The University of North Florida offers students free digital badging opportunities, providing verified skills to enhance resumes and appeal to employers.
Digital badges are short, self-paced and skill-focused courses ranging from 10 to 30 hours that students can sign up to take at any point during their enrollment at UNF. According to the digital badging page for UNF, these credentials provide students with verifiable proof of mastering a skill to the extent of the badge. Currently, UNF offers 79 badges through 13 different UNF issuers.
According to Trudy Abadie-Mendia, one of the leading efforts for the UNF Digital Badging Initiative, certain industries are hiring using skill-based hiring practices. Instead of only looking at the degree a candidate may have, they are looking for provided skill sets along with that degree.
Badges provide employers with a way to quickly see and verify that students have gone above and beyond the requirements of their degree and worked toward mastering specific skill sets.
Badges are not meant to take away from earning a degree but rather help enhance it to employers.
“Badges can lead to certifications but are not equivalent to certifications,” Mendia said.
For example, while receiving a badge in Microsoft Excel does not make someone certified in Excel, it shows to employers one has been taught the skills aligning with the courses, gained experience with the software and know how to use it in various ways.
Some badges can only be registered for if a student is within a specific major that corresponds to the badge (Fig. 1) and a proposal form must be filled out. However, there are 16 badges that can be earned regardless of a student’s major (Fig. 2). These include badges within career development, leadership, technologies, research, ethical awareness and innovation. View the image below to see the specific badges for each of these categories. Students can also enroll for the badges here.
After earning a badge, an email will be received with instructions on how to display the badge on social media pages, resumes, websites and portfolios.
Mendia said it is common for people to assume they can Photoshop the image of the badge.
“The beauty of a digital badge is that it has metadata attached to each one,” Mendia said. “So anybody that sees it on your resume or your LinkedIn profile can click on it and confirm that you, on X day, earned it by doing XYZ.”
Some employers are eager to find students with certain badges on their resumes.
During the UNF career fairs, UNF provides employers with surveys to fill out. In the survey, employers are asked questions along the lines of “What are you looking for in your next student? What kind of skills would you like them to have or could they be stronger in?”
According to Mendia, one of the top responses UNF receives from employers is they are looking for students who are knowledgeable in Microsoft Excel. Because of this high demand, there are two digital badges that focus on teaching Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel Level I and Microsoft Excel Level II. Both of these badges are free to all UNF students to be completed at any time.
Mendia said the importance of students taking advantage of these badges while they are enrolled at UNF and can earn them for free as a student.
An example of this is the digital badge Covey LeaderU. This badge was created through the partnership between The Taylor Leadership Institute and Covey Franklin, an international organization that specializes in leadership development. The modules for this badge include topics such as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 5 Choices to Extraordinary Productivity, Leading at the Speed of Trust, The 4 Essentials Roles of Leadership, The 4 Disciplines of Execution and Unconscious Bias.
“If you do that same leadership training but outside from being a student, it’s like two or three grand,” Mendia said. “Not to mention that if you have Covey on your resume, every employer knows what Covey is and it’s a badge worth earning.”
Understanding that most students are full-time, badges don’t have to only be worked on during the Spring and Fall semesters, they can also be worked on in a student’s free time over the summer and holiday breaks as long as the student is still actively enrolled with UNF.
Some badges can also be earned while in a course. Depending on the course a student is enrolled in, badges can be completed by doing regular assignments for that class.
Professor Dyllan Cole, UNF Adjunct English Professor, said it has become part of his course plan for students to complete an AI digital badge. He said it helps to enhance his students’ knowledge of AI where they can use it effectively as a tool to enhance their work rather than using AI as a shortcut to completing their work for them.
“We actually advocate for taking a UNF sponsored AI education course. [Students] have to earn a badge in order to pass or they receive bonus grades upon completing it.” Cole said. “So, more than likely, especially in my own course, we have implemented where [students] have to take it, become accustomed to it, learn about all different types of AI, and then showcase it.”
Along with providing badges for those enrolled with UNF, there are 36 badges offered to those who are not UNF students (Fig. 3). This includes professors, faculty, staff and those who meet the criteria.
In the UNF Division of Continuing Education, there are some badges that can be registered for if specific requirements are met to enroll in the particular badge a student is going for. Some badges may require documentation proof of completion of prerequisites to go for the badge. Others may be open to students as well with no required prerequisite. Students can go for these DCE badges, but they will not be free like the badges created specifically for UNF students. Upon registering and getting approved for the badge, students will pay a fee which varies per badge.
More information about DCS badges can be read in the image below and on the DCE badging website here.
There is no limit to the number of badges a student can take and some take longer to complete than others.
Mendia recommends instead of trying to receive all the badges just for the sake of having numerous badges, focusing on the badges that will best compliment a student’s career and the skills that would benefit them the most.
A student can register for a badge here. If students have any questions, they may contact badging@unf.edu.
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