Research for the white paper included reviewing scholarly publications, including empirical studies, related to badging efforts in education; examining prior and extant badging programs; and conducting informal interviews with experts in relevant areas of research, policy, and practice. In addition, the authors of the paper have been working to develop innovative and rigorous assessment methodologies in the humanities since 2015. That body of work provides a foundation for the validation methodology described in the paper.

We are not the first to propose a strategy to replace traditional grades with badges, and the extensive work of others in this area provides a strong foundation for our new approach. Our strategy differs from prior efforts in three key ways: First, we anchor our strategy in a competency-based approach to education in which units of learning are understood in terms of real-world capacities, rather than the traditional Carnegie Unit based on seat time in a typical year-long course. Second, we address the persistent need for different levels of assessment information (e.g., formative and summative) by introducing three coherently linked levels of badges (micro, meso, and macro) to meet the needs of learners, educators, and other stakeholders at all stages of learning. Third, we directly confront the lack of credibility and comparability that has hindered prior badging efforts by proposing an infrastructure to  validate badges via evaluation of the evidentiary arguments supporting the use of badges for formative and summative purposes. The first two innovations have been proposed before, but we believe our proposal is the first to bring them together in combination with the validation infrastructure needed to ensure the badges have value to all stakeholders.

We have conducted interviews and solicited reviews from experts in higher education, and we are actively pursuing feedback and commitments from major employers and experts in nontraditional credentialing.

There will be a two-year strategic planning process and proof of concept piloting period, followed by independent full scale up pilot.

In the wake of the pandemic, education systems at all levels are undergoing substantial change, and this is a good opportunity to re-think how we measure, record, and report learning, with the goal of supporting excellence and equity simultaneously. We do believe that a badging strategy would be an improvement upon existing approaches; however, we recognize that a mix of assessment strategies has always existed across our nation’s highly varied educational system. We hope that our method will outcompete existing methods over time.