Digital Badges
In our increasingly digital society, the stakes are high for individuals to communicate their skills in real-time, and badges are an effective means to digitally share and verify learning.
Badges are digital icons that can be used to document and communicate a learning achievement or credential. They contain metadata that provides the context and verification of the learning, such as the criteria that were met to earn the badge.
Earning a digital badge demonstrates that you have acquired specific knowledge and skills that are relevant to the value you bring as a professional.
Just because you do not earn academic credits from badges doesn’t mean they are not taken seriously. Only individuals who meet all criteria will earn the badge.
Because they are digital, badges can be shared within social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as other forms of digital forms such as email, websites, and digital resumes. Displaying your badge can increase your odds of being noticed by your network and employers.
Digital badges can be a valuable addition for credit and non-credit students as they up-skill to gain employment or pursue new career paths.
These alternative forms of recognition do not take the place of formal academic programs and majors but enhance the development of a particular skill set.
Badges are transforming the way recognition is professionally communicated and understood.
If you’re interested in exploring the digital badge or want to gain the tools to implement your own customized badging program, email Julie Kiehne at jkiehne@winona.edu.
Examples of customized digital badges include:
- Merchants Bank – I Believe in Leadership Series
- Rochester Public Schools – Multicultural Education Certificate Program (MECP)
- Olmsted County – Multicultural Education Certificate Program (MECP)
- Mayo Clinic – Multicultural Education Certificate Program (MECP)
- Oliver Companies – Resiliency Series
Digital badges are associated with many of our non-credit professional development courses.
To earn a non-credit digital badge, you must successfully complete the criteria identified in the badge description.
You’ll be awarded your badge within 7-10 days of the course completion.
Examples of non-credit badges include:
- Essentials of Leadership with Development Dimensions International (DDI)
- Scrubs Online Career Exploration
WSU students seeking degrees can earn badges to be displayed on their co-curricular transcript.
Co-curricular badges are structured to complement formal credit-based curriculum.
Digital Citizenship Foundations
To earn the Digital Citizenship Foundations Badge, you’ll build a strong foundation of professional knowledge, skills, and abilities in these areas:
- digital footprints
- literacy
- etiquette
- responsibility
- hygiene
Email Chad Kjorlien at ckjorlien@winona.edu for help.
If you’re experiencing any problems with your digital badge, you can always visit Credly’s Help Center or contact WSU Adult & Continuing Education.
If you have met the criteria to earn a badge, you’ll receive an email from WSU Adult & Continuing Education notifying you of your award.
You’ll also receive an email from Credly, our badging service. This email will contain a link to create an account on the Credly’s platform to accept your badge.
It’s no problem if you can’t find the email—just create an account on Credly with the same email address that WSU has on file for you.
Sharing your badge through Credly to the online destination of your choice is a fast, easy way to let your professional network know about your achievements.
You can share your badge during the acceptance process, and you can also go back into your Credly account any time and share it again.
To make sure that you receive your badge notification email and that it doesn’t end up in your spam folder, add admin@credly.com as a Contact or Safe Sender in your email settings.
If a badge has been issued but you have not received an email notification from Credly, try to:
- Check your email’s spam/junk folder to see if the email notification was delivered there
- Make sure the email address on file with your badge issuing organization is accurate
- In some cases, a domain firewall can block emails from Credly. To avoid this, create an account on the Credly platform with the email address the badge was issued to. This way, you can accept the badge from the Dashboard.
- If you already have an account registered to another email address, add the email address your badge was issued to as a secondary to your account
Adding a hyperlinked badge image to your email signature is a great way to make sure your professional network is aware of your certifications, credentials, and other badge-worthy recognition.
LinkedIn requires individuals to manually add information about their certification to share their badge to their profile.
To share your badge details to your LinkedIn profile, follow these steps:
- Once you have connected your LinkedIn account, click the LinkedIn icon from the “Share Badge” page.
- Check or uncheck the boxes next to “Add to my Profile” and “Share to my newsfeed” as desired.
- If adding to your profile, click “Share to LinkedIn” and a blank LinkedIn form will appear in another tab within your browser.
- Go back to the Credly tab in your browser and click the “Copy” button next to “Certification Name”. A green check mark will confirm that the information was copied.
- Switch back to your LinkedIn tab and paste the information into the “Certification Name” field.
- Copy and paste the information on the Credly tab to the LinkedIn form until all relevant information has been added.
- You’ll need to choose the dates based on the information included on the Credly share page under “Time Period”.
- Click Save.
Once you’ve successfully shared your badge, it will appear in the “Licenses & Certifications” section on your profile.
The badge image won’t display in the “Accomplishments” section of your profile. LinkedIn chooses to show the company logo of your badge issuer instead.
Viewers can click on the “See certification” button to view more details on Credly.