Welcome to Digital Badges for Nursing at CI. This pilot project is supported by Foundation Funds for High Impact Practices for Teaching and Learning. 

What are Digital Badges?

A digital badge is a validated indicator of an accomplishment, skill, or competency associated with learning provided in an online format (HASTAC, 2015). Digital badges are visual representations of skills, experiences, or competencies that may be achieved during the learner’s educational journey, which may offer a deeper understanding of the student’s individual progress and skill, in addition to the attainment of a degree (Tally, 2012). Digital badges may be a way to provide evidence of real-life skills, individual expertise, and representations of learning experiences, which may not be reflected by a degree alone (Gibson, Ostashewski, Flintoff, Grant, & Knight, 2013).
Much like badges or medals earned in Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, or gaming, digital badges are earned for completing the required activities. Digital badges have encoded metadata to include data for the badges earned. Each badge should include the name of the recipient, the institution awarding the badge, the endorser of the badge, what was required to earn the badge, and evidence of completion of the required criteria. Nine digital badges have been created for this pilot project including the following badges: Clinical Excellence, GPA Award, Community Service Recognition, Cultural Awareness. Student-Faculty Research, Empathetic Caregiver, HIPAA Training, Patient Safety Education, Outstanding Communicator.

 

How to Earn your Badge

Once you have met the criteria for the badge and submitted the required elements, you will receive an email asking you to join Credly to receive your badge. Follow the instructions to create your Credly account (yes, it is free). Be sure to submit your preferred email you would like to receive your badges under, and create your Credly account to match that email. After you log in you should be able to retrieve your badge, and decide if you would like to share it out to any of the listed social media sites available. You can house multiple badges in Credly in the meantime! Happy badging!

How to Add Digital Badges to your CI Keys ePortfolio from Credly

1. Go to your Credly account and login
2. Click ‘My Credit’ listed under ‘Settings’ on the left hand side
3. Click ‘Earned’
4. Click ‘Categories’
5. Click ‘Add Category’
6. Create the name of your category
7. Go back to your earned badges
8. Click on the badge to add it to the category by clicking ‘Manage’
9. Manage the badge by adding it to the new category you created by selecting the category name from the dropdown menu
10. Be sure the eye icon above the category dropdown menu is open to public viewing, rather than closed
11. Go back to categories
12. Click the </> icon above the newly created category
13. Select the format you would like your badges shared based on the options given
14. Click ‘Get Embed Code’
15. Select and copy the code provided
16. You will paste the code on your CI Keys website on a page where you would like the badges to appear. Be sure to paste the code on the ‘text’ format of the page in CI Keys, rather than the ‘visual’ format (top right tab)