MyKnowledgeMap, creators of myprogress and myshowcase.me, has entered the Open Badges market with a simple and secure platform – Openbadges.me. The platform empowers organisations to recognise the achievements and skills of individuals through digital badges.

As a global learning technology provider, passionate about supporting organisations in providing first-class education and training, Openbadges.me is the next big step for MyKnowledgeMap.

Much like physical badges and awards, open badges are used to recognise achievements and skills – only digitally, online. Open badges are digital credentials that allow users to create, issue, share, and receive them. They contain an image with built in data known as ‘metadata’ – this includes a description of the badge, who issued it, who received it, and the criteria of the reward. The metadata is what makes each open badge credible, secure, and verifiable. Each badge is unique to the issuer and so each badge can be certified against the issuer – showing just how credible each badge is and how meaningful the action was to achieve it.

Launching the Openbadges.me Platform

Since its initial launch in 2012, Openbadges.me has been used by over 10,000 individuals worldwide - with over 2,500 badges issued. Now onto its latest release, with an improved user interface, integrations, and functionalities such as rule-based issuing, the platform is currently used by more than 200 organisations - finding popularity in a range of industries from all levels of education to learning and training providers.

One learning provider using the platform is UnionLearn – who use Openbadges.me as part of their SkillCheck platform, rewarding learners for completing ICT, Maths, and English assessments. Another organisation using Openbadges.me is 23Red on behalf of the Year of Engineering – a UK government-led initiative designed to tackle the skills and diversity gap within the engineering sector. The initiative used Openbadges.me to reward badges to participants who took part in engineering activities, events, and more.

Adam Doyle, operations director at MyKnowledgeMap, said, “It’s a very exciting time for Open Badges and Openbadges.me provides organisations a simple, secure and flexible way to reward and celebrate individual achievement and success”.

By using Open Badges, organisations can support and enhance any number of activities, from rewarding individuals for successfully completing a single milestone to using a series of Open Badges to recognize steps reaching towards a final goal. On top of this, Open Badges can also vary as to their value – from being awarded to an individual for simply attending an event, to being issued to an individual for completing a module within a formal qualification.

For more information on Openbadges.me, visit our product website www.openbadges.me.