Many institutions now issue not only a paper-based certificate to those who successfully complete them but also a digital certificate, in line with the increasingly common international educational practice over the past year.
These badges, modeled after the badges used by scouts, are intended to certify skills in a uniform and easily accessible way that formal education cannot handle. This way, employees can also provide proof of professional development, training achievements, and the knowledge gained perhaps at a previous job.
The learners receive these digital certificates in the form of a digital open badge, attached to an email as a .png file. This file includes all the essential elements of the certificate (who received it and for what performance, when, etc.) in an encrypted, secure format.
However, upon opening the email attachment, we only see a simple image (most often a shield or seal), without access to its contents. To view and more importantly, to share these badges with others or upload them to any profile, they must be viewed through a suitable platform.
Here is a list of the most common platforms to use:
How do we manage our badges in Moodle?
Many organisation award digital badges in the Moodle framework for courses that use this system. In this video, you can see how to upload, manage, and share your badges within this system.
A drawback of Moodle is that it can only handle badges obtained within Moodle, making Moodle unsuitable for long-term storage.
The DIScoPLAYER display platform: https://dcp.discovet.eu/
This display platform is developed by an international team headed by the BME Institute of Continuous Engineering Education. Several University departments have already introduced its application, and the employee recognition system is also based on this. This video briefly introduces the registration process (registration is completely free) and how to upload and more importantly, share your results, either via email or embedded in a post: What can you do in DcP after registration?
The biggest advantage of the DcP system is that it can handle badges issued anywhere, thus it is suitable to become a long-term repository for such recognitions.
Uploading digital badges to our LinkedIn profile
The DcP is also very suitable for displaying our digital badges, thereby enriching our professional and skill portfolio. Although LinkedIn itself is somewhat rigid in that we must provide numerous details ourselves and it does not read data from the badge file, DcP can generate a link with which anyone can read the content of our badge. This is easily obtained by clicking a Copy Badge URL button on the badge interface and from there, it can be integrated anywhere – including the LinkedIn badge URL section.
Here you can find instructions on uploading open badges to LinkedIn: A Step-by-Step Guide to Adding Digital Badges and Certificates to LinkedIn