What is a Digital Badge?
A digital badge validates that the earner has acquired knowledge, skills, or abilities by completing a learning pathway. Digital badges offer several advantages:
- Earners can easily share badges with their professional networks, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook
- Earners choose how and when to broadcast their credentials to a more comprehensive online audience
- Earners can be awarded individual badges that show progress toward a more comprehensive, cumulative badge
- Badges use images to make the credential stand out
- Badges are linked to verifiable issuers, such as a university, employer, or company
- Badges provide metadata, specifically indicating the knowledge, skills, or abilities the earner has gained
Digital badges make ongoing professional development more transparent. With digital badges, a learner does not need to pursue an entire degree to sharpen their skillset; it is simple to highlight recently developed skills while other badges are in progress. For employers, digital badges offer a solution for upskilling their workforce in a quickly changing landscape.