The Digital Badging Commission, a partnership between the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and Ufi VocTech Trust, aims to revolutionise the recognition of skills and learning in the UK. Starting in 2024 and now well underway, the Commission’s work is focused on progressing the potential of digital badges, skills wallets and frameworks, particularly in non-formal settings, and to understand the adoption and impact of these in the UK.

The Commission has four key aims:
1. To establish a shared understanding of digital badges across education, employment, and skills sectors
2. To develop a robust quality assurance framework for digital badges
3. To create guidance on the design and implementation of digital badges
4. To produce policy recommendations for the widespread adoption of digital badges

So far, a focus of the work of the Commission has been assessing the current digital badging landscape. This has involved conducting a literature review and interviewing key stakeholders from a variety of areas such as education, employment and policy, to understand the value of badges, skills wallets and frameworks from their perspectives, but also the barriers preventing universal understanding and adoption of these as key instruments for recognising lifelong learning.

From review findings, a key challenge that continues to persist in the digital badging sphere is the lack of standardised frameworks to guide badge creation to provide a reference point for quality, trust and authenticity. This has led to a ‘wild west’ of badges representing different levels of learning, time commitment and assessment, with little guidance to support employers in understanding what a badge represents when viewing these from prospective employees. This has the potential to limit badge value for earners who lack traditional educational qualifications or wish to demonstrate new skills earned as they seek to progress their career. Where employers have been involved in the development or issuance of digital badges, however, they are highly valued. In addition, whilst skills credential wallets and online portfolios prevail, their interoperability remains limited, and no such verified universal wallet is recommended or adopted in the UK.

The Commission have a vision for the future potential of credential wallets to meaningfully support employability, providing the opportunity for all learners to curate a wallet incorporating formal and non-formal learning experiences across their lifetime. This would allow learners to showcase a holistic profile of their best skills and experiences as they seek employment in the UK and internationally, and for badges as part of this to be universally recognised and valued by employers as a legitimate representation and communication tool of learning.

This presentation will provide a comprehensive understanding of the Digital Badging Commission's aims and progress, with a focus on the need for standardised frameworks and credential wallets.

Keywords: Digital badges, frameworks, credential wallets, lifelong learning, skills.