Introduction
2 min readJul 14, 2017
How to Use This Resource
The Sprout Fund has been working to help people develop digital badges in Pittsburgh and beyond since 2013. This collection of resources describes the history of our work and includes key considerations and design principles for developing your own high-quality digital badges for learning. We’ve included descriptions of the key steps in our process and discussion about why we pursued these steps, what we were trying to achieve, and the insights that emerged along the way. We hope that these resources will help practitioners thoughtfully design and begin to issue digital badges in their programs.
There are five main sections:
- Key Considerations for the Badge-Curious: Use this section to read about the history of digital badging and Connected Learning and some key considerations for the “badge-curious” — that is, people who are considering using digital badges for the first time.
- Case Studies: You can read about Sprout’s history with badging and browse some brief case studies of badging in Pittsburgh.
- Design Principles: To get started with designing your own badges, use the self-assessment tool to see whether badging is a good fit for your program. Then, use a series of worksheets we’ve created to help you design your badges.
- Platform & Technology Considerations: Finally, explore some key ideas that should guide your thinking as you pick tools to support your work.
- Links & Resources: You can also browse a list of links and resources that we’ve curated of the best and most useful badging resources out there.
Contact us
If you’d like to learn more about our work with digital badges, please contact The Sprout Fund at connect@sproutfund.org.
