CHARM-EU Awards its First Digital Badges

Collaborating with CHARM-EU provides many opportunities for professional skill development among academic teachers, stakeholders, and administrators. As part of its CHARM-EIGHT project, CHARM-EU is embarking on a pilot initiative involving Digital Badges as a way of recognising, validating and rewarding these professional skills.

What are the Digital Badges?

Digital Badges are a way of verifying and showcasing skills that learners have gained through professional activities, workshops, and learning activities such as modules and courses. These badges can be shared online on professional platforms (e.g., LinkedIn), personal websites, digital badge backpacks, wallets, and portfolios, and communities related to learner interests. Sharing digital badges can enhance CVs, showcase new skills to an employer, and foster continuous learning and professional development.

Digital badges for CHARM-EU

CHARM-EU are committed to exploring digital badges for recognizing and credentialing professional skill development. We aim to motivate learners to engage with our educational activities, and to encourage inter-institutional learning and co-operation. By using digital credentials, CHARM-EU are exploring modern and innovative ways to give shape to knowledge and skills recognition. For our initial pilot Utrecht University aligned eduBadge technology has been selected.

CHARM-EUs pilot initiative: Portfolio Assessment Committee Digital Badge

To pilot our strategy around digital badges, 20 members of the Portfolio Assessment Committee (PAC) from five CHARM-EU partner institutions have been selected as the inaugural recipients of a digital badge issued by the CHARM-EU Academic Council. These PAC members satisfied criteria including conducting high-stakes assessment for a minimum of 10-15 students of the CHARM-EU Master’s programme ‘Global Challenges for Sustainability’.

Titled “Applying Innovative Approaches to Assessment”, this digital badge represents the knowledge and skills demonstrated by PAC members involved in the CHARM-EU innovative assessment approach by assessing student portfolios and participating in the PAC.

On March 11th these 20 awardees attended an online awards ceremony where they received a digital badge from Chair of the Academic Council Núria Casamitjana, with Alliance Manager Meritxell Chaves also in attendance.

Alliance Secretary General Meritxell Chaves says “This pilot initiative with the PAC represents a starting point for CHARM-EU digital badges. Although the current focus is on this select group, we acknowledge that there are many others deserving of recognition within CHARM-EU. As we complete and evaluate this pilot initiative, we look forward to extending the reach of digital badges the broader CHARM-EU community.”

Chair of the Academic Council Núria Casamitjana says “Programmatic assessment is one of the key innovations for the MSc in Global Challenges for Sustainability, and the PAC are a crucial part of its successful implementation. The initial 20 members of the PAC have showed a great commitment and done a huge amount of work piloting the implementation of this innovative model of assessment to the master programme. Throughout the first three editions of the programme they made the corresponding calibrations and adjustments, learning both from their own experience and from the one from students and assessors. This is a well-deserved recognition for a job that has not always been an easy one for academic staff not familiar with the programmatic assessment system. Our thanks and congratulations to all of them.

For more information on CHARM-EU Digital Badges, please contact Silvia Gallagher.