Digital badges are visual indicators of skills and achievements. Open Badges is the world’s leading format for digital badges, adopted by dozens of technology platforms worldwide. Open Badges are verifiable, shareable, and contain detailed information about the achievement and what the recipient did to earn the badge.
There are 475,000 total badges around the world that individuals can earn, 381,561 of which are available from issuers in the U.S. To date, there have been 43,363,239 badges already issued.
These data represent significant growth from the 2018 survey. In 1.5 years, there has been an 82% increase in total badges available to be earned and an 80% increase in issued badges.
“The numbers here speak for themselves. The growth across the world shows the creativity of credential issuers to better recognize individuals’ accomplishments. But work still remains to be done toward increasing access and ensuring people understand the value of badges,” says Scott Cheney, CEO of Credential Engine. “The Open Badges standard helps to ensure these credentials can be accessed, exchanged across platforms, consistently verified, and fully described through a linked open data network, such as with the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) schema.”