A digital badge is on online representation of an achievement.

Badges are a smart, simple, and visual way of rewarding learning, skills, and experience that can otherwise go unrecognised.

Remember that ‘certificate of achievement’ you got at school, or the sew-on badges you earned for swimming? Digital badges have the same idea but are awarded and stored entirely online – you can’t lose them down the sofa or behind the fridge, and the information contained within them can be used in a variety of ways.

The template for a badge, known as the badge class, is written by the organisation/person intending to do the issuing. Badge classes contain information such as name, description, earning criteria, tags, and a badge visual. This content is entirely customisable and can reflect anything the writer chooses.

When an individual (or organisation, depending on the badge) has achieved the earning criteria, the issuing organisation then issues the badge. The record of a badge class being issued to an email address is called an assertion, which is recorded in a unique URL.

Badge recipients can use their assertion URLs to proudly display achievements outside of formal qualifications in a wide variety of ways, including display on websites, email signatures, social media such as LinkedIn, and CVs or cover letters, making badges a brilliant way to equip recipients with the power, language, and tools to better tell their stories when seeking future opportunities.

Multiple organisations across many sectors use Good Badges to ensure that their digital credentials program is great value for money and making an impact to people’s lives.

The majority of members cover these three sectors:

Skills Impact Professionals

People and organisations aiming to solve the skills shortage, support the economically inactive, and bridge the skills gap.

Creative Impact Professionals

Organisations that drive up participation in the arts and cultural spheres. They’re creating a powerful pipeline of creative talent, often from the disadvantaged and underrepresented.

Education Impact Professionals

Educators use digital credentials to increase the quality, perceived value and effectiveness of vocational pathways to employers.

Digital badges can be used in the certification process for formal accreditations and qualifications; however, this does not mean that all digital badges are accredited.

Any person or organisation can access an issuing platform to issue digital badges, and while these badges can produce worthwhile impact for recipients and be put to excellent use, they must not be confused with formal accreditations or qualifications unless the activity the badge is for is recognised by a relevant professional body.

Not all learning happens on paper. Gaining skills and knowledge is a very human activity that deserves to be celebrated.

Outside of formal qualifications, exams and tests, individuals are constantly evolving through everyday work, volunteering in communities, attending events, and interacting with new ideas. But how can we recognise and mark all this ‘extra stuff’ in a lasting and meaningful way?

We believe that digital badges are the answer.

You can write a badge about anything, and award it to anyone that has achieved the specified criteria. Whereas an old-fashioned certificate may just title the activity and the date that it was achieved, a digital badge clearly displays the earning criteria and skills involved in completing that activity, immortalising this reference of experience online.

• Badges recognise accomplishments and achievements that cannot be formally accredited, where experience outside of qualifications is highly valued and often not well documented.

• No achievement is too small to be badged! Any accomplishment, however small, can be the start of a journey to a better future.

• Badges provide the ultimate tool for providing verified employer references in an emerging freelance workforce.

• Badges give earners the power and language to better tell their stories by clearly displaying the activities they have engaged with and the transferable skills gained along the way. All in language that employers understand.

• Badges support earners to use the experiences, skills, and competencies they have developed by working with your organisation to take positive steps in their own lives.

Have you ever been completely stuck writing a cover letter for a job application, updating your CV, or applying for a course? It can be immensely difficult to articulate the skills you have and the experience you’ve gained from a lifetime of various activities.

Digital badges are a fantastic tool for giving earners the power and language to better tell their stories. They clearly spell out the activity carried out and the attitudes displayed along the way. What is particularly useful about this is highlighting transferable skills that may not – at first glance – be seen as relevant. 

We get it – there are costs involved with implementing badging and you’d like to know what’s in it for your organisation?

Depending on your organisation and the activity you deliver, there are several ways that badges can be beneficial:

Statistics
– Badge issuing platforms provide statistics of how your badge collection is performing, such as how many badges you have issued and how many have been accepted. Many issuing platforms also provide information on shares to social media for an easy snapshot of where your badges are appearing online.

Reporting & Impact Tracking
– Every organisation has outcomes or markers that can be hard to measure and track. Badges give a quantifiable source of data for ‘soft outcomes’, such as increasing skills or wellbeing, which can help you to demonstrate your impact.

Managing Staff & Internal Processes
– Recipients don’t just have to be participants on programmes or customers of your activity. Rewarding staff achievements with digital badges makes a great record of the upskilling and progression of staff within the organisation.
– Badges are a brilliant way to reflect staff training, CPD courses and suitability for roles.  

Recruitment
– Attracting the right people to your organisation requires a lot of time, care and effort. Badges are fantastic for getting a snapshot of a person’s experience and skills. They have the added bonus of showing what organisations have previously worked with them without the laborious requests for references. 

Grants & Funding
– Lots of organisations will utilise grants and funding at some point. Incorporating digital badges into delivery can make applications stand out by increasing the credibility of how you will be tracking, measuring and reporting on specific outcomes, as well as bringing structure to your activity.  

Attitudes & Movements
– Every organisation has key messages and attitudes that they want to develop in others. Digital badges are a brilliant way to recognise and encourage the change you want to see in the world. 

Marketing
– You can get really creative with using badges as a marketing tool!
– Badges are created with your logo and branding, so are very personal to your organisation. Every time someone shares a badge they earned with you, it’s an advert.
– Because of the way badges are linked in-browser, people that click on your badges get a direct snapshot of the activity you deliver and the impact you’re creating.

Absolutely. Digital badges are extremely flexible.

While issuing to organisations is less common than to individuals, there are plenty of examples of organisational issuing, such as demonstrating endorsement, highlighting social value commitment, or recognising programme adoption in schools.

Check out this video for more information, or see some of our favourite organisation badges:

• Young Person Ready Endorsed

• Food Enterprise Network

Under GDPR, only people aged 13+ can consent to their own data sharing. 

As issuing platforms require the processing of personal data, including an email address, this often prevents issuing to children.

There are ways to ensure children are recognised for their learning and achievements by issuing badges. This largely depends on your organisation’s ability to gain issuing consent from a parent or guardian, and which issuing platform you intend to use, as platforms have varying stances on whether they support issuing to children.

Digital badges are designed to be traceable and owned by the recipient. Issuing a badge is a verification that the person owning the email address has achieved the earning criteria in your badge – by issuing badges to an email address that does not belong to the earner, it can create difficulties for them retaining access to their verified achievements as they develop and grow. Therefore, many issuing platforms require earners to create their individual accounts to accept their badges and these issuing platforms tend to distinctly advise against issuing to a parent or guardian on an earner’s behalf.

While we do recommend that issuing takes place directly to the earner wherever possible, there are lots of circumstances where earners cannot access an email address of their own. In these cases, it can make issuing badges difficult.

We do not support the practice of issuing badges to an email address that does not belong to the earner using an issuing platform that has expressly told us they do not condone it, so the issuing platform your organisation uses is a factor in whether you can issue to parents or guardians.

A digital badge wallet, also known as a badge “passport” or “backpack”, is an online platform that enables badge recipients to collect, store, and display the digital badges they have earned

Some issuing platforms have wallet functionality included, enabling recipients to build a profile. However, these tend to be focused on badges issued through that issuing platform only and do not enable interoperability with badges from other platforms.

A true digital badge wallet contains the ability to import badges from any issuing platform to store all achievements in one place. Some wallets contain fantastic additional functionality, such as building digital CVs featuring badges, and networking with other users.

My Skills Pass is a UK-based digital badge passport with networking features.

Users access the platform for free to import badges earned through any issuing platform, build a shareable profile, display their earned badges to other users, and utilise networking functionality such as instant messaging, location, and endorsement.

Its most valuable feature is digital CV creation. Users can develop multiple digital CVs featuring badges, other certificates or files, video, and hyperlinked text. These CVs can be shared via URL and even exported as PDFs for immediate use in applications. Check out this example of a digital CV created on My Skills Pass.

My Skills Backpack is a UK-based digital badge passport and the ‘little sibling’ to My Skills Pass.

It contains the same features as My Skills Pass for managing badges and creating digital CVs but prevents any user interaction, making it a safer option for groups that hold specific online safeguarding concerns around display or networking features.

When adopted at any scale, digital credentials are an effective way of strengthening local education and employment ecosystems. They increase the effectiveness of local interventions and provide all parts of the system with  powerful tools to make learning visible and better connect it to meaningful employment.

Over time, a systemic approach can make a noticeable impact on key metrics like economic inactivity, NEET levels and local productivity.

Cities of Learning is a movement of people and places committed to nurturing, validating and connecting learning across towns, cities and regions to support a regenerative economy. The RSA supports local leaders, with digital infrastructure, learning, systems design and a national network of peers, to transform their learning ecosystems towards better outcomes for people, places and the planet. The Good Badges team have been a part of the movement since the beginning so feel free to book some time for a chat if you’re interested in hearing more.

You need to ask the following questions…

What are you trying to achieve with issuing badges?

For some organisations, it’s quantifying impact and reporting on engagement. For others, it’s linking badge recipients with wallet technology to build a profile of achievements.

Identifying what matters most to your badging offer will help you find an issuing platform that suits the needs of your organisation and recipients.

Who are you issuing badges to?

As mentioned in other answers, some issuing platforms do not support issuing to children or parents/guardians on their behalf, so identifying your earner base is essential to determining which issuing platform will suit your needs.

How do you want to issue?

There are many ways to issue badges, and each issuing platform has its own functionality. Considering how badging fits into staff capacity, data policies, and existing systems is important.

For example, you might have a team member who is well placed to access and process recipient data such as name and email address within existing administrative functions. However, if you have other needs such as having recipients claim badges in-person, or apply for a badge using evidence, or to have the platform integrate with other systems, which platform facilitates your needs will help narrow it down.

What is your budget?

Whether it be the time spent creating and administering your badges, or the monthly/annual payments of an issuing platform subscription, there is always a cost involved in implementing a badge offer.

Considering what you are willing to spend in both staff capacity and money is important.

Are you diving in, or just dipping your toes?

While it is always tempting to swing for bells and whistles when getting a badge offer up and running, many organisations fall into the trap of spending big on issuing technology and then underutilising the platform in the first year while they get to grips with badge writing, issuing, and communicating about badges with recipients. This can lead to the question of whether it was ‘worth it’ and the energy and enthusiasm for badging falls.

It’s okay to test the water before committing more time and resources. Ask what the bare minimum of ‘good’ looks like for your first year of badging and go from there – if there’s a platform that caters for this at a price you’re happy with, that may well be enough for now. Don’t panic, you can always change platforms in the future.

We want to bring together companies that are committed to openness, interoperability, and real customer freedom. This means no penalising contracts or restrictive ties and always being fully transparent. It means fair pricing, and equitable software that encourages internal use not external consultants. It means promoting and linking together companies that are compliant, secure and in good health financially. It means bringing together public and private sector companies that share the common social aim of democratising technology so it can be used to its fullest potential where it’s needed most.

We don’t just let anyone into this community! We currently have 300+ members, growing rapidly, from 160 organisations across multiple sectors including education, local government, voluntary, charity and community interest companies. They all share two common character traits:

• A desire to make a positive impact on society

• A willingness to share knowledge for mutual benefit

Discuss any topic raised here, or get independent advice on digital credentialing.

The crew at Good Badges are fully supportive of the work of UFI and the RSA in driving the national commission on digital badges and ensure our members get their voices heard in the world of policy and research. For more info, visit: https://www.badgingcommission.org/

The way the majority of SaaS platforms operate leads to phenomenal waste in the UK public sector. Open badge technology is no different. Pricing structures, commercial strategies and the underlying tech culture can all lead to an environment where it's normal for 51%  of software subscriptions to go unused while nearly half of the UK government’s spend on technology goes on expensive legacy systems.

On the surface it can feel like both the US and Europe have developed more advanced support for digital credentialing. However, when you dig a bit deeper we think that there are some key structural flaws in how both systems are set up. The UK might not be the first to the party when it comes to national policy or support infrastructure but that means we have a unique opportunity to GET IT RIGHT. Good Badges is as the forefront of making sure this happens in the UK.