We’re continuing to make some updates to our technical infrastructure as existing tools change their features and pricing plans. We wrote recently about how we’ve moved to Zeffy for training registration and now we’re excited to share that we’ve moved our digital badging to a new homegrown platform, Credible.
Why digital badges?
Since 2022, we’ve awarded digital badges to all graduates of CSCCE multi-week training courses and programs, including our Community Manager Certification Program and the Birdaro training program for open-source leaders. This is something we’ve included for all courses at no additional cost to learners.
Digital badges perform several important functions.
i) Verified credentials
Firstly, they enable graduates to signify the professional development credentials they’ve earned using a verified badge, with its own ID and metadata, uniquely assigned to them by the issuing organization. This adds a trust layer to professional development credentials.
ii) Raising the visibility of an individual’s skills and qualifications
The digital badge can be shared across a range of online locations – from email signatures to LinkedIn, GitHub profiles to personal websites. The ability to share in this way puts the learner in control of the visibility of their credentials.
iii) Raising visibility of the field as a whole
Additionally, as more learners graduate from our courses and share their badges there’s a collective action impact that raises the visibility of these skillsets as a whole. This aligns well with CSCCE’s mission to champion the importance of less visible leadership skills in STEM.
We also maintain opt-in pages on the CSCCE website to celebrate graduates of our courses and programs:
- CEF graduates: https://www.cscce.org/cef-grads/
- PBK graduates: https://www.cscce.org/pbk-graduates/
- CODE graduates: https://www.cscce.org/code-graduates/
- PMB graduates: https://www.cscce.org/pmb-graduates/
- NOC graduates: https://www.cscce.org/noc-graduates/
- Certification program graduates: https://www.cscce.org/cscce-certified-community-managers/
iv) Spreading the word about the trainings themselves
And finally, the colorful and easily shareable nature of badges helps to spread the word about the corresponding training, acting as a useful referral mechanism for one of our core revenue streams as a non-profit.
What’s Credible?
Credible is a new digital badging platform built and hosted by CSCCE. It enables us to continue to mint badges for all graduates of CSCCE training courses and programs. It uses the Open Badges framework, which enables learners to store similar badges that they’ve earned in a single digital backpack, making it easy to manage sharing of the badges from one place.
What are the key features of Credible?
From a graduate’s perspective Credible enables you to:
- Access all badges that you’ve earned from CSCCE
- Manage sharing of those badges via a badge backpack in Credible – including seamlessly adding a badge to your LinkedIn profile or using a personalized embed code to add your badge to an email signature or website
- Import other badges you’ve earned elsewhere to your Credible backpack to manage them from one place
From the perspective of an issuing organization, Credible enables us to:
- Create badges for anything we like! All we need to do is create the badge design, upload the badge image, and complete the description of what someone had to do to earn the badge
- Award badges
- Manage access to Credible – including inviting graduates to access their Credible badge backpack, customizing automated emails, and even creating badges that are timed to expire, if needed
Will you be minting badges for anything in addition to trainings?
Maybe! This is something that we’ve been discussing for some time and talking with graduates of our certification program about. There is some interest in receiving badges for additional community-focused tasks such as contributing to community calls, co-creating published resources, and running SIGs. One thing we like about badges is that adding eligibility criteria to each badge’s description ensures clarity about what level of contribution is expected.
What if I previously earned a digital badge from CSCCE via Canvas Badges?
At the moment, we have no plans to duplicate the badges that we issued previously. Instead, graduates will be able to import previously issued badges into their Credible backpack so they can manage them from one place.
How do I stay updated about new Credible features?
Credible is fully functional right now in terms of having all of the features that we were previously using on Canvas Badges. We’ve additionally started work on implementing additional features such as:
- Certificates – the option to download a personalized PDF certificate of your qualification, customized to each course.
- Integration with ORCID – the option to add earned credentials to ORCID
To stay up-to-date, we recommend subscribing to CSCCE’s newsletter and, if you’re a community builder, joining CSCCE’s community of practice on Slack, where we share regular updates and discussion.
My organization is looking for a badging solution – can you help?
Maybe! Now that we’ve solved our immediate need of being able to badge our own learners, we’re exploring what comes next with Credible.
Please contact info@cscce.org so we can gauge interest and chat with you about your use case(s).