While microcredentials and open digital badges have become increasingly popular in education, more research is needed to better understand their implementation and benefits to both issuers and users. In this paper, we use a case study approach to report and discuss the outcomes from the implementation of an open badges program at National…

This article is intended as a practical resource to help interested organizations design and implement an open badging system. Open badges are a type of open credential designed to recognize a variety of skills, knowledge, and experiences, both inside and outside of traditional educational settings. While growing in popularity, common questions…

In this article, we examined school leaders' perceptions of open badges for teacher candidates. We emailed one of two forms of a survey to principals and assistant principals in five school districts in the United States. Form A used wording about digital badges while form B used the term microcredentials. Both forms included open-ended questions.…

This design case documents the creation of open educational resources for preservice and inservice teachers at Brigham Young University (BYU). The purpose of this interdisciplinary project was to design and develop training, assessments and credentials to help the learners become competent in teaching computational thinking (CT) and coding in…

For several decades members of the American Evaluation Association have discussed and disputed the issue of evaluator certification. Our past inability to agree on a certification solution may have been partially caused by the weaknesses of traditional certification systems, which rely on candidates obtaining a degree and completing a…

This article describes an examination of how undergraduate instructional design assistants (IDAs) scaled up an open badge system by assisting in creating open badges. External reviewers rated the open badge rubrics created by seven of these IDAs along with those created by instructors, and the results were compared by scored components as well as…

With increasing interest in competency and outcome-based education, and the blending of formal and informal learning, there is increasing need for credentials to match these learning paradigms. In this article, the authors discuss the benefits, challenges, and potential future directions for open digital badges--one potential alternative…

This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of Open Badges into a secondary education preservice course on instructional technology. Open Badges provide a new way of issuing credentials to individuals who demonstrate knowledge, skill, or ability in a particular domain. Badges provide a simple system for communicating a skill…