edubadges: issuing digital certificates to students
edubadges is the digital certificates platform for the Dutch education community. edubadges enable you to award students or workers with evidence of knowledge and skills they have acquired. An edubadge is issued electronically within a secure and trusted SURF platform.
Ongoing development of edubadges
edubadges will continue to evolve. What can you expect in the period ahead?
Ongoing development of the edubadges platform
SURF will continue to work on improving the platform, for example, on the technical integration with learning management systems, student information systems, and on adding bulk upload tools. Where possible, we will also simplify the issuing process on the platform, for example, by allowing students to give their one-off consent to receive edubadges issued by the institution.
Promoting the use of open standards
The platform has been built in line with international standards and frameworks. Students move in an educational environment with a strong international dimension, and should be able to collect multiple badges from home and abroad. The edubadges platform therefore uses the open-badges standard to facilitate this. The edubadges application code is open source and is available on GitHub. SURF strives to use open source technology and to promote its use. This makes collaboration easier, and also helps avoids supplier tie-in.
The edubadges team maintains close contacts with the 'Making education more flexible' acceleration zone, part of the Acceleration Plan for Education Innovation with IT. Various institutions are working together on a more flexible educational system, for example, by supporting a more modular structure and by introducing edubadges as microcredentials.
Read more on the website of the Acceleration Plan
edubadges: a unique, national approach
At SURF, we have been exploring the opportunities that badges might offer the Dutch higher education sector since 2016, as well as how to extract maximum benefit from them at the national level. By collaborating with SURF, Dutch institutions have opted for a national approach. This makes the Netherlands one of the front-runners in this field worldwide.
Publication: 7 arguments in favour of a national approach to open badges in education (pdf)
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