How digital badges are shaping a responsive skills system

Digital badges change lives

In both sessions, we explored real-world examples of how digital badges are already making a difference. In Hull, where learners are being recognised for their employability skills, delivering over 12,000 digital badges each year; and also iDEA, one of Ufi’s Strategic Partners, which has now issued over 17 million badges to more than 2 million learners, improving vital skills for work and life, for free.

I also shared a personal story from 2015 when I witnessed a 17-year old L3 Hospitality and Catering apprentice deal with an emergency. When a customer fell ill in the training restaurant Ollie demonstrated his initiative, critical thinking and communication skills to call 999, deal with the paramedics, manage the other customers and successfully help the woman who had collapsed. The digital badge Ollie received served to recognise the skills he had shown, and also helped Ollie to communicate his skills to prospective employers. Ollie went on to gain a prestigious opportunity at a top London restaurant.

At the end of each workshop, all participants earned their own digital badge. The badge’s criteria described the content covered during the workshop and provided an opportunity for participants to experience the end-to-end process, from badge authoring to badge issue, to claiming the badge. Participants were then shown how they could link to their badge on their CV, share on social media, download to their smartphone or upload to a skills passport. You can view the badges and the information they hold for Digital Badge Strategy and Digital Badge Implementation.

My hope is that each attendee felt recognised for choosing to attend, participate and learn.

Recognition is powerful when it’s authentic and transparent

Our workshop participants offered some valuable challenges, such as how can digital badges offer the rigour and credibility of existing formal qualifications. My response to this is three-fold:

• A credential’s value is based on who issued it and for what. Paper based certificates state this information, but digital credentials offer verifiable proof; with direct links to evidence demonstrating the skills.

• Digital badges aren’t a replacement for formal qualifications; but they can help to tell a richer story of learning and skills, demonstrating each learner’s unique skillset and personal pathway.

• Using digital badges as a means of recognition doesn’t just help learners feel seen, it creates a common language between training providers and employers. A badge is a bridge between what’s been learned and demonstrated, and what’s valued.

From insight to action: the Digital Badging Commission

To turn these conversations into practical steps, Josh Smith shared some of the latest work from the Digital Badging Commission, a partnership led by Ufi and the RSA. The commission has recently launched a set of exemplar digital badges designed to:

• Show what high-quality, meaningful digital recognition looks like

• Provide templates to inspire training providers to build their own digital badges

• Foster sector-wide conversations around agile credentialing for skills in the workplace

These exemplar badges are open, adaptable, and built with input from across the sector. We’re inviting anyone to download, adapt and use them, free of charge.

In the workshops we also demonstrated our Ufi-funded project Credsuite, which supported the development of Credwriter, an innovative digital credential authoring support platform, and Credbank, a library of 500+ digital badges, classified by sector/skill that can be copied and adapted to avoid reinventing the wheel.

What happens after a workshop matters more than what happens in it

The workshops were energetic, participatory, and rich with ideas, but the real work starts now. If we want a skills system that’s truly responsive, we need tools that:

• Reward progress, not just endpoints

• Recognise contribution, not just completion

• Support providers to pivot quickly to employer needs, without feeling the need to wait for the next framework or standard to be announced.

Digital badges offer that potential. But only if we adopt them at scale. We must embed them with rigour, purpose, and alignment to the values we want to nurture, not just the outcomes we want to measure.

Let’s co-create the future of authentic, agile and responsive recognition.

So, if you’re:

• Exploring how to improve learner motivation and retention

• Interested in evidencing skills to employers

• Curious about piloting new approaches to digital credentials

• Looking for recognition frameworks that work across formal and informal learning

…then we’d love to connect.

We want to help build a recognition infrastructure that’s not only agile, but meaningful, inclusive, and ready for whatever comes next.

A set of resources, including slides from the workshops, is available here.

The exemplar badges are available here and the full recommendations from the Digital Badging Commission will be published in October.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the workshops, and to AELP for creating a space where these ideas can take root.