Digital badges are becoming an increasingly popular way to validate skills and achievements in today’s workplace. Whether you’re a learner aiming to highlight your abilities or an employer seeking to better understand a candidate's expertise, digital badges offer an innovative method to bridge the gap between learning and recognition.
At their heart, digital badges are visual symbols of an individual’s accomplishments or skills. Issued online, they come with embedded metadata that provides comprehensive details about the achievement. This can include information such as the issuing organisation, the competencies demonstrated, and the specific criteria met to earn the badge.
Unlike traditional certificates, digital badges are more transparent and easier to verify. They can be shared across a range of digital platforms, from social media profiles to email signatures, making them accessible to a broader audience.
The Open Badge Standard & Interoperability
The Open Badge standard provides a framework for creating, sharing, and verifying digital badges, serving as portable records of skills, achievements, or certifications. These badges embed metadata such as the issuer, requirements, and achievement details, ensuring authenticity and scalability. An important element of this system is badge lockers, which offer a way for users to store, organise, and display their verified badges in one place.
Interoperability is a key strength of the Open Badge standard. By adhering to a universally recognised framework, these badges are compatible across various platforms, institutions, and systems. This flexibility enables recipients to share their credentials seamlessly across learning management systems, professional networks, and personal portfolios. For employers, educators, and stakeholders, this ecosystem fosters trust and creates a fluid, accessible way to acknowledge accomplishments.
The History of Open Badges
Open Badges began in 2011 as an initiative by the Mozilla Foundation, with support from the MacArthur Foundation, to create a standard for recognising skills and achievements beyond traditional qualifications. The aim was to provide a portable and versatile means of verifying learning experiences.
The launch of the first Open Badge standard in 2012 established a solid framework for embedding metadata into badges, ensuring they were both verifiable and transparent. Over the years, the standard has evolved through global collaboration with the education and professional sectors. Eventually managed by IMS Global Learning Consortium (now known as 1EdTech), updates have continued to enhance its scalability, accessibility, and compatibility.
Today, more than a decade on, Open Badges are widely used in education, workforce training, and professional development, creating new opportunities to recognise lifelong learning and informal achievements. In 2022, 74.7 million badges had been issued worldwide through Open Badges.
When you complete a course purchased from mintra.com, you will receive an email with your pdf certificate and your digital badge.
Congratulations! You can now share your achievement, whether it be sharing the public url with an employer to be able to verify your badge, or sharing your accomplishment on your social media channels as well as adding it as an achievement on you r LinkedIn profile, you can retrieve all the links on your badge page found within your dashboard here >
When a digital badge is issued, a public profile for this badge is created. This link can be shared with someone, and by entering the learners email address, the badge can be verified. The public url can be found by following the link a learner shared on social media, or a learner can retrieve this from their dashboard by clicking the badge here >
Badges are only issued on new course completions that take place from XX/XX
Mintra.com uses Canvas badges to issue Open badges. Open Badges is the world's leading format for digital badges.
Yes, Open Badges are designed to be safe and verifiable, utilising secure metadata and verifiable credentials to ensure authenticity and integrity