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The ASPIRE Program is now awarding badges through Badgr<\/a>\u00a0to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who fully complete any of our ASPIRE modules. We will be back issuing badges to trainees who participated in an ASPIRE Module in the 2020-2021 academic year. This micro-credentialing program will continue to grow in the coming months. To see criteria for earning an ASPIRE module badge, please see the descriptions of each individual module<\/a>.<\/p>\n For questions on Badgr and earning badges, see our FAQs below, or contact Angela Zito, angela.zito@vanderbilt.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Badgr\u00a0<\/a>is the badging software that was selected by Vanderbilt to manage digital “badges” awarded by ASPIRE or other Vanderbilt programs. The Badgr platform uses a standardized type of digital badges called Open Badges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A\u00a0digital badge\u00a0is a visual symbol of accomplishment. They can be awarded for any definable achievement and earned in many learning environments. An Open Badge is a specialized type of digital badge that contains verifiable metadata about achievements according to a common data format, the\u00a0Open Badges specification<\/a>. Because they follow an open standard, recipients can combine badges from many different sources into common collections, and when they share them, these badges may be verified by any compatible system to ensure that they are trustworthy representations of their earner’s experiences. Badges are awarded for achievements of all kinds, such as:<\/p>\n These badges can “stack” and shed light on the interests, capabilities, and accomplishments of learners. ASPIRE will also be using badges to help guide graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in their career and professional development and select ASPIRE opportunities that fit with their training stage and career interests – almost like stepping stones on a learning pathway! Badges are organized in badge systems and learning pathways to represent the skills and experiences that are valued in interest communities and by employers.<\/p>\n An Open Badge achievement is represented by a visual symbol, but it also carries detailed metadata, including a name, description, link to detailed earning criteria, and information about its issuer. When this badge is awarded to a recipient, the portable image contains all the aforementioned verifiable data, and “bakes” it into the image so that it may be displayed in any Open Badges-compatible application. The ingredients of Open Badges (name, description, criteria, and recipient) are much like that of a cake, once baked, individual ingredients cannot be removed from the badge. This allows for greater portability; badges are meant to be shared (also like cake).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Create an account on any Badgr server (Australia<\/a>,\u00a0Canada<\/a>,\u00a0European Union<\/a>,\u00a0United States<\/a>) to collect your badges in a free Backpack service.<\/p>\n The Badgr Backpack is where you can store and fully interact with any of the Open Badges you’ve earned.\u00a0Badgr awarded badges will be automatically added to a user’s backpack.\u00a0 Non-Badgr badges may be\u00a0manually uploaded<\/a>\u00a0to a Badgr Backpack.<\/p>\n From your backpack, you can select a badge to view the badge details. When viewing the badge detail page you can:<\/p>\n More information on how to use Badgr can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Earned badges can be shared from an award email,\u00a0from within Canvas<\/a>, or from a user’s Badgr backpack to various social media sites.<\/p>\n Sharing badges on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest<\/strong><\/p>\n If your LinkedIn or other social media account has a different login email than your Badgr account, you may need to add that email to your Badgr account in order to share your badge. Please see\u00a0Managing your Badgr account<\/a>\u00a0for information on adding an additional email.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You can also add badges to the Certification section of your LinkedIn profile. One advantage to using this approach is that the badge is persistently associated with your LinkedIn profile and does not get “lost in the feed”. Adding badges to the Certification section requires some manual entry of badge information.<\/p>\n Please note that LinkedIn may change the image based on what the LinkedIn company\/organization image is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n These badges can aggregate and shed light on the interests, capabilities, and accomplishments of learners. Badges can serve as the stepping stones on a learning pathway.\u00a0Badges are organized in badge systems and learning pathways to represent the skills and experiences that are valued in communities.<\/p>\n Since these badges carry detailed metadata detailing the name, description, link to detailed earning criteria, and information about its issuer, you can share these on LinkedIn, or other digital platforms. This not only allows you to show your accomplishments, but it can lead future employers, colleagues, etc. to details about the activity you participated in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n All graduate students and postdocs are eligible to participate in ASPIRE programming and can apply to earn a badge. The requirements for every badge are different, but in general there are two fundamental steps:<\/p>\n Each badge will have different criteria that will need to be met in order to earn the badge, and have it awarded to you to be added to your backpack. Please see each individual module description to see the earning criteria.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nFrequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n
\n\n\n<\/i>What is Badgr?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/i>What is a badge?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\n<\/i>How do I use Badgr?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\n<\/i>How do I add my badge to social media?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\n<\/i>How do I add my badge to LinkedIn?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\n<\/i> Why do I want a badge?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/i> How do I earn a badge?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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