By Foram Gathia, PhD student
What is a digital badge?
A digital badge is a portable, clickable icon that certifies you have mastered a clearly defined skill or completed a learning experience. Each badge carries secure metadata – who issued it, what you did to earn it, when you earned it, and how your achievement was assessed. You can store badges in a digital wallet, add them to LinkedIn or a resume, and share them with anyone, anywhere.
Why earn digital badges?
- Showcase real skills: Badges surface achievements – data analysis, inclusive leadership, lab safety, communication – that don’t always appear on a traditional transcript.
- Boost career prospects: In a Coursera survey, 96% of employers felt microcredentials help a candidate’s application, and 85% were more likely to hire a job candidate who earned a microcredential than one who didn’t.
- Build interdisciplinary competencies: Digital badges capture modular skills that cross traditional departmental boundaries allowing students to demonstrate broad learning.
Badges let students highlight discrete competencies so they can present proof of skills alongside (or ahead of) traditional transcripts, meeting growing demand for skills-based hiring and lifelong up-skilling. Digital badges offer a lightweight but rigorous way to surface the fine-grained learning that degree transcripts often hide helping students tell richer skill stories and help stay responsive in a fast-shifting talent economy.
Digital Badges offered by the UW–Madison Graduate School
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Communication Badge: Recognizes graduate students who can distill complex research into a compelling three‑minute talk, using a single static slide and language accessible to non‑specialists. Earning the badge signals polished public‑speaking skills and an ability to translate academic work for diverse audiences. For more information, visit the 3MT website.
Delta Teaching & Learning Practitioner Badge: Awarded to participants who apply evidence‑based practices to improve student learning in higher‑education settings. Badge holders have designed, implemented, and assessed a teaching innovation, demonstrating data‑driven decision‑making, inclusive pedagogy, and reflective practice aligned with UW–Madison’s Delta Program and CIRTL standards. For more information, visit the Delta website.
Research Mentor Badge: Signals completion of a competency‑based mentor‑training series focused on effective, equitable research supervision. Earners can align expectations, foster professional growth, communicate regularly, and support mentees from diverse backgrounds; they use established mentoring rubrics and assess outcomes to continually refine their practice. For more information, visit the Delta website.