Lessons-Learned from a System-Wide Digital Badging Pilot to Validate Students’ “Career-Ready Skills”

Traditional college transcripts communicate very little to prospective employers beyond the fact that a graduate has been taught a particular course and received a particular letter grade.  As a more “granular” means for validating and representing what an individual knows and is able to do, digital badges promise to communicate to prospective employers what students have learned instead of just what students have been taught.

The University System of Maryland (USM) sees great potential in digital badges to help us validate and present the career-ready skills our graduates attain that are not particularly well illustrated by a university transcript, resume, and cover letter.  The purpose of the USM Digital Badging initiative is, therefore, to collaboratively explore the feasibility of digital badges, both for our students (the badge earners) and for prospective employers (the badge consumers).

We recognize that not all students graduating from our institutions are sufficiently “career ready.” Those who are often are unable to articulate and/or demonstrate the skills they possess.  Our initiative goal is, therefore, to design, implement, and evaluate a constellation of complementary digital badges aimed at validating and communicating our graduates’ career-ready skills. We are initiating this work because:

·      We want to motivate and incentivize students to obtain the requisite career-ready skills throughout their time with our institutions.

·      We want our students to be able to better communicate what they know and are able to do, translating their educational experiences to career-ready skills.

·      We want our institutions to be able to better communicate to employers what our students know and are able to do.

·      We want students to be able to differentiate themselves in a competitive marketplace.

·      We want to help employers make better hires by improving fit and match between our students and open positions.

Our diverse project team is made up of a variety of career-placement, student affairs, academic affairs, instructional technology and innovation professionals from each of the seven system institutions that are actively participating in the design process (Coppin State University, Frostburg State University, Towson University, University of Baltimore, University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Maryland University College, and the Universities at Shady Grove). During the Spring and Summer of 2016, each participating institution identified a “career-ready” skill around which to develop a badge; these skill areas include teamwork, oral communication, leadership, and decision making.  The participating institutions are pilot these badges during AY 2016-17. We will evaluate the pilot during AY 2017-18, identify lessons learned, and iterate to expand the activities during the academic year.

We are operating under the following “guardrails” or assumptions, which will likely be modified as we move through the process:

•       We have agreed to share information, insights, resources across institutions throughout this initiative.

•       We will work to assure both these initial badges and potential future badges are “as open as possible.” The badge(s) created will be open to all USM to start.  The degree of “openness” may change over the course of the initiative.

•       The badges we create will address career ready skills, defined as the “resume worthy” competencies needed to obtain employment after college.

•       Badges will be created in collaboration with employers.

•       Any skill selected for badging will be one that is valued by employers for use in the hiring process.

•       Badges may be scaffolded or include a progression of skill development.

•       Evidence for earning badges will largely come from co-curricular experiences, and may also come from curricular experiences.

•       Badges developed will include a validation process (whether external or internal).

In this session, project team members will share insights into how we identified the badges to pilot and discuss the design processes that went into creating the badge criteria and assessments.  Presenters will also address both the opportunities and the barriers we have encountered along the way.  We will engage the audience by asking them to identify opportunities and barriers they might experience in trying to launch a similar project. We will create color-coded cards that represent categories of barriers (e.g. faculty interest/participation, technology infrastructure, leadership support, administration/logistics) and have participants order those barriers from most difficult to least difficult and encourage open discussion around these issue as well as strategies to overcome those barriers. Slides, handouts, and related website links will be provided during the presentation and posted on the conference web site.

As a result of participating in this session, participants will be able to:

·      Outline the process of designing and implementing a collaborative badging initiative

·      Identify assumptions and establish guiding principles as parameters of operation

·      Identify possible opportunities and barriers that may arise during a badging initiative and how to leverage them and overcome them, respectively