Dive Brief:
- Panelists discussing digital badges in higher education during a webinar by The New Media Consortium outlined four steps to getting policies and practices in place for digital badges, helping students and creating greater demand at higher education institutions.
- The first two steps, most applicable to colleges and universities, are defining the competency that leads to a badge and identifying an easy-to-use online badge conferral platform so students can receive, display, and store their credentials in an online profile.
- According to eCampus News, the availability of alternative credentials is expected to double in the next five years, and with students and employers increasingly interested in displaying and seeing skills that don’t appear on traditional transcripts, the schools that offer such badge programs will be those in high demand.
Dive Insight:
In some corners of the higher education sphere, people see digital badges as a very real threat to traditional college and university programs. Theoretically, they provide clear descriptions of student learning and proof of mastery that allows employers to quickly verify a claimed skill.
One reason alternative programs have not historically been seen as much of a threat is because the traditional institutions still have name recognition with employers. Digital badges, though, could cut down on the need for that recognition. Colleges and universities can stay ahead of the curve by developing their own competency-based badge programs, expanding their offerings to meet prospective student demand.