By laddering its digital badging offerings, British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) meets the needs of today’s students while adapting to the changing employment needs of industries across British Columbia. Learn how digital badging with Canvas Credentials helps make it happen.
The Challenge
Learning today calls for tailored classes and programs that students can apply to a specific job skill and need, whether they’re just beginning their careers or are updating their capabilities to meet the changing market.
British Columbia Institute of Technology has a strong history of working with industry partners to prepare students for the careers in demand throughout the region. Using short, for-credit credentialing is a mainstay of its education programs. Wanting to further align its offerings with the skill sets that students and industry were looking for, the institution began a laddered approach in 2021 to align its badged courses, microcredential programs, flexible, part-time learning, and full-time education programs with industry needs. The goal was to provide an easy-to-follow and clear educational journey for students.
BCIT saw how digital credentialing offers students a way to stand out among their peers, and helps differentiate the institution from others. Additionally, implementing their credentialing system in a way that would help maintain compliance with Canadian information privacy requirements was critically important. Following its search, BCIT selected
Key Insights
Tailored learning programs that are focused on local industry gives students in British Columbia a clear path to viable careers.
By laddering its microcredentialing program, BCIT gives students a clear and flexible path to gain future-ready skills, promoting continuing education and driving accessibility in the process.
With a successful approach to digital badging, BCIT has substantially grown its microcredential programs and has issued more than 1,000 program microcredentials and 4,000 course badges.
*Canvas Credentials for its digital badging needs
The Solution
BCIT chose Canvas Credentials for its ability to help validate important skills and showcase students’ workforce readiness to employers. Providing short, stackable, transferable and agile competency-based training opportunities was the way forward. Also important? Complementing existing programming so that the institution could fulfill the need for skill development across the province.
Where, once, microcredentialing was essentially separate from the institution's full- and part-time programs, today, we’ve brought that all together so we’re not competing with ourselves.
Eric Fry,
Associate Dean of Agile and Work Integrated Learning, BCIT
Putting Microcredentialing to the Test
With a short timeline for implementation, the BCIT team moved forward with a robust pilot program, evaluating three distinct delivery models for microcredentialing.
The first model provided a variety of individual, competency-based courses for students to choose from, such as networking foundations, YouTube marketing, and ECommerce. Courses ranged from .5 to 3 credit hours each. Students completing four course badges received a Digital Transformation microcredential certificate.
With the second model, BCIT partnered with Vancouver Island University to offer courses on natural resource and environmental protection, with each institution offering a badge for completed courses. Students completing both sets of courses were issued a microcredential.
This generation of students want tailored menus of courses that will help advance their training
Eric Fry,
Associate Dean of Agile and Work Integrated Learning at BCIT.
The third model introduced students to the mass timber industry through a cohort-based program with sequenced courses. Understanding the fundamentals of building large structures with wood is important specifically in Canada, as the use of trees supplants cement or steel in carbon reduction programs. This widely popular skilling and reskilling program is still being offered today. Together, these three pilots laid the groundwork for BCIT’s digital badging success, and helped scale its offerings.
Meeting Province-Specific Privacy Requirements
Badging within the legal requirements of its province served up some initial challenges for BCIT. To meet information privacy requirements, for example, information needed to be housed on Canadian-based servers. Fortunately, the implementation team worked with Canvas and found a suitable and reasonably automated way to filter out private content and import and export badging data.
Within this process, a clerk verifies that information has been ported correctly, provides welcome human confirmation, and sends students their microcredentials via their school email accounts.
Creating Clear Paths for Continuing Education with Laddering
BCIT leaders determined that laddering its microcredentialing program would give the students the most flexible option for gaining future-ready skills while
There’s security builtinto [badges], with metadata that shows when you took the course, when the credential expires, and how students were evaluated.
Eric Fry,
Associate Dean of Agile and Work Integrated Learning, BCIT
promoting continuing education and driving accessibility. With this approach, lower credit courses are badged and bundled into microcredentials, which eases the progression toward an associate’s degree or an industry partner (IP) certificate. Students also have a clear path for achieving additional certifications, as well as a bachelor’s or master’s degree.
“Where, once, microcredentialing was essentially separate from the institution's full- and part-time programs, today, we’ve brought that all together so we’re not competing with ourselves,” said Eric Fry, Associate Dean of Agile and Work Integrated Learning at BCIT. “Some programs are badged and lead to a microcredential program, and some of those lead to full-time programs.”
The Results
As a testament to its success, BCIT students now have more than 250 course badges and nearly 80 program microcredentials to choose from. The school has since issued more than 1,000 program microcredentials and 4,000 course badges.
Students completing their coursework have easy access to their badges and certificates, which they can load into their digital backpack, share on social media, or print as a verifiable parchment. Instant verification to potential employers helps demonstrate that students’ skills-based learning is preparing them to fulfill the roles that they are applying for. “Microcredentials help show employers what students can do. Badges are labeled logically, showing for example, that a student knows how to fly a drone, or knows the essentials of network security, or knows how to do stenography,” said Eric.
“There’s security built into it, with metadata that shows when you took the course, when the credential expires, and how students were evaluated. From there, the employee or their employer can augment their capabilities with different types of training.”
An Agile Quality Committee implemented in early 2022 helped formalize the approval process for new badges and microcredential offerings across the institution. Moving forward, BCIT will continue to evolve its microcredentialing offerings to help ensure students have the flexibility and depth they need to prepare themselves for a changing workforce.
“This is an important step in democratizing how credentials are issued, and a shift toward the ownership of your own credentials,” Eric added.
*In April 2022, Instructure welcomed Concentric Sky, the makers of Badgr (now Canvas Credentials), to the family.
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