Using Digital Badges to Measure the Impact of Your Training Program

Digital badges have become a popular way to recognize and validate an individual's skills and knowledge in a range of industries, from healthcare to finance, and technology to customer service. Digital badges provide a clear and verifiable way to demonstrate an individual's achievements and are increasingly being used by training providers to recognize learners' skills and competencies. 

While digital badges offer a range of benefits to learners, such as increased motivation, a sense of accomplishment, and more opportunities for career development, they also provide a powerful tool for training providers to measure the positive impact of their training programs. Once able to measure the positive impact of these programs, you will be armed with robust statistical and anecdotal evidence to share with future learners and establish the clear value your courses can bring to them. 

Here are three ways digital badges can help training providers measure the impact of the training program on their learners and their own business. 

By nature of being digital, digital credentials allow you to take advantage of all the data tracking and analysis that would have remained a mystery if you were sharing a paper certificate. Digital badges come with an analytics dashboard that allows digital credential issuers to monitor their learners' engagement with badges.

The analytics dashboard by Acclaim provides insights into badge acceptance rates, views, clicks, shares, and more. This information can help training providers determine how learners engage with their courses and identify areas for improvement. For example, if a badge has a high acceptance rate but a low share rate may suggest that the training program is valuable, but learners aren’t aware of the benefits of sharing for them. Training providers can use this information to adjust their communications to learners to ensure they’re getting the most from their qualifications after completion.  

Digital badges provide learners with access to a network of skills and organizations. Learners who earn a badge become part of a community of individuals who have demonstrated similar skills and competencies.  This community can provide learners with opportunities for networking, career development, and skill building.

Training providers can leverage this network to measure the impact of their training programs and survey earners to understand where they are seeing the most success. For example, after Snowflake launched their Education Services Program, they were able to monitor learner engagement with their badges and checked in with earners to understand how they were progressing. Their survey revealed that 51% were able to connect to career opportunities and 45% received a raise, promotion, or a new job because of their digital credential. 

The opportunity for training providers to expand their business is growing, but you need to be confident that the platforms you invest in are providing you with the clear return on investment your business needs. Instead of relying purely on paper certificates or isolated badges, Acclaim’s analytics dashboard allows you to measure the shares, views and clicks from your earner’s badges. This can help with clearer attribution of increased website visits and new earners signing up for training programs.

Kelly Ricker, Executive VP of Events and Learning at CompTIA said this invaluable tracking has “allowed us a new way to stay informed on how our certification earners are using their badges and has driven significant traffic to our website.” 

Acclaim can support your digital credentialing needs with a clear and easy means of not only issuing badges, but also understanding the benefits these programs are bringing to your business. If you want to learn more about how digital badges can help you measure the impact of your training program, get in touch with us to book a personalized demo with Acclaim. 

You can also download our whitepaper to explore how to grow your business and strengthen customer relationships to meet training demand with digital credentials.