Open Digital Badges offer several advantages for learners, teachers, peers and potential employers. Open Digital Badges can be given for several reasons, for example, to recognise, verify, validate, motivate, evaluate or study learning. Next, an overview of the advantages of Open Digital Badges for learners, teachers and employers are described as discussed in the literature. Open Digital Badges enable to:
- recognise informal learning and ‘soft skills’ such as leadership, collaborative skills, critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making, time management, imagination, innovation, initiative, communication, independence or new skills and literacies such as digital, media and visual literacies. Open Digital Badges can capture more specific skills that might otherwise go unrecognised through formal academic processes, and capture the learning path and history and give a more holistic, accurate picture of educational achievement of the learner in comparison to traditional degrees or certificates;
- verify and communicate concrete evidence and proof of skills, achievements and success to potential employers, professional networks, educational organisations and communities. The opportunity to present work and skills to the employer is a new experience in non-formal learning with people who are trying to promote and present themselves;
- find and hire suitable employees for an employer, find people and communities with similar interests. Although the indexing and referencing program for badge credentials is still under development, it is possible in the future easily find certification organisations and courses. Such a directory would be necessary, in particular, for the user to search by subject for the issuer and qualification;
- monitor and support learning - teachers receive information about the student’s results and achievements that helps support learning, facilitate individualised and multiple learning pathways, particularly critical for professional learning development in fields that are rapidly changing and where formal programs may not be in step with emerging trends, technologies and practices; badges also allow to promote specific types of student behaviours;
- motivate participation, learning, behaviours and achievement of learning outcomes; badges provide feedback, milestones and rewards throughout a course or learning experience, encouraging engagement and retention, as well as reinforcing a sense of achievement;
- enhance identity and reputation - badges raise the learner’s profile with the learning community and peers, giving the individual control over their online identity and reflect ongoing professional growth;
- provide branding opportunities and increase awareness of organisations and learning communities, being valuable to issuing institutions from a marketing perspective.
Thus, Open Digital Badges can transfer learning across spaces and contexts and make skills more portable across jobs, learning environments and places. They move faster to support and recognise new skills than traditional degree or certificate programs. Elkordy (2012, para. 13) notes that “well designed, robust badges can be associated with important principles of learning and motivation of particular interest to educators because of their potential for deep and lasting knowledge”: for example, contextual learning situations (situated learning and cognition); scaffolding through learning trajectories; socially constructed/mediated learning; participatory learning; motivational and interest learning; formative and summative assessment; creation of ‘visible’ learning paths which encourage reflection, self-regulation and autonomy and building of self-esteem and self-efficacy (Virkus, 2019).