Digital badging, as an emerging education trend, offers the promise of a fluid and flexible way for people to learn in different contexts and be recognised for the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired. Digital badging challenges traditional approaches and offers innovative alternatives to credit skills and knowledge outside the formal curriculum. Contemporary, online and customised, badging provides the possibility of displaying and verifying an achievement, ability or skill in a variety of learning environments. These could be a formal academic award or the demonstration of “soft skills” such as leadership, communication, collaboration and organisational skills. 

Badges are small digital images or words that signify achievement. The image is hyperlinked to information about who issued the badge, when, and the criteria of achievement. The receiver can display their badges on their personal websites, blogs, or digital CVs, and the hyperlink enables verification of the credentials of the badge. Skills, knowledge and competencies can be acquired across many different contexts: in formal classrooms, on the sports field, through cultural events, in the workplace, through hobbies and clubs. Badging offers the potential to acknowledge learning that is both formal and non-formal, enabling a learner to showcase individual strengths and interests across a range of authentic contexts and areas. 

The questions posed in this presentation relate to whether badging offers innovative teaching and learning opportunities for teachers in an ongoing professional development programme. It is arguably the ‘soft skills’ that are the benchmarks of truly effective teaching practice, yet internationally, educators have found it difficult traditionally to formally assess these ‘soft skills’. This research examines the usefulness of digital badging used in a teaching programme to acknowledge the intangible qualities of good teaching practice.   

Hart, M. (2015). Badges: A New Measure of Professional Development « Online Learning Update. Retrieved from https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/01/14/badges-a-new-measure-of-professional-development.aspx Grant, S. (2014). What Counts as Learning? Retrieved from http://dmlhub.net/sites/default/files/WhatCountsAsLearning_Grant.pdf Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Learning in landscapes of practice: A framework. In E. Wenger, M. Fenton- O’Creevy, S. Hutchinson, & C.Kubiak (Eds.), Learning in landscapes of practice. Routledge. USA.