Digital badges are a symbol of accomplishment, skill, quality, or interest, and they can be used to showcase achievements quickly and easily. Open badges, in particular, are an online standard for recognizing and verifying learning that comply with the open badges specification. Accredible offers digital badges that have metadata embedded in the image to authenticate the credential, making them more than just pretty pictures. In this comprehensive guide, we will take a closer look at how digital badges work with Accredible, and how you can utilize them to showcase your achievements.
What are digital badges?
A badge is a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality, or interest. Digital open badges are an online standard for recognizing and verifying learning that complies with the open badge specification. They allow recipients to use an image to quickly show off their skills and achievements. Accredible badges have metadata embedded in the image to authenticate the credential, meaning that it’s more than just a pretty picture for recipients.
Establishing Credibility with Digital Badges
Digital badges are becoming more and more common for individuals to use across platforms as a visual snapshot of their achievements. These badges link back to the verified webpage that contains more information about what the achievement entails and how it was obtained. This not only allows recipients to use an image to quickly show off their skills and achievements but also establishes credibility.
Managing and Utilizing Digital Badges
Recipients of badges issued through Accredible will receive an email that looks similar to this with information regarding the award. The recipient can either click the icon, the button, or copy and paste the link featured in the email. By doing so, the recipient is taken to the web page where they can view their brand-new badge. This is called the credential view, and this is where the badge is hosted on the Accredible Network.
From the credential view, recipients have a number of options for managing and utilizing their new digital badge. They can share their badge using the unique URL for their badge to share with anyone, such as employees, admissions officers, or any other kind of stakeholder. Recipients can send an email directly to a stakeholder from the credential view, inviting them to view their digital badge.
Sharing Digital Badges on Social Media
For social media platforms, the credential view features widgets that will allow the recipient to create and share a post about their badge, linking directly back to the credential view. Most importantly, the credential view gives recipients the ability to share their digital badge on LinkedIn. There are two options available for sharing to LinkedIn:
- Create and share a post that will appear in the recipient’s LinkedIn newsfeed, announcing their achievement to their connections.
- Add the digital badge to the license and certification section of their LinkedIn profile.
Unlike the newsfeed post, which loses visibility over time, adding a badge directly to their profile means that the recipient’s badge will remain visible to any stakeholder that views that profile, regardless of whether the recipient shares the badge to their newsfeed or profile. Anyone who clicks on the image or name of the badge will be taken to the credential view.
Embedding your digital badge
Recipients can also embed their digital badge into their email signature or into a website or blog of their choosing. By embedding their credentials, recipients increase the reach and visibility of their achievement. Recipients can embed the image of the badge on its own, commonly done for email signatures, or they can embed the entire credential view. Embedding the entire credential view is useful for exhibiting the badge and the additional achievement information on a company or personal website.
Verifying the validity of the achievement
Recipients can download a PNG version of their badge onto their computer. Because of the metadata contained in the PNG file, the image alone can be used to verify the validity of the achievement. If an issuer includes a transcript letter along with the digital badges they issue, recipients can log in and view the transcript letter from the credential view at any time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, digital badges are a modern and convenient way to showcase one’s skills, achievements, and accomplishments. Accredible offers a reliable and user-friendly platform for creating and distributing digital badges, complete with embedded metadata for verification purposes. With the ability to share badges across various platforms and embed them into email signatures, websites, and blogs, recipients can maximize the reach and visibility of their achievements.
Additionally, issuers can add credentials to the blockchain for added security and immutability. Overall, digital badges with Accredible are an excellent tool for establishing credibility and recognition in a world where skills and accomplishments matter more than ever before.