Table of Contents
Summary
Despite being the most popular way to prove skills and knowledge in most industries, traditional paper certificates are becoming obsolete due to their limitations. Digital credentials such as digital badges and digital certificates are getting more popular.
Digital badges and certificates are digital credentials that provide proof of an individual’s professional achievements and qualifications. They contain key elements such as the date of issue, details on the event, the name of the issuer and recipient, a URL to verify its authenticity, and a unique serial number and QR code.
A digital badge is a digital representation of a skill earned and linked to evidence of achievement. It is a way to recognize skills and achievements and is open-source, issued by an organization or individual, and can be embedded with metadata for verification and sharing.
Digital certificates, on the other hand, represent real-world achievements in education or the workforce. They are paperless, unique, and verifiable documents that are accessible anywhere with an internet connection. They are perfect for today’s global workplace as they need to be portable, verifiable, and trustworthy across borders and time zones.
Digital badges and certificates offer several advantages over traditional paper certificates. They are more flexible, convenient, and carry more information. They are digital, shareable, and verifiable and can be easily accessed anytime and anywhere. Unlike traditional certificates, they cannot be easily faked and prove knowledge, skills, and competencies more comprehensively.
Employers need more than just a CV to find suitable hires in the new digitalized world. Digital badges and certificates provide digital representations of knowledge, skills, and achievements and are crucial in connecting learners with job opportunities through their networks. The Open Badge 2.0 standard allows for easily sharing credentials with a broader audience.
Introduction to Digital Badges & Certificates
Despite being the most popular way to prove skills and knowledge in most industries, traditional paper certificates have never been a good fit for online learning. In fact, with digital credentials on the rise, they are now becoming obsolete. Paper certificates are expensive to produce and ship; difficult to keep safe from loss or damage; not verifiable or portable; and as an offline document, they’re not connected with any data or personal information (like a LinkedIn profile) that would make them useful to issuers or recipients. Therefore, digital credentials such as digital badges and digital certificates are becoming popular among people.
What are Digital Badges & Certificates?
Digital badges and certificates are digital credentials that are becoming the gold standard for verifying qualifications, training, skills, and competencies.
Digital credentials are a new generation of technology-enabled credentials that provide proof of an individual’s professional achievements and qualifications. They include key elements such as:
- Date of issue, including the exact time when the credential was issued,
- Details on the event, including the earning criteria and skill descriptions,
- The name of the institution or organization issuing the credential,
- The name of the recipient,
- Institution’s logo or personalized seal,
- A precise URL where each credential can be verified online to prove its authenticity,
- A unique serial number and QR code for each digital credential.
What Is a Digital Badge?
A digital badge is a digital representation of a skill you’ve earned, linked to evidence that verifies your achievement. Badge earners can tell the story of their learning journey by detailing how they learned a skill and providing evidence of it.
Badges are simple, visual ways to understand, share, and celebrate achievements. Badges don’t have to be complicated, but they do have to be meaningful.
Digital badges are a way to recognize the skills, achievements, and qualifications of individuals. Digital badges are open-source badges that an organization or individual issues. They can be embedded with additional metadata, which makes them verifiable, storable, and shareable.
What is a Digital Certificate?
Digital certificates provide a different view on learning and training. With digital certificates, you can empower yourself, your students, or your employees. They make education and certification simple, clear, and credible for everyone.
Digital certificates are paperless documents that are uniquely verifiable. They represent real-world achievements, whether in education or the workforce. Digital certificates are digital native; they live online and are accessible anywhere in the world to anyone with an internet connection.
This makes them ideal for today’s global workplace, where degrees, diplomas, certifications, and licenses need to be portable, verifiable, and trustworthy across borders and time zones.
What’s The Value for You?
Let’s face it. CVs are a thing of the past. They are impersonal, 2-dimensional, and rarely tell the full story of a person’s skills and accomplishments. In this new digitalized world, employers need more than just a CV to find the right hires. They also need to know how skilled potential candidates are and whether they have the potential to grow in their roles.
Digital badges and certificates are digital representations of knowledge, skills, and achievements. Like their physical counterparts, they allow an individual to prove competence in a particular area of expertise.
Badges and certificates also play a crucial role in helping learners connect with job opportunities through their networks. This is because when learners earn a digital badge from an organization, they earn much more than just a digital credential. They also get access to information about how they learned that skill, what they were able to accomplish as part of their learning journey, and what evidence they provided to prove that they have indeed acquired that skill.
The Open Badge 2.0 standard allows you to easily share your credentials with a greater audience. You can share via email, add them to social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, or display them on your website which is perfect if you’re a freelancer.
Advantages of Digital Badges & Certificates over Traditional Ones
When you apply for a job, you need to show your academic certificates such as diplomas to prove your education degree and you need to show other documents to prove your knowledge, skills, and competencies. However, even if you have done a lot of online courses, education, training, and so on, you may not have any documents to prove them.
Yes, we all are familiar with traditional paper documents. They are issued by companies, institutes, and even by individuals. But these certificates do not carry much information, they do not prove much, and can be easily faked too.
But what if we can make these paper documents more flexible, convenient, and useful for everyone like students, job seekers, teachers, and companies? Digital credentials are different from traditional ones in
the way they are digital, shareable, and verifiable anytime anywhere. They carry more information than traditional credentials and prove knowledge, skills, competencies, and achievements.
Digital certificates and digital badges offer a wide range of benefits over traditional certificates and badges:
- Easy to issue and send your recipients automatically,
- Can be verified by anyone in the world just by scanning the certificate
or badge with their smartphone, - Offer interactive elements that can include videos, images, links, social
media buttons and more, - Can be customized with your own design,
- Can be sent to multiple recipients at once,
- No limit on the number of credentials you can issue or store,
- Enables you to save time and money over paper-based alternatives,
- They are secured and can’t be copied,
- They are shareable on CVs, websites, social media, and so on,
- They have no limits, they can be issued by any by companies, educational
institutions and even individuals who want to recognize someone’s
skills or work in an official capacity.
Why Issue Digital Certificates/Badges?
Digital badges & certificates can be issued by any organization – schools, universities, companies, non-profits. While the concept of digital credentials is relatively new, the demand for them has been growing steadily as more and more organizations are realizing that they can help boost their credentialing operations.
Benefits for badge & certificate earners:
Digital badges & certificates can include many different types of information about the learner’s achievement (e.g., grade earned, date of completion) and about the achievement itself (e.g., title, description). This information is embedded directly into the digital credential itself.
Digital credentials provide a rich source of data about learner’s education history such as when they earned it, where they earned it from, and what they learned. With this information, job applicants can better understand their own skillset as well as explain to potential employers how they became qualified for a particular role. Digital certificates and digital badges can also be presented on social media or in job applications with the click of a button.
Benefits for teachers, trainers, and academics:
For teachers and trainers, digital credentials are a new way to acknowledge the academic achievements, skills, and learning progress of their students/trainees. This method is faster, cheaper, and more transparent than traditional methods.
Also, it’s important to know that students get a better understanding of what they need to do to earn a credential. They also know that the digital credentials they receive at the end of an event can be used to improve their chances of landing jobs or advancing their careers.
Benefits for recruiters and companies:
Digital credentials are the new way to prove skills, achievements, education, and talent. They are essential for recruiters and employers, educational institutions, and corporations. The main feature of digital credentials is that they can be verified online in real time by anyone. This means that potential employers can easily check whether a candidate is telling the truth about their educational background and achievements. Employers get a better idea of who they are hiring and whether they are qualified for the position.
Digital credentials are also a more convenient option as they can be instantly verified online, by employers and recruiters. This helps to legitimize the validity of the credential before undertaking any further verification activities. They can also easily be scanned into an applicant tracking system (ATS).
How Can You Issue Digital Badges & Certificates?
We are living in a digital era, where everything is getting digitized, and the education sector is no different. Everything from the way we learn to the way we share knowledge and learning is changing, and it has been a positive change so far. Traditional paper-based credentials are becoming obsolete with digital badges and digital certificates taking over. The main idea behind a digital credential is that the recipient of the credential can prove ownership by presenting a unique URL or QR code:
- They allow you to set up an individual URL or QR code for each student/recipient,
- They allow you to set up an individual badge for each student/recipient,
- They give anyone who viewed the credential full details about how it was earned.
Are you representing a university, a company, an organization, or just a freelancer providing educational courses or another kind of training? Sertifier allows you to issue digital credentials that contain information about your educational programs, courses, conferences, or other public events as well as information about their recipients – participants. For the recipients, digital credentials can provide the following information and more:
- Name,
- Achievement,
- Issuer organization,
- Date of issue,
- Proof of validity,
- Earning criteria,
- Related skills
How Can Sertifier Help?
To keep up with the pace of change, Sertifier was established in 2016 to make issuing and managing credentials easier. Sertifier has been constantly improving since then! Sertifier is a cloud-based platform that helps you issue digital badges and certificates. Sertifier provides a platform for issuing, verifying and displaying digital credentials. With Sertifier, you can easily create badges and certificates for your students, employees, or other individuals that you want to award with digital credentials.
Issuing digital badges & certificates is also super easy with Sertifier’s beautifully designed templates. However, if you are looking for something else, you can easily design your own template that you think fits better for your company or organization.
What Makes Sertifier Different from Other Tools?
Sertifier’s mission is to provide an easy way for instructors, trainers, teachers and organizations to issue digital credentials to their recipients in just minutes without having any technical skills.
- We offer a simple interface with plenty of options so everyone can find something suitable for them!
- We know how it feels to issue thousands of credentials manually, so we automated it for you.
- With Sertifier you will never have to worry about security, because all issued credentials are secured and verifiable.
- Using Sertifier can also help you build an audience by providing an easy way to share your digital credentials on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Digital credentials issued by Sertifier will be valid forever! You don’t have to be our user as an issuer organization for your certificates/badges to be valid.
- Sertifier offers several plans that offer different features.
Our values are:
- Simple sign-up process, so you don’t need to fill out forms for hours to
get started. - Clean and simple interface, so you can focus more on content and less
on design. - Effortless credential design, so you can save time.
- Customization of details, so you can set custom details for each recipient.
Can I use Sertifier for free? Are there any limitations?
Yes! You can sign up now and start your 14-day free trial which enables you to use all of Sertifier’s Pro features. After your trial ends, you will be able to create digital credentials for free for up to 20 recipients. You can start using Sertifier for free now and upgrade when you need it.
If you would like to learn more about Sertifier’s digital credentialing solutions, we would be happy to help! Please book a free demo call with our team and let’s build your digital credentialing program together!
