Digital Badging and Microcredentials

Provides examples of how badges are enhancing and invigorating information literacy instruction. The editors share their experience implementing a metaliteracy badging system that has engaged more than 2,000 students across disciplines, secured faculty buy-in, and facilitated partnerships. Chapter 10 is titled Badging and Workplace Information Literacy: Helping Students Prepare for the Professional World by Megan Blauvelt Heurer.

Contains 8 chapters:
1 - Introduction
2 - Overview, Definitions, and Benefits
3 - The Badge Ecosystem
4 - Six Roadblocks to Designing Digital Badges
5 - Collaborations and Partnerships
6 - Deployment and Sustainability
7 - Assessment
8 - Conclusion

2 reports available: Microcredentials: Connecting Business Schools and Business Through Lifelong Learning and Fulfilling Organizational Talent Needs Through Microcredentials.

Reports are free but must request downloads on report page.

Digital badges are an increasingly popular way to display learning achievements, both in higher education and in professional environments. Digital badges can be used to help deliver information literacy instruction in a scalable and sustainable way and can increase the effectiveness of reaching a large audience of students. This case study discusses the work of a solo business librarian who uses digital badges to reach first year business students in a foundational level course.

As digital badging expands its reach into higher education, the merits of using badges in information literacy instruction grow more compelling. Badging allows students to demonstrate acquired skills to future employers in areas such as library research by showing earned competencies, which are shareable on platforms such as LinkedIn.

The Business Research Toolkit (BRT) is a free, noncredit-bearing course designed to serve students, faculty, and staff who are interested in learning more about the intricacies of business research. It began as a face-to-face course and evolved into an asynchronous, online course offered in the campus LMS. Transitioning the program to an online-only format required extensive planning and collaboration. This article describes the process of transitioning the toolkit online, answers common questions colleagues have about the toolkit, and provides strategies for practitioners to create similar programs at their institutions.

This poster was presented at ACRL 2023, March 15-18, Pittsburgh, PA.

IFLA webinar (available on YouTube via the link) as well as white papers.

Competency-based hiring is beginning to catch on as employers insist on having a clearer understanding of an applicant's abilities before extending an offer of employment. Microcredentialing offers employees a mechanism to articulate their competency, and they offer employers a profound way to certify an applicant's abilities.

This paper aims to describe the evolution of an academic library’s approach to first-year student information literacy instruction from face-to-face instruction to a fully integrated online microcredential. The design considerations, motivation theory and evaluation methods used to create and evaluate the course are also discussed, with implications for future library microcredential design, integration and research in campus first-year seminar courses.

Information Literacy Instruction has a long history of being taught by librarians to online learners. Emerging technologies help librarians increase their ability to meet the needs, learning styles and best practices of providing online ILI to their students. Digital badging is an evolving technology which could help librarians develop their online learning practices in areas including sustainability, personalized learning, and collaboration with academic colleagues. This paper examines established best practices identified in the literature regarding online ILI and gives readers a context of how the best practices align with the use of digital badges in ILI.

An analysis of badging administration and badging trends in higher education

Microcredentialing programs remain nascent at many institutions, but interest continues to grow. As the demand for flexible learning experiences increases, stakeholders might find renewed interest in and uses for microcredentials.