Digital badges have been making a buzz, gaining popularity over the last few years. With its ever-increasing usage, it has moved from being a word of mouth jargon to something commonly adopted by organisations including educational institutes and corporates.
Moving from static badges, today companies are providing digital badges on blockchain technology to better gauge a persons’ competencies, further their career paths and make them industry-ready.
What are digital badges issued on blockchain?
A digital badge is a virtual representation of a credential. It is used to digitally reward and recognize academic achievements or professional accomplishments. Digital badges are also known as micro-credentials that assist in tracking and verifying people’s skills, certifications, training and other milestones achieved throughout their academic and career journey.
To simplify this tracking process, we see many organisations adopt digital badges powered by blockchain. It records data in a sequential, permanent manner with a timestamp and other details such as who earned a digital badge, for what reason, who issued it, etc.
Additionally, digital badges issued on blockchain are not under the control of any third party. They are issued on a public ledger which makes them highly secure, verifiable and traceable.
Why are we witnessing an increase in the use of digital badges?
Gathering, examining, interpreting and presenting one’s skills and achievements is becoming a challenge for organisations and people.
Even though university transcripts, resumes and professional certificates provide some information about the achievements of a person, it remains difficult for anyone to assess the true value of these documents.
Even more importantly, traditional transcripts, academic certificates or employment documents can be falsified. Because of all this, there is still a considerable gap between skills and employment – the so-called “skills gap” – where real skill sets don’t match up with what employers are asking for. One way to solve this problem is by introducing blockchain digital badges into the education and learning system.
Blockchain digital badges are a different way to award recognition for learning and achievement. They can be shared online, added to social media and employee profiles. Furthermore, they can be used to track prior learning and experience.
Three key benefits of awarding digital badges
Apart from being a powerful tool for visualising and tracking knowledge and skills, digital badging provides a number of other benefits. Let’s take a look at three key ones here:
- It shows your investment in employee or student development, and makes them believe that their contributions are valued
- As digital badges are socially shareable they can become the most cost-effective marketing tool for you, promoting your brand and business
- It provides information to employers, helping them not only understand a person’s skills and achievements but also verify them remotely before making a decision on their candidature
Considering the versatility of digital badges, an increasing number of organisations are adopting them. And, CredSure’s blockchain-powered platform provides this capability. CredSure is one of the pioneers in helping educational and training institutions adopt digital credentialing, providing organisations a window into the skills people are mastering and helping them measure it.
CredSure enables organisations to issue digital badges to students, trainers, employees, volunteers, interns and others, recognising and promoting their achievements. To learn more about how digital badges can support your organisation and its people, contact us by scheduling a demo.
