The number of freelance workers is expected to grow to more than 50 percent of America’s workforce in the next decade. An urgency has arisen to define, create, and articulate credentials that document alternative learning experiences and directly correlate with the skills required in the project-based job market. How can employers determine which soloists have the capabilities and experience that the work demands? And how can soloists showcase their capabilities and achievements so potential employers can reliably identify them?

In this session you will learn about alternative credentials where digital badges promise a level of transparency and verification that will remove some of the friction in the emerging labor market. Discover how IBM, Microsoft, and other organizations use digital badges to motivate, track, and recognize a variety of learning outcomes. You will come away from this session understanding how and why to incorporate digital badges in your own learning and development programs.

In this session, you will learn:

• The importance of creating learning experiences that clearly align with in-demand labor market skills and how badges can serve as an infrastructure for doing so
• How to identify badges that support new solo worker models and those that do not
• How corporations, certification, training programs, and community colleges are using badges to create an unrivaled transparency of skills

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.