If you run a digital credential program, you know how important it is to represent a credential's context, criteria, and achievements in its description and metadata.
Clear descriptions show learners what they might accomplish within a credential and how your organization evaluates their achievements. Credentials with Earning Criteria hold more weight than other credentials, as they show credential viewers and verifiers the amount of effort your learners have invested into earning their credential.
We’re excited to announce Earning Criteria, a meaningful, engaging, and efficient way to add, update, and remove criteria to your credentials.
What is Earning Criteria?
Available as an optional feature to all Accredible customers beginning March 30, 2023, Earning Criteria supports a broad range of issuing institutions––from professional associations, higher education institutions, learning experience platforms (LXPs), professional or product certification, and internal corporate training programs––in communicating credential prerequisites or requirements to their learners and credential viewers.
Issuers can use Earning Criteria to supplement their credential descriptions, and add additional context beyond what a learner might learn or accomplish within a credential.
Additionally, Earning Criteria is great for issuers who want an efficient way to optionally add, edit, delete, categorize, and order Earning Criteria to each group or credential, distinguish between standard and optional Earning Criteria, and communicate the Earning Criteria of a group, so viewers can understand the required effort to earn the credential.
Accredible’s Earning Criteria aligns with OpenBadge Standard 3.0.
Creating Earning Criteria
To add Earning Criteria as optional information within a Group, visit the Group Settings: Info & Appearance tab in your Accredible account.
There are four components to Earning Criteria:
- a description of your requirements
- the type of requirement
- an opportunity to link to another webpage
- the opportunity to differentiate between required and optional criteria
Earning Criteria Description
Give your credentials a narrative by highlighting any specific criteria or prerequisites required to earn a credential. Prerequisites clarify what a learner must do before attempting to earn a credential, letting them know if they’re ready for the credential.
This description field is also a great place to add other information about the credential, such as how much effort it will take a learner to earn the credential and how you’ll assess the knowledge, skills, or abilities they’ll gain from the credential. This required component gives learners and viewers full transparency into how much time and effort they need to commit to earning a credential.
Descriptions are required when adding earning criteria to a credential. If you add protips or best practices to your descriptions, we recommend keeping the narrative brief. However, the description field accommodates up to 1,000 characters.
Type
Type is another required component when creating Earning Criteria. This dropdown allows you to characterize your prerequisites so learners or credential viewers understand the type of effort involved. Did the learner need to complete a course or participate in a webinar?
You may not have the same requirements for every credential in your program, and that’s okay. Types are flexible—choose from 12 different options, or define each type as you wish, to communicate your requirements in a way that makes sense to your learners:
- Certificate
- Course
- Degree
- Exam
- Experience
- Knowledge
- License
- Participation
- Reading
- Skill
- Specialization
- Other
Link
Do you need more space to distinguish between specializations, and mandatory and optional criteria, or do you want to give a relevant page on your website a backlink? While optional, adding a URL to the Link field in your credential metadata gives your learners a singular space to access any information about a credential.
Fill in this section to send learners to a specific page where they can learn more.
Required Criteria
Make specific requirements mandatory by checking the required criteria checkbox to help your learners understand expectations.
If you have both required and option earning criteria for a specific credential or group of credentials, required criteria will always appear first on the credential view.
Viewing Earning Criteria
Learners can find Earning Criteria in two places: on their credential view page and on your issuer page.
Credential View
If a credential has Earning Criteria, any learner or viewer who visits a recipient’s credential will see it below the issue date. Now, any viewer can see the amount of effort required from the individual who earned this credential, giving that credential more weight, meaning, and depth––and learners an easier way to communicate their achievement.
Earning Criteria: Issuer Page
Similar to how it’s displayed on a Credential View page, Earning Criteria for credentials found through your Issuer Page will visually distinguish between the required and optional criteria needed to earn the credential or certificate. Earning Criteria will appear underneath any skills tags in the Skills and Knowledge section.
Create Credential Currency
Credentials have two different forms of currency: helping individuals find employment or advance in the workforce, and/or accelerating a student’s progression into and throughout their postsecondary education and training.
Earning Criteria gives us a two-dimensional view of the currency, or weight, of a credential: we can see what a learner has invested in themselves to earn the skill and gain a higher level of insight into anything else they may have achieved along the way. This view shows us the true value of the final credential, allowing us to assign academic and workplace value to courses and credentials. Which, in turn, showcases the breadth and depth of your learners’ accomplishments, giving their credentials more weight and depth––and currency.
For more information about Earning Criteria, reach out to your Account Manager.
New to digital credentials? Contact our sales team to see digital credentials and earning criteria in action.
