A Guide to Digital Credentialing in Education
Digital Credentialing has taken over the world of education, pushing it towards the road of progress and technology. Over the past years, the number of universities, educational platforms and institutions that pride in providing in education have grown two-fold. To understand what Digital Credentialing really is, click here for a previous blog post I had submitted. If you're looking for a shortened version, here's a small piece just for you.
Digital Credentials include digital badges and certificates, which come in handy for adults or working professionals who aim to learn skills that will enable them build their careers. A fantastic example would be Udemy, which provides you with courses by qualified instructors online on just about anything. On the completion of such a course, one would be awarded a certificate for the skill gained, which will help them grow in the industry they play a role in. Now, there are two kinds of rewards for the skills you pick up on such platforms - the first is a digital badge, which represents and accomplishment that is less demanding in nature than a digital certificate. A digital certificate, on the other hand, is used as an indication for the completion of a course or an exam. To help you understand, a badge is what you get when you complete an assessment or video, a certificate is what you get when you complete the entire course.
How do you begin Digital Credentials?
Now that you have an understanding of what Digital Credentials are, here are 3 steps to help you get involved in digital credentialing:
-
Planning your System. Every decision starts out with a plan. List out the courses you wish to offer, and how each of these courses are related to one another. For example, what are the prerequisites required for the courses you put up, and the program flow for a certain course or program. Along with the training comes your assessments - what type of assessments should suit which sort of courses, and the badges that should be awarded to the professional after completion of said assessment. Badges encourage learner participation, so specifying the need for every badge is also important.
-
Requirements for Digital Badges. When you have the course offerings, you can think about how to design your digital badges. The Open Badges system, which lends to making digital badges verifiable and portable, has set requirements for the information included in a digital badge. Important information such as the name, category and URL of the badge, the issue date, as well as the issuer and recipient must be included. Other information such as the skills and knowledge, end date and extra information about the issuer are also often included and are helpful to potential learners and other institutions.
-
Making Your Digital Credentials Available. The digital credentials that you create should be available to the learners. The current system used is the Open Badges system by the IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS), which also supports other important systems in the online learning space. IMS partners with educational institutions as well as companies that develop products in the digital credentialing space. It certifies platforms that support the creation of digital certificates and badges, which include designing, issuing and verifying digital credentials. These companies make integration into digital credentialing much easier for schools and universities.
Digital credentials work like how courses and programs are developed in traditional educational settings, such as planning how courses will work together, but others are new and require a different set of skills, such as making sure courses are verifiable.
Related links: