Digital Badges
Digital Badges
UNC-Chapel Hill Digital and Lifelong Learning is piloting digital badges as a way to demonstrate lifelong learning. As lives and careers lengthen, and technology and jobs change more rapidly, education doesn’t end at the completion of a degree or training program. It continues throughout an individual’s life, often via shorter, more targeted models.
Alternative credentials like digital badges can signify, in intuitive and commonly accepted ways, what holders of the credential know and can do. Digital badges may represent a certificate or training completion, and they also allow students, colleagues, and current and potential employers to view a list of skills gained by the learning opportunity.
About Digital Badges
Digital badges are an online validation of an individual’s achievement and skillset. They are generally used to illustrate completion of a noncredit offering, such as a boot camp or certificate, but they can also be used in other ways, such as highlighting specific skills or competencies gained by the learner. Making these skills more visible and explaining how they are demonstrated can unlock new career opportunities for learners, and present a more diverse set of qualified candidates to employers. Millions of badges have been issued across a wide range of companies, schools, associations, and government agencies.
Work With Us
UNC-Chapel Hill units that are interested in issuing digital badges should email Tyler Ritter, Director of Digital Learning Design & Development.
Resources
Trying to get a sense of the digital badge landscape, especially in higher ed?
Download our digital badging report, Badging Usage in Higher Education: An Analysis of Badging Administration and Badging Trends in Higher Ed.
Interested in planning and implementing a badging program of your own?
Download our guide, Digital Badging: A Quick-Start Guide for Higher Education Program Administrators.