Digital badges can be significant in providing success, proficiency, and employability. What are electronic or digital badges? How are they different from, say, a badge image? What services do they provide, and to whom?
You may learn about the technology that underpins them as well as the advantages, difficulties, and opportunities that come with digital badges in this in-depth guide.
Digital Badges — Some Key Concepts
The Definition of Digital Badges
They are a visible, accessible, and digitally verifiable indicator of achievement, talent, quality, or desire. Simply put, these badges are digital symbols of visual success. Digital badges can be obtained in a variety of ways and for a range of accomplishment levels. It includes “low stakes” event participation and “high stakes” accomplishments like successfully finishing a group project.
Digital badges have become a symbol of massive attraction in various industries. Hence, these badges are verifiable and secure; hence, they secure the integrity of different credentials. Moreover, they deliver additional value to certificate receivers because they can share them easily via email or on websites, social networks, or digital resumes. Also, people who earn digital badges can make a personalized portfolio to store and keep track of one or more badges.
Digital badge earners serve as ambassadors by spreading the name of the issuing institution to a wider network. They present themselves as ambassadors by sharing their digital badges with coworkers, employers, or licensing boards. Once a badge is given out, the organization that gave it out can track how often it is shared and opened, which gives them important information about how well their activities are going.
Digital Badges — The Mechanism
Digital badges carry embedded metadata. The metadata provides robust validation of qualifications. They have shareable information regarding the badge receiver, issuer, scenario for issuing, expiration period, issue date, standards complied with, and achievement evidence.
The granting institution typically develops a digital badge for every course or credential. This entails creating the accomplishment’s front-facing image and supporting metadata. After that, people who had earned the credential would get the badge through a software platform if they had done everything right.
Earners are informed of their badge’s issuance and given instructions on how to access their profile page via email or another form of contact. After that, it may be sent to the earner’s email or social networks, depending on how the vendor set it up.
The Challenges of Digital Badges
When the awarding of badges and official evaluation and scoring are performed, the procedure becomes too laborious. Badges are sometimes locked within the LMS, essentially removing market visibility. Badge credibility weakens if the issuer is not credible in the industry. As a result of “poor badges,” stakeholders may be unsure which digital badges to believe in.
What Value Can Earners Get
Digital badges offer tremendous value to both the issuer and the earner. Some of the values are described as follows:
Verified Expertise:
Thanks to digital badges, employers, coworkers, and licensing boards can easily validate an earner’s credentials with a single click. They describe all of the prerequisites required to obtain the badge.
What Sets You Apart from the Crowd?
Earners can stand out from the rest of the crowd by showing off their verified skills and experience with cool badges.
Convenience:
Digital badges provide a simple way for people to share, store, and digitally record their credentials and experiences online.
What Value Can Organizations Get
Additionally, digital badging provides issuing firms with several substantial, quantitative advantages, such as:
Marketing and Branding:
As people who earn badges talk about what they’ve done, the organization that gave them out can get the word out about its programs and build a strong brand.
Risk Reduction:
Digital badges, as opposed to paper certificates, are completely checked and authenticated, preserving the validity of each credential. Additionally, certain badging solutions like myCred even permit issuers to specify expiration dates and business rules. These solutions further reduce the possibility of workers spreading expired credentials.
Analytics:
Some systems have highly complex data collection capabilities that let businesses examine clicks, badge sharing, and views to determine their influence on the market.
Cost reduction:
Businesses can spend less on mailing and processing paper by using digital badges. Additionally, businesses that use foreign certificates don’t need to worry that the paper certificates won’t (or can’t) be sent correctly.
Global:
Different languages are applicable for digital badges.
Skills:
In addition to qualifications, businesses could make systems to find and verify skills, especially when they need to be renewed.
Revenue generation:
Digital badges can be an extra perk for certification and continuing education classes that organizations can offer.
How Digital Badges Increase Customer Engagement
Digital badges offer trustworthy digital proof that acknowledges accomplishments. They give you a tangible display of abilities and skills and a part of your identity. Additionally, badges enable the earner to openly exhibit and market their skills and are easily shared on digital platforms like social networks.
Also, they give the organization that gave the credential a chance to raise brand awareness and do viral marketing because the person who got it will want to talk about both the achievement and the organization that gave it.
Once an organization posts on social media platforms with comments like “I ’m thrilled to disperse my achievement,” the viewers rally with reactions like “congratulations” with thumbs up and waves. Each answer shows that both the person who gave out the digital badge and the person who earned it were thoughtful and engaged.
To get a deeper understanding, you can do a study of recently shared digital badges on social platforms. If a badge receives 100–1k impressions with 50 interactions on average, it can be assumed to be a success.
With this social experiment, you will see more connections leading to enhanced interactions. It’s important to note that location is indiscriminate. Whether you are in the US or anywhere else, it won’t matter. It also suggests that social media power is universal regarding customer engagement.
These social observations show that people interact with digital badges on social media, and they also show a good way for businesses to use badges to build brand recognition and awareness.
Digital badges drive brand exposure while remaining a component of your online identity, unlike paper badges. Paper certificates can be cropped and stored in the corner of your Zoom screens.
Tips to Consider While Investing in Digital Badges
Organizations and earners are equal beneficiaries of digital badges. However, an important point here is that not every platform awarding digital badges is the same. Therefore, business entrepreneur must consider their goals before investing in a particular digital badge software.
Consider the following questions before finalizing the digital badge platform:
- Does the platform include a tool for creating and authoring badges?
- Do there exist open APIs on the platform that can be quickly connected with current credentialing procedures?
- Are the digital badges reproducible static images, or do they have underlying data that describes the achievement?
- Can the embedded data fields capture the company’s needs and be altered to fulfill different goals?
- Does the platform keep track of expiration dates and disclose them, as well as group Continuing Education programs that can be upgraded to a certification?
- Does the workflow match the volume and frequency demands of the organization?
- How will the issuer and the industry be informed about the digital badge profile?
- Does the program track badge analytics like “clicks” and sharing only, or does it cover other metrics too?
Wrap Up
To conclude, it is necessary to invest in digital badges and related initiatives to support the competencies of earners. It will help them in various professional development activities. Moreover, digital badges are recognizable images that are shareable on various social networks. They help to articulate specific achievements and competencies, while companies can use them to highlight particular skills, paint identity profiles, build reputations, and show continuous learning and development.
