Information technology (IT) plays an increasingly significant role in today's world. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased that reliance. Employers in all industries are struggling with considerable shortages of skilled IT workers and are seeking innovative alternatives to meet these needs. Digital badging and micro-credentials have emerged as an…

Digital badging has seen widespread adoption within the US higher education sector with continued growth predicted. Might digital badging present an underrealized opportunity for libraries seeking new vehicles through which to deliver information literacy instructional content? This paper offers an analysis of badging in higher education and…

Higher education faces increasing demands to take a more active and direct role in assuring employability for students. Micro-credentialing and badging is a growing movement, attractive for its flexibility and efficiency in connecting students with careers and jobs. This paper presents a case study of the development and pilot of an…

Digital badges are a promising innovative tool to support teacher candidates' instructional skill development. Although digital badges are increasingly utilized in online teaching and learning, their effectiveness is still under investigation. This exploratory study reports on 151 elementary level teacher candidates' participation and success rate…

This dissertation consists of three journal articles about using open digital badges to improve learning performance and facilitate students' goal setting processes. In the first study, we investigated the impact of instructional ODBs on pre-service teachers' perceived technology capabilities and their actual learning performance in a large…

Employers are increasingly selecting and developing employees based on skills rather than qualifications. Governments now have a growing focus on skilling, reskilling and upskilling the workforce through skills-based development rather than qualifications as a way of improving productivity. Both these changes are leading to a much stronger…

The Micro-Credential Program is a digital badging system composed of competency-based pathways that move forward early childhood professionals to achieving mastery in employability skills. These skills are crucial for early childhood professionals to have to provide high-quality, nurturing learning environments to children in their care as well as…

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are facing a potential challenge at questioning the means and method as to how education is delivered and learning is credited. The leading agent for this change is online learning and transfer of credit for potential employment. The aim of this paper is to look into these questions by raising the questions…

The role of gamification in Australian higher educational learning has gained increasing currency in recent years, with many proponents promoting its usefulness for improving the university student experience by increasing progression and lowering attrition, particularly among first year students (Charles, Charles, McNeill, Bustard, & Black,…

The use of digital badges is a trend in today's education and professional settings. We conducted an exploration to see how badges are being used in higher education. Digital badges and more specifically, open badges, are used in a multitude of learning contexts and serve many purposes. This study conducted interviews with individuals leading…

This case study concerns findings from a workshop with senior teacher educators from three Indian states as part of the TESS-India teacher professional development initiative. The workshop explored how open digital badges might be used to support, capture and validate changes in teachers' classroom practice. Workshop participants drew on the…

Digital credentials (or badges) allow evidence of achievement to be more detailed than is possible through grades, and can be shared more broadly than is possible through the academic transcript. Here, we illustrate the potential use of digital credentials in higher education through sharing an approach that utilised digital credentials to…

One challenge facing faculty and staff at higher education institutions, and particularly those with an access mission, is understanding and supporting their students in a holistic manner. Organizations with a high proportion of traditionally at-risk students must balance resource demands with providing the intensive teaching and advising models…

Digital badging continues to garner attention in the educational community. What remains to be seen is how badging will interact with traditional curricular elements. While concerns have been raised about using badges as extrinsic motivators in coursework, there are alternate areas of application for digital badging. Badges may actually serve to…

In e-learning environments, 'digital badges', often referred to as 'micro-credentials', are expected to function not only as valid indicators of learner's accomplishments but also as useful tools for motivational and reward purposes (Clayton, 2012). In this study, we investigated students' perceptions about the use of digital badges in an online…