Attending the Summer Institute on International Education, Japan (SIIEJ 2026) in Tokyo in early August provided me as a representative of the GDN Network an important opportunity to better understand microcredentialing, quality assurance, international education, credential portability and learner mobility through a Japanese lens.

The convening brought together a wide range of perspectives on the changing nature of international education and the systems needed to support learners as they move across borders.

One valuable experience for me was participating in a workshop examining the changing nature of the international office.

International offices are increasingly being asked to do much more than manage exchanges and international partnerships. They are navigating changing student expectations, new technologies, recruitment pressures, institutional strategies, learner support requirements and increasingly complex mobility pathways. The workshop was particularly helpful in understanding the operational realities and challenges facing the modern international office, and the institutional capacity required to support international learners effectively. In our tabling exercise, the participants innovated and shared several interesting ways to create joint credentials and programming.

More broadly, the SIIEJ sessions helped me develop a richer understanding of the Japanese context for credential portability and learner mobility.

The presentations from J-Micro and IMPACT were especially relevant in highlighting the growing attention being paid to new forms of learning, microcredentials, recognition and the digital infrastructure needed to support greater portability.

One initiative that particularly stood out to me at SIIEJ was the work underway through JMICRO, the Japan Micro-Credentials Organization. What made the initiative especially interesting was understanding how it has evolved from earlier collaborative work in Japan.

The foundations were laid through a joint micro-credential working group involving the Forum for Internationalization of Universities, Japan Virtual Campus (JV-Campus), and the Japan Massive Open Online Education Promotion Council (JMOOC). Beginning in 2023, these organizations worked together not only to encourage the development of micro-credentials within Japan, but also to consider how they could support greater international collaboration, particularly across the Asia-Pacific region. This work led to the development of a common micro-credential framework, followed by practical guidance for issuing micro-credentials digitally. The framework draws on UNESCO’s definition of micro-credentials, while the digital guidance has evolved to align with Open Badges 3.0. JMICRO was subsequently established as a formal organization in October 2025, providing a more permanent national structure for taking this work forward.

Today, JMICRO is helping to build a more coherent national approach to micro-credentials by focusing on common standards, quality assurance, trusted digital issuance, a registry, and greater interoperability. Its ambition also extends beyond Japan, with international compatibility and mutual recognition, particularly across the Asia-Pacific region, forming part of its work.

What I found especially significant was the potential for this work to support recognition beyond the issuing institution itself. By creating clearer information about learning outcomes, assessment, and quality, and connecting this to digital credential standards and a national trust infrastructure, Japan is laying important groundwork for micro-credentials to become more portable and more easily understood by institutions, employers, and, increasingly, across borders.

For me, this reinforced the importance of thinking about micro-credentials not simply as new forms of shorter learning, but as part of the broader infrastructure required to support lifelong learning, credential recognition, and learner mobility. It was also a useful example of the value of moving beyond individual institutional initiatives toward coordinated approaches at a national level, while deliberately considering international interoperability from the outset.

I was also particularly interested in the Navi Japan initiative. It demonstrated the value of developing policy, digital and interoperable solutions at national scale to support international learners across the full journey, rather than expecting them to navigate a fragmented collection of institutional systems on their own.

That end-to-end perspective was one of my strongest takeaways from the convening. Learner mobility is not achieved simply by making a credential digital or by encouraging more students to cross borders. It requires trusted information before learners move, understandable pathways into institutions, mechanisms for recognizing their learning, appropriate support during their studies, and connections to further learning and employment afterwards.

SIIEJ provided a valuable window into both the progress being made in Japan and the practical challenges that remain. It also reinforced for me how closely connected the issues of credential portability, recognition, international student support, digital infrastructure and institutional capacity really are.

Successful learner mobility is ultimately an end-to-end challenge. These elements cannot be treated as separate conversations because, from the learner’s perspective, they are all part of the same journey.

That was the real value of SIIEJ for me: the opportunity not only to learn more about international education in Japan, but also to see how many of the issues we are grappling with globally around trust, recognition and mobility come together in practice. I’m looking forward to working with the Japanese experts as we build our collaborations together.

Stay tuned for further details on future shared GDN convenings in Japan.