21st Century Skills Badging Initiative

21st Century Skills Badging: The Badging Fellows Eighteen months ago, we released Version 1.0 of our 21st Century Skills Badges as an Open Education Toolkit. With 1100+ institutions, colleges, nonprofits, and high school districts using the Toolkit, we believe innovators around the country can help us crowdsource expertise to make the next version even better. To that end, we are funding five Badging Fellows to lead institutional or community teams in 2019-2020 to add expertise and scaling strategies to one or more existing badges. Each Fellow’s organization will receive $25,000 through a grant from the deLaski Family Foundation and pro-bono support from the Education Design Lab to lead their team in recommending enhancements and testing those ideas in one or more educational curricula or programs. Overview Meet the Badging Fellows Stay Connected Initiative Overview Who are the Badging Fellows? Innovators from US-based education institutions and education-focused organizations committed to pushing the envelope on our 21st century skill micro-credentials. How are they different from other Badging Partners at the Lab? The Lab has several initiatives on 21st century skill learning, micro-credentialing and sub-degree credentials. We have many partners, most of whom engage the Lab to move this work forward on their campuses. These Fellows were chosen to receive institutional stipends based on a one-time grant from the deLaski Family Foundation. About the Initiative After a competitive RFP process, we have selected five innovators who have recommended important ways to scale and enhance the Lab’s 21st Century Skills Badges to meet the needs of historically underrepresented learners. The Fellows have the support of teams from their organizations to scale the projects outlined. Each lead innovator will join the Lab’s pre-conference workshop, Jump-Starting Your Institution’s Badging Initiative, at the EDUCAUSE annual conference Oct 14, 2019 and lead their campus in a year-long pilot development process. The pilot proposals ranged from on-ramps for continuing education to empathy badging for human trafficking survivors. The dozens of proposals we received were very strong. It demonstrates that campus efforts are spreading to adopt and scale explicit, visible curriculum and credentials for 21st century skills. The Lab is committed to helping colleges and other types of learning providers prepare their learners with digitally-discoverable credentials that address the targeted needs of today’s employers. Access the Lab’s 21st Century Skills Badge Toolkit and sign up for the Innovator Network to be the first to know about our latest developments!