2025 Badge Summit

SkillStack®, Idaho's statewide Open Badges microcredential platform, has been in place for over 10 years. It has been widely adopted across Idaho, with over 40,000 secondary and postsecondary learners earning digital badges. A key use case for SkillStack® is the awarding of microcredentials to high school juniors and seniors enrolled in CTE capstone courses. These digital badging pathways incorporate both written and observed career skills assessments conducted by teachers, serving as indicators of students' career and college readiness. 
Within Idaho, SkillStack® digital badges can potentially be leveraged in various formal and informal contexts to provide prior learning credit, facilitate recruitment into college programs, and offer other advantages to badge earners. However, numerous logistical and technological barriers currently complicate this process, rendering it unclear and burdensome for the badge earners themselves. This presentation will delve into IDCTE's experiences and efforts to articulate and streamline these pathways of opportunity for digital badge learners as they transition from high school to college.