Updated 4/19/23
The badge metadata is the content you create to represent the credential, certification, course, or designation that you’re badging. This information should describe what the earners are capable of doing after earning this badge, what they had to do to earn it and why employers should care about it.
Badge metadata should describe:
- What the earner did
- Who said they did it
- Why it is important
What is a badge-worthy achievement?
Credly considers an achievement to be badge-worthy if it’s career enhancing. Credly’s badges should represent hard skills and learning outcomes that employers care about and that can be verified by an established set of criteria.
Refer to our information about quality metadata if you need more information.
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Here are the Available Metadata Fields:
Badge Name
This is the name of the badge, course, credential or certification.
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Considerations & Recommendations:
- Reference the title of the badge earned in the name.
- End each badge title with “Certificate” or “Certification”, if applicable.
- Establish a naming convention for all the badges you will develop. This will ensure that your badge program and credentials are recognizable in the marketplace.
- Determine whether you want the name of brand/company in the title of each badge.
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Badge Name Examples:
- Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel 2013
- Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Certified Professional
- SAS Certified Advanced Programmer for SAS 9
Badge Description
This is a 500 character or less description of the outcomes of this achievement. This should articulate what the individual is capable of or competent in doing.
- Considerations & Recommendations:
- Focus on what the badge earner is capable of after having earned this designation.
- Do not use this space to include verbatim course descriptions or requirements for achieving the credential.
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Establish an organizing principle for the syntax of the badge description for each badge you design.
- Consider starting the description as follows: “Earners of this designation have demonstrated…”
- The second sentence could begin with: “Earners are able to…”
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Some Questions to Ask:
- What special skills and knowledge do they contribute to the industry and position?
- What distinguishes them from either other credentials in your program or from those without this credential?
- What skills has the earner demonstrated in order to earn this badge?
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Example: Badge Descriptions
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POOR: Competent in the basics of creating spreadsheets. Understands the Excel 2013 environment and how to sort data using the filtering and formatting tools. Familiar with worksheets, working with numbers, creating and saving spreadsheets, and formatting columns. Experience using the table and formula tools to create charts, lists and simple spreadsheets.
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GOOD: Earners of the Microsoft Excel Specialist 2013 badge have a fundamental understanding of the Excel environment and the ability to complete tasks independently. They know and demonstrated the correct application of the principal features of Excel 2013. These candidates are able to create and edit a workbook with multiple sheets for a variety of purposes and situations.
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Skills
These are concise (1-3 word) keyword phrases that link to occupations and skills housed within Pearson Ontology. Skill tags offer organization and allows viewers to quickly understand what the person has either acquired or demonstrated.
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Considerations & Recommendations:
- Determine the roughly 6-10 primary skills earned or represented by this credential.
- Choose the most relevant keyword phrases that best represent this badge.
- Keep skill tag phrases to three words or less, generally.
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Making It Work:
- First consider clicking on the Suggest Skills link to see what our algorithm thinks are best, given your description and criteria. If you don't like the results, enhance those fields first!
- If you have your own idea and begin typing, you'll see the "normalized skills data base" and can select from one of those skills.
- Once your template has been saved, you can click the tags to view labor market data and ensure the information your tags return is relevant to your designation.
Badge Criteria
This is a brief descriptive and visual representation of what the badge earner did to earn this badge. The list of criteria describes the sequential set of steps required for an individual wanting to pursue this credential.
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Considerations & Recommendations:
- Utilize action verbs to denote the “checkmark” items needed for the earner to achieve this badge.
- Consider the thematic type for each criterion you enter.
- Review the associated images with each thematic type in the “Criteria Types” document
- Ask yourself: Did the earner have to complete coursework? Submit a capstone project? Pass a proctored formal exam? Accumulate 5 years of professional experience? Submit an application?
- Consider briefly describing each action that earners took in order to achieve this badge.
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Options:
- Define criteria with URLs: You may link to a relevant external URL for more information.
- Define criteria with static text: If no relevant external URLs are available, you may describe with static text only.
URL to Additional Information
This is a link to the most relevant webpage about this particular certification or your general program or brand.
Earn this Badge
This is an additional link to where readers might go to register register or enroll. Don't miss the opportunity to additional marketing and awareness. Read more here.
Standards (optional)
This is an optional field that links to any relevant third-party external standards.
Template Attributes
Template Attributes are optional metadata fields that allow you to indicate the type, level, average time commitment, and cost for each badge.
By standardizing how badges are categorized, it will be much easier to compare achievements, provide better benchmarking, and enhance badge discoverability.
Read more about Attributes here.
Achievement Type
- Experience: Not measured, unstructured learning (e.g., events, membership, volunteering, hackathons)
- Learning: Also not measured, but structured learning (e.g., self-led courses, product knowledge, "soft skill" training)
- Validation: Measured and validated learning (e.g., learning and assessments, portfolio evidence)
- Certification: Industry recognized, validated achievement (e.g., industry certifications, license, terminal credential)
(Pro tip: If your program includes assessment of any kind, think Validation. If it is a credential you might see in a job description, think Certification.)
Mastery Level
- Foundational (e.g., Beginner, Fundamentals, Level 1)
- Intermediate (e.g., Professional, Intermediate, Level 2)
- Advanced (e.g., Specialist, Expert, Level 3)
Time Commitment
- Hours (e.g., 2-hour webinar)
- Days (e.g., 3-day workshop)
- Weeks (e.g., 12 hours of content delivered across 2 weeks)
- Months (e.g., semester-long course)
- Years (e.g., 2 years of professional experience)
(You can't add specific numbers here, but that's a great detail to include in the Criteria.)
Cost
- Free: Available at no cost to the earners
- Paid: Cost to the earner to complete the requirements
You can elect not to make attributes publicly visible, but their presence may determine future recommendations to earners.