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SUNY Online Teaching Digital Badges & Certification

Recognizing Community, Practice, and Professional Growth

A Community-Driven Credentialing Ecosystem

SUNY Online Teaching maintains a comprehensive digital badging ecosystem designed to recognize participation, leadership, professional learning, and demonstrated competency across our online teaching community of practice.

Our badges serve as portable, shareable digital evidence that document meaningful engagement in online teaching, instructional design, quality assurance, and community leadership. Each badge contains embedded metadata linking to evidence of learning or contribution, providing transparency, credibility, and professional value.

Together, these credentials tell a richer story than traditional certificates alone: they surface skills, experience, service, and growth across a practitioner’s online education journey.

Badges can be shared on LinkedIn, professional portfolios, résumés, email signatures, and institutional recognition materials, making accomplishments visible within and beyond SUNY.

Media

Podcast: Adam Davi – Integrated Learning Center, University of Arizona regarding badging – Published on July 29, 2025
Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube Music

Podcast: OLC Effective Practice Award project, “Using Digital Badges as a Framework to Support & Scale an Online Teaching & Learning Community” – November 15, 2017.
Listen Notes

Panel: The 2025 City Tech’s Micro Credentials Forum – May 2, 2025 – Brooklyn. NY
Panel | Event Playlist

Why Digital Badges?

We use digital credentials to:

  • Recognize diverse roles and expertise across the SUNY Online community.
  • Support intentional professional learning pathways.
  • Incentivize community engagement, mentoring, and knowledge sharing.
  • Validate demonstrated competencies in online teaching and course design.
  • Cultivate a culture of continuous improvement and reflective practice.
  • Make professional growth visible and portable.

Our approach moves beyond participation/attendance-based recognition. Badges are earned through evidence of learning, contribution, or practice, such as completing professional development, conducting OSCQR reviews, mentoring peers, facilitating workshops, sharing effective practices, or leading community initiatives.

Evidence-Based and Practice-Centered

Our badging framework is grounded in research on communities of practice, online faculty development, and competency-based professional learning. Badges are only awarded when participants provide evidence of engagement or learning, such as reflections, peer reviews, mentoring, facilitation, or implementation artifacts.

This approach supports accountability, authenticity, and sustained participation, while reinforcing shared values around quality, equity, and continuous improvement.

The ecosystem has also been recognized nationally as an effective practice for scaling online faculty development and community engagement across large systems.

Scale and Impact

To date, SUNY Online Teaching has:

  • Created more than 90 distinct digital badges across professional development and community engagement.
  • Issued over 11,800 credentials through Credly, enabling secure, portable, and verifiable sharing of accomplishments.
  • Seen the majority of earned badges shared publicly,most frequently on LinkedIn, extending visibility of SUNY’s online teaching excellence well beyond our campuses.

Our volunteer networks of instructional designers, faculty, and campus leaders continue to co-design, refine, and sustain this ecosystem, ensuring it evolves alongside practice.

More Than Badges

At SUNY Online Teaching, digital credentials are intentionally embedded within a broader professional learning and community development strategy. Our credentialing framework supports:

  • Campus and system-level recognition of online teaching excellence
  • Structured mentoring and peer leadership opportunities
  • Eligibility for community leadership roles and ambassador programs
  • Documentation that supports promotion, tenure, and professional advancement
  • Continued progression along advanced professional development pathways

We design and issue badges not simply to recognize achievement, but to connect professional growth to meaningful roles and opportunities within our ecosystem.

By integrating digital credentials into our statewide faculty development initiatives, quality assurance efforts, and leadership programs, we reinforce a culture of contribution, reflection, and continuous improvement.

In this way, our badges function not merely as symbols of accomplishment, but as visible markers of engagement, trust, expertise, and shared responsibility within the SUNY Online Teaching community of practice.

A Journey Model: Roles, Pathways, and Constellations

The SUNY Online Teaching badging ecosystem is organized around interconnected pathways that reflect how practitioners grow within a living community of practice.

Rather than a single linear track, badges form constellations that align with different roles and contributions, allowing individuals to move from emerging participation to leadership and mastery over time.

These pathways support progression from novice to experienced practitioner, and from participant to mentor, reviewer, ambassador, innovator, or trainer, while honoring multiple forms of expertise.

Categories of Badges

SUNY Online Teaching digital credentials are organized around six core purposes that reflect how individuals engage, grow, and lead within our community of practice. Together, these categories recognize participation, contribution, competency development, and professional impact across the online teaching ecosystem.

SUNY Online badges chart
Acknowledge or Commemorate: Events & Participation

These badges mark meaningful engagement, participation and milestones in the SUNY Online Teaching community programs, webinars, and initiatives.

Examples include:

  • SUNY Online Summit participation
  • Community Participant badges
  • OSCQR First Adopter
  • Event attendance and engagement

These credentials honor presence, early adoption, and connection to community initiatives.

Endorse or Recognize: Community Membership & Engagement

These badges recognize individuals who actively contribute to the community through service, leadership, and peer support.

Examples include:

  • Workshop facilitators
  • Mentors and ambassadors
  • Friends of SUNY
  • Community volunteers and contributors

These credentials acknowledge practitioners who share expertise and help sustain our community of practice.

Honor or Award

These badges celebrate exemplary leadership, innovation, and demonstrated impact.

Examples include:

  • OSCQR Awards
  • Effective Practice recognitions
  • Exemplar Online Courses for Observation
  • SUNY Online Speakers and Community Leaders

These honors spotlight models of excellence and elevate practices others can learn from.

Verify or Validate

These badges confirm documented engagement, experience, or role-based participation within SUNY Online Teaching.

Examples include:

  • SUNY Online Interns
  • Expert Instructional Designers
  • Verified community leadership roles

These credentials provide formal validation of service and professional involvement.

Credential or Certify: Professional Development & Competency

These badges recognize completion of structured learning experiences and demonstrated competencies in online teaching, instructional design, accessibility, and learner-centered practices.

Examples include:

  • OSCQR webinar completion.
  • Interested in Online Teaching self-paced course.
  • Professional development pathways tied to online teaching, course design, accessibility, and learner-centered practice.

These credentials document skill development and evidence-based professional learning.

Authorize or License: Quality Assurance

These badges certify practitioners who complete the requirements and are vetted to contribute to online course quality continuous improvement efforts, including reviewers, trainers, and implementation partners.

Examples include:

  • Certified OSCQR Reviewers
  • OSCQR Trainers
  • Online Teaching Self-Assessment facilitators

These credentials formally authorize practitioners to lead reviews, deliver training, and support institutional quality initiatives.

Together, these badges create a holistic portrait of professional growth—integrating learning, service, leadership, and impact, while supporting clear pathways from participation to expertise within the SUNY Online Teaching community of practice.

Join the SUNY Online Teaching Community

All SUNY Online Teaching badges are issued through Credly and are freely shareable.

If you have questions or are interested in participating, earning credentials, or exploring how digital badging can support you or your campus initiatives, we invite you to join our SUNY Online Teaching networking community and continue this conversation using #badging.