Digital Badge Issuers
- Digital badge issuers must be UCM faculty or staff employees.
- There can be only one digital badge issuer per campus unit or program.
- Each digital badge issuer will be authorized to issue badges only in certain badge categories.
- Award badge issuer privileges will only be authorized for Dean, Vice Provost, or Vice Chancellor level administrators.
- A UCM employee can apply to be a digital badge issuer by submitting an online application. That application will include a complete sample of one badge that the unit would like to issue plus a general description of the nature of other badge awards.
- Digital badge issuers also have access to badge tracking for their awardees.
At this time, students are not eligible to be digital badge issuers.
Digital Badge Categories
At UC Merced, we will separate digital badges into the following badge categories:
1. Co-Curricular Experience
2. Student Employment Competencies
3. Training Completion
4. Awards
5. Internal Course Achievements
6. Completion of Course or Collection of Courses (Certificate)
7. Official Degree Completion
Digital badge series will be used to denote a set of badges with different levels of competency/performance for a single skill area. A digital badge series can include at most 5 levels.
Badge Development
- Digital badges should be developed for specific skills recognizable to employers or external entities.
- Digital badges should not be given for participation, but rather the expected skill outcomes gained through the program.
- Digital badges may only be issued for university affiliated training, activities or programs.
- Digital badges may not be used for compliance training unless that training includes substantive employer-recognized skills. Badges may never be awarded for compliance trainings related to UCM internal policies or practices.
- Category 2: Student Employment Competency digtal badges will be centrally developed. Individual badge issuers may request additional badges be added to that ecosystem. Individual issuers may not modify badges in this category.
- Each digital badge in the UCM Digital Badging system must be unique.
- When developing a new digital badge, badge issuers must first check through the existing badges in their category to ensure their new badge is not duplicative of an existing badge.
- If a digital badge issuer would like to issue an existing badge, they must reach out to the original owner of the badge and request permission to issue the badge. (Note: this does not apply to Category 2 badges.)
- The goal is to have a minimal set of digital badges, so whenever possible badges should be developed to recognize skills in a program-agnostic manner. Additionally, badges should be as specific as possible around the actual skills and have detailed attributes of the skill demonstration in the earning criteria.
- Future policy fordigital badge Categories 5-7 will be developed prior to launch.
Badge Design
Images
- Issuer images and award images should be relatively simple so as to still be legible in the thumbnail size.
- All issuer images and award images must be original or fully copyright cleared.
- Images must be of sufficient professional quality.
- Images must be consistent with UCM branding standards.
- Award images must be unique to the award. The exact same image may not be used for different awards. Badges in a series may have similar images, with different indicators for level.
Award Text
The award text should be a sentence fragment briefly describing the recognized skill.
Examples: “For demonstrated virtual team leadership skills”, “For completion of UCM Google X Artificial Intelligence Training Bootcamp”, “For level 2 customer service competency demonstrated in student employment work”, “For completion of advanced pedagogical instructor development training.”
Earning Criteria and other Metadata
The earning criteria and other metadata should be written in complete sentences. These should describe in detail the skills represented by the badge. The criteria may also include additional description of the program experience or training context. The criteria could include specifications on number of hours of training or length of participation.
The following sentence must be included at the end of every earning criteria: “This digital badge is not a formal credential or official student record of the University of California, Merced.”
Units are discouraged from writing individual narratives for each awardee.
When issuing badges that are common to multiple units, badge issuers may not alter the overall award text, images or earning criteria. Badge issuers may note their specific program in the narrative text for individual awardees, as desired.
Evidence samples of individual student work may only be uploaded if the awardees give consent or if they were informed prior to participation.
