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Information on micro-credentialing

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The Lab's 21st Century Skills Micro-credentials

After years of research and on-the-ground work with academia, students, employers, assessment providers, and technologists, the Lab designed a rigorous set of eight micro-credentials that transform the way learners recognize, activate, and display in-demand skills.

More than 800 higher ed institutions and 125 K-12 districts are using our micro-credentials via a free toolkit released by the Lab two years ago-we've recently released version two of the original toolkit, vsbl, a platform that allows multiple options for institutions to employ the Lab's micro-credentials. The credentials are currently being used in some 40 pilots around the world that are implemented in a variety of models.

Each of the 21st Century Skills Micro-credentials represent a core 21st century skill. To earn a micro-credential, a learner must demonstrate proficiency via a performance-based assessment in four core sub-competencies. Once a learner successfully completes the four assessments, they are awarded a digital badge.

Pima Community College's Automated Industrial Technology FastTrack micro-pathway leads to a career as an Industrial Engineering Mechanic.

The program is offered in 3 months, part-time, and in noncredit, with up to 7 credits earned going towards higher credentials.

Our Micro-credential Framework is Unique

By unbundling each skill, the Lab has identified discrete skills that allow learners to practice and demonstrate mastery on each skill with greater precision.

The Lab is committed to updating this framework as needed and will continue to use what we learn through our direct work with stakeholders to inform our thinking and the badge-earning experience.
We're testing our micro-credentials with institutions, learners, and employers in BadgedToHire + with our Badging Fellows.
Learn More About Our Pedagogy

Become a 21st Century Skills Facilitator

Issuing the Lab's 21st Century Skills Micro-credentials requires the completion of our facilitator training. It is a self-paced, online learning experience, approximately 4-6 hours in duration. It is a community experience with colleagues around the world. Upon successful completion, learners are awarded a badge, issued by Education Design Lab.

I hadn't realized how carefully you have to think about communications like this - and how important it is - until I had to record that video [one of the assignments learners complete to earn the micro-credential] over and over and practice listening carefully and responding in a thoughtful, appropriate way. Now I have these really valuable communications skills, but I also have this credential that I can use to show employers I have mastered them.

Learner Participating in BadgedToHire Initiative

Freshman Business Major, San Jose State University

Just having a degree is not going to be good enough. So, [micro-]credentialing is really important in terms of people who want to be successful professionally. This is a way for them to demonstrate it early on.

Director of Talent + Diversity, Bangor Savings Bank

Interested in Using Our Micro-credentials?

Launching a scalable micro-credentialing initiative can be a complex undertaking. We offer everything from 2-day sprints to 6-month, even year-long engagements to co-design custom scalable solutions for your unique organizational needs. Developing a digital microcredential strategy? Want to build your own badges? We can do that, too. The Lab's team of experts will meet your unique needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a badge and a micro-credential?

An educational credential is awarded upon successful completion of an identified scope of learning. The scope tends to be broad and encompassing (e.g., a diploma, degree or certification). A micro-credential is more focused, discrete and, if you measure learning by seat time or instructional hours, shorter in duration than a credential. Successful learning done to earn a micro-credential can be awarded in the form of a digital badge. A digital badge is a validated indicator of a mastered accomplishment, skill, quality, or interest that can be earned in many learning environments ( HASTAC ). It is the portable, transferable technology used to display the successful completion of learning and the digital format includes metadata that communicates details to others such as an employer.

What makes the Lab's micro-credentials unique?

The Lab's micro-credentials were co-designed with 20 colleges and 60 employers and target the most in-demand universal skills in the emerging job market of the future. Beyond the methodical process used to design them, what makes the Lab's micro-credentials unique is the set of "core four" sub-competencies associated with each skill. Every skill has a more discrete set of skills associated with it (e.g., playing soccer requires stamina, footwork, agility, etc.). 21st century skills are no different. Identifying these "core four" skills allows individuals to get a better handle on their skills and target areas for continued growth and improvement.

Join our Innovator Network + never miss an update on our micro-credentialing work.

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The Lab's 21st Century Skills Micro-credentials - Education Design Lab

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After years of research and on-the-ground work with academia, students, employers, assessment providers, and technologists, the Lab designed a rigorous set of eight micro-credentials that transform the way learners recognize, activate, and display in-demand skills.

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This organization provides guidelines for companies issuing digital badges

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IACET is dedicated to bringing its experience, its leadership, and its value as trusted, third-party Accreditor to the digital badging ecosystem.

Why is IACET in the Open Digital Badging Ecosystem?

Historically, IACET has focused solely on the Continuing Education Unit (CEU). Starting in 1970 when IACET, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education task force created and defined the CEU following a study the measurement of non-credit continuing education activities. The continuing education unit (CEU) was designed to:

Provide a standard unit of measurement for continuing education and training,

Quantify continuing education and training (CE/T) activities, and

Accommodate for the diversity of providers, activities, and purposes in adult education.

Throughout the five decades since the creation of the CEU, IACET has worked tirelessly to protect the integrity of the CEU and to ensure that companies, regulators and learners could trust that continuing education and training was valuable and effective.

Today, Open Digital Badging faces many of the same struggles that continuing education and training faced 50 years ago; struggles that IACET helped to overcome. IACET wants to bring its experience, its leadership, and its value as trusted, third-party Accreditor to the digital badging ecosystem.

One of the biggest barriers associated with digital badging today is determining how to make them more authentic to employers and regulators. The perception is that digital badges are not credible because anyone can make a badge about anything. How can an employer trust that a worker has the skill for which he has a badge? How can a regulator verify that the licensee acquired the proficiency a digital badge asserts he has?

That's where IACET fills the gap. By providing an independent, third-party accreditation of digital badge issuers, IACET can bring gravitas to the Open Digital Badging ecosystem.

Micro-credentialing through open digital badging has the potential to change education, workforce development, regulatory requirements for learners, education providers, employers and governments. But only if there is a trusted, third-party, independent organization that can put it's seal of approval on the credential.

Just like 50 years ago, IACET forged a way to make the CEU meaningful as a measure of education, so today does it seek to make digital badging a meaningful way to recognize and evidence accomplishments and skills of those who have earned it.

IACET believes that the 21 st century continuing education and training that you are providing deserves a 21 st century credential.

What has IACET done so far?

In response to industry trends and stakeholder needs, IACET has convened a group of experts from the digital badging ecosystem who developed a set of guidelines that details the metadata and quality assurance traits for open digital badges (ODB). IACET plans to release those specifications as guidance to organizations who wish to issue high-quality digital badges.

Not all digital badges are equal in terms of effort and significance. As part of the specification work, the IACET Open Digital Badging Taskforce developed the IACET Open Digital Badging Taxonomy, a system to classify different kinds of digital badges. The IACET Open Digital Badging Taxonomy is designed to help decision makers better identify certain types of badges for fast, easy, and in some cases automated decision making. Download the new Open Digital Badge Taxonomy that is part of the forthcoming IACET Guidelines for Open Digital Badges.

IACET has created an educational program to provide members and other adult learning stakeholders opportunities to learn about Open Digital Badging credentials and how to effectively implement them in adult learning environments. Since, the IACET 1-2018 Standard for Continuing Education and Training requires processes involving record keeping and transcripts, Open Digital Badging is a natural extension of these elements of that important standard.

IACET's forthcoming IACET Guidelines for Open Digital Badges does not replace IMS Global's metadata standard. IACET fully supports and will actively promote adherence to this important IMS Global work. IACET's specification is designed to complement the IMS Global Standard by providing a qualitative framework. IACET stakeholders have identified that badges are being used in a broad series of applications. For professional continuing education and training purposes, IACET believes that Open Digital Badges should be designed in a quality way that correctly, accurately, authentically, and fully represent the credential it depicts.

IACET's planned future for Open Digital Badges

IACET, as an ANSI Standards Development Organization, and as an Accreditation Agency plans to use the forthcoming IACET Guidelines for Open Digital Badges document created by the Open Digital Badging taskforce as a springboard to develop a full-fledged Open Digital Badging Standard and accreditation program. This program will allow education providers who want to stand out as world-class issuers of digital badges will be able to earn a designation of Accredited Digital Badge Issuer from IACET.

IACET also plans to create tools for regulators and employers be able to use to verify with IACET if a digital badge was earned from an Accredited Digital Badge Issuer. Once verified, regulators and employers can rest assured that the digital badge presented as proof of competence is authentic and trustworthy.

IACET will also implement the IACET Open Digital Badging marketing plan advancing a strategic objective to improve the CE/T ecosystem with knowledge, resources and standards regarding Open Digital Badges. Open Digital Badges and its advantages are unknown to many providers as the technology is still new to many. IACET has an opportunity to fill a knowledge gap and set a standard for Open Digital Badges in the industry.

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One of the biggest barriers associated with digital badging today is determining how to make them more authentic to employers and regulators. The perception is that digital badges are not credible because anyone can make a badge about anything. Learn how IACET can bring gravitas to the Digital Badging ecosystem by providing an independent, third-party accreditation of digital badge issuers.

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Here's what to do with a badge after it's earned.

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If you're participating in the e-Formation Learning Community's digital badging program, this video will help you share your badges in documents, on websites, or via LinkedIn and other social media.

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Graphic showing various digital badges.

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Graphic showing various digital badges.

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A collection of articles on digital badging.  https://www.macfound.org/programs/digital-badges/

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Digital badges are an assessment and credentialing mechanism that is housed and managed online. Badges are designed to make visible and validate learning in both formal and informal settings, and hold the potential to help transform where and how learning is valued.

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WiKi with details on Mozilla's Open Badges Ecosystem.

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Learning happens everywhere. Yet it's often difficult to be recognized for skills and achievements that are gained outside of school. Mozilla's Open Badges project is working to solve that problem by making it easy for anyone anywhere to issue, earn, and display badges.

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7 Things You Should Know About Badges

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Here's how Dale Carnegie is using digital badges.  http://www.dalecarnegie.com/professional-badging/competency-based-badges/

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This document was shared with MCC Automate! workshop participants to explain how to collect their digital badges using Badgr.

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Video explaining how Georgetown University is using digital badges. (7:46)

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Graduation day at Georgetown University. It takes four years, more than $200,000, and a lot of hard work to get here.

But now more employers are asking, what does a four-year degree really mean? What true marketable skills can new graduates offer the work force?

Georgetown University is trying to answer that question.

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Giving students a leg up with job skills a resume won't show

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When applying to a job out of college, having a top-notch resume isn't enough anymore. College graduates from top schools apply alongside dozens of similarly qualified candidates. In light of new hiring trends, a program at Georgetown University aims to make their students the best candidates possible, by teaching them skills that will give them a leg up on the job hunt.

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MCC's  Workforce Innovation Division Badge Image

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MCC's  Workforce Innovation Division Badge Image

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This image may be customized for use with various MCC initiatives.

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HASTAC - Collection of Resources on Digital Badging

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HASTAC - Collection of Resources on Digital Badging

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HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) is a free and open interdisciplinary community of humanists, artists, social scientists, scientists, and technologists who are changing the way we teach and learn.

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What is a digital badge?

A digital badge is a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, quality, or interest that can be earned in many learning environments. Open digital badging makes it easy for anyone to issue, earn, and display badges across the web-through an infrastructure that uses shared and open technical technical standards.

The world is changing fast and, today more than ever, traditional modes of assessment fail to capture the learning that happens everywhere and at every age. Digital badges are a powerful new tool for identifying and validating the rich array of people's skills, knowledge, accomplishments, and competencies. Digital badges inspire new pathways to learning and connect learners to opportunities, resources, and one another.

What Counts as Learning: Open Digital Badges for New Opportunities is an early response to designing badge systems grounded in actual practice and is based on the lessons learned from the 30 Badges for Lifelong Learning projects. It provides a building block for anyone interested in designing open digital badge systems, and also for educators, policymakers, technologists, humanists, scholars, and administrators who have a stake in how badge systems might impact learning, assessment, and opportunities for lifelong learners.

A collection of content and resources on digital badges curated across the web for hastac.org.

This annotated bibliography is a first step toward organizing literature about digital badges, open badges and badge systems.

Watch interactive webinars with grantees discussing effective badge design and development for lifelong learning, plus motivation, the OBI, assessment, and more.

DML 4: Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition

The Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, with additional support from the Gates Foundation and in partnership with Mozilla. The Competition is administered by co-located HASTAC teams based at the University of California Humanities Research Institute and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University.

The fourth HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition provided up to $2 million in grants for 30 innovative badge systems as part of the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition. Click the titles below to learn more about each funded project or read What Counts as Learning: Open Digital Badges for New Opportunities to read an analysis of the lessons learned across all 30 badge systems.

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A digital badge is a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, quality, or interest that can be earned in many learning environments. Open digital badging makes it easy for anyone to issue, earn, and display badges across the web-through an infrastructure that uses shared and open technical technical standards.

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From Mozilla Open Badges http://openbadges.org/about/