15 Australia and New Zealand institutions issuing Digital Badges
Digitary[1] is proud to realise a further milestone in the delivery of digital badges within My eQuals, by announcing an additional five participating partners adopting Digital Badges.
Australian National University, University of Canberra, Canberra Institute of Technology, University of Southern Queensland and Australian Catholic University are now signed on to implement Digitary’s trusted digital badging solutions within My eQuals, joining The University of Newcastle, The University of Queensland, The University of Western Australia, The University of Auckland, University of Canterbury, University of Waikato, Monash University, Federation University, University of the Sunshine Coast, and Massey University.
This growing tally means that approximately one-third of all Publicly funded Universities will now issue Digital Badges through My eQuals.
Collectively, the fifteen institutions are moving to further support their student’s lifelong learning journey and enhance the recognition of all learning experiences through the adoption and use of digital badges. This is a notably important development of the progressive movement to emerging forms of education, often in shorter, formal and non-formal instances that recognise student achievements.
The importance of digital badges
Digital badges are associated with micro-credentials, short courses, and formal and non-formal recognised learning; and are increasingly being used worldwide to comprehensively articulate and recognise skills and achievements, supplementing official academic awards.
In 2020, this has become more prevalent than ever, especially with the increased expectations of micro-credential courses working to ensure that competencies are fully articulated, representing job-ready graduates for growing industry demands.
Learners have the ability to access all their official credentials and awarded badges within the My eQuals platform, and to share these digital credentials with third parties supporting further study and employment applications.
Institutions can issue digital badges as a digitally secure means of recognising the skills and achievements of their learners, providing comprehensive recognition for skills gained and supporting students on their journey towards career success.
Open Badges standard
Based on the Open Badges standard, stewarded by IMS Global Learning Consortium, which promotes the vision of portability, the digital badges solution utilises the Badgr engine. This enhanced functionality for My eQuals offers tertiary learners in Australia and New Zealand a single official repository for their verified official documents and digital badges.
Powered by Digitary, the badges technology is an additional capability available to all users of both My eQuals and Digitary CORE platforms.
The My eQuals platform enables Australian and New Zealand tertiary education students and graduates to access their official digital certificates, transcripts and supporting academic documents; and share them with employers, education providers or other parties.
Quotes
“We are excited to be able to offer Digital Badges for our expanding suite of micro-credentials for lifelong learning that support senior executive education; professional development; and personal development.” Dr Kim Blackmore, Director, Teaching and Learning, Australian National University.
“My eQuals provides a nationally consistent solution for institutions and learners alike. In partnership with Digitary, we are proud to enable education providers to progress their micro-credentialing strategies through secure, trusted digital badging technology. This functionality is available to all My eQuals participants and we are working collaboratively with our community across Australia and New Zealand to make the digital badges solutions widely available.” Jay Segeth, Program Director, My eQuals
“Digitary are committed supporters of the My eQuals network and we are honoured to provide digital badges capabilities to our partner organisations. It is an exciting milestone to welcome onboard the first fifteen My eQuals participants from across Australia and New Zealand, working to support progressive digital adoption as they implement key micro-credentialing solutions and meet the emerging demands for recognition of all learning outcomes.” Daniel Hibbert, Commercial Director, Digitary
This post was originally posted on Oct 27, 2020
[1] Digitary was acquired by Parchment in July 2021. You can read more about it here.