Framework for the Assessment of International Academic Credentials (QAF) and international legal instruments related to academic credential recognition;
• aligned with pan-Canadian and international best practices in the field of assessment and recognition of academic credentials; and
• largely inspired by the European Area of Recognition (EAR) Manual, a similar tool used by national information centres within the ENIC-NARIC Networks and endorsed in 2012 by the Ministers of Education from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). However, CICIC’s step-by-step guide is adapted to follow procedures in the context of a decentralized system and includes terminology specific to Canada.

Why use the step-by-step guide?

For academic credential assessors employed by assessing organizations, using the step-by-step guide is an opportunity to improve practices in their daily work. The step-by-step guide may also be used by the leadership teams of assessing organizations and competent recognition authorities as a training tool to acquire and develop additional skills, competencies, and knowledge specifically focused on assessment methodologies.

For assessing organizations and competent recognition authorities, using the step-by-step guide is an opportunity to:

• review and adjust their internal policies and procedures, specific to their sectors and the third parties they may service, with a view to continual improvement;
• demonstrate (and increase) adherence to CICIC’s QAF and, more broadly, compliance with international legal frameworks related to academic credential recognition enforceable in Canada;
• provide a practical training tool to their academic credential assessment personnel. Such training supports skills-building, in particular: the ongoing development of the key attitudes, values, and competencies of their academic credential assessment personnel based on CICIC’s Competency Profile for an Academic Credential Assessor;
• enable greater consistency and portability of academic credential assessment reports in Canada by encouraging receiving third parties to broadly acknowledge and recognize the assessment procedures implemented by issuing organizations. Such a degree of consistency and portability would also be achieved through transparency over adopting aligned assessment methodologies, based on common practices used by other assessing organizations within and outside Canada.