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This paper aims to focus on two areas of digital badge design that impact learner experience: the value and meaning of badges outside of their original context and badge function and platform functionality that impact learner experience.

This research uses a design-based research approach. For this paper, components of badge systems were analyzed to identify the characteristics of learning experiences in each program.

Findings in this paper are from a National Science Foundation-funded project where digital badge systems were co-designed to connect informal science learning with college credit. The badge design principles presented to address the value of badges and badge function and platform functionality, as well as making program design more systematic and using badge design as a conceptual, organizing design framework for improved educational programs.

Though this research is limited in the number of programs examined, the findings provide a framework for the language and standards to discuss and implement digitals badges.

This paper will be of use to programing developers seeking to integrate badges into their educational programs or simply reexamine their educational goals and opportunities for learners.

This paper challenges the conventional use of badges for simply increasing learner engagement by illustrating that the badge design and development process can improve program design and subsequent learner experience rather than serving purely as a learner motivational tool.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse data on first-year students’ needs regarding academic support services and reasons for their intention to leave the institution prior to degree completion. On the basis of the findings, a digital badge outline is proposed which could contribute to improved communication of academic requirements in order to help students to better adapt to higher education demands. Digital badges might also serve as an indicator for students’ needing additional academic support services.

An online-questionnaire was conducted with 730 first-year students at a German university. Participants’ responses to open-ended questions were coded and categorised. On the basis on these findings, an outline for a digital badge programme is proposed.

Participants seek the most institutional support regarding research skills and organisational aspects. Main reasons for participants’ intention to withdraw from the institution include difficulties with their programme choice.

These findings may enable higher education institutions to provide targeted support services that meet first-year students’ needs. On the basis of the findings, higher education institutions can create digital badge programmes, which may improve communication of academic requirements and may also serve as a platform for a staff-student conversation about expectations and demands for a successful first-year experience. Besides, further research and discussion may address using digital badges for learning analytics algorithms to even better identify students’ strengths and needs for targeted academic support services and enhanced student success in higher education.

Little is known about first-year students’ needs for institutional support and reasons for thinking about dropout in Germany. Understanding the student perspective is crucial for enhancing student retention. Digital badges are an emerging educational technology in higher education and they have the potential to target academic requirements, which may guide first-year students and help them to better adjust to universities’ demands.

The concept of digital badges (DBs) as a form of microcredentialing has gained considerable traction in higher education and workplace settings in recent years. This scoping review aims to map the empirical research conducted on DBs in higher education and workplace settings.

The design of this study is a scoping literature review. This scoping review adopts the five-stage scoping framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005).

Based upon our review of the 45 studies that comprised this scoping review of the empirical literature on DBs, we advance a typology that segments the empirical research based on whether DBs are used as pedagogical tools (PTs) or microcredentials. The authors found some confusion regarding nomenclature, numerous theories offered to explain DBs and divergent findings that suggest room for further exploration of this relatively new phenomenon.

This scoping review of the literature helps make sense of the emerging research landscape on DBs. The findings suggest that using DBs as a PT or as a microcredential has implications for a wide range of stakeholders regarding promoting lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling the workforce. With the financial constraints facing higher education in a postpandemic environment, understanding the impact of DBs is needed before making an investment in this arena.

Micro-credentials, which have been widely used in re-skilling and skills development, provide advantages for improvement in the professional career. As a complementary approach to career and professional development in formal education, it can be said that micro-credentials are preferred for supporting professional development and/or to acquiring new skills to find a job in a new field (Fisher and Leder, 2022). This study aims to provide a detailed perspective on conceptual framework and the use of micro-credentials in higher education.

Many questions have arisen regarding micro-credentials, applicability, quality assurance, inclusion in formal educational settings and how to include them in traditional education systems, especially in higher education institutions. Oliver (2019) emphasizes that there is little research on micro-credentials or their derivatives in the literature. There is still uncertainty on micro-credential on behalf of students, employers or employees. In addition, although there are studies on micro-credentials in the USA, Europe and Australia, there is very little research around countries such as Turkey (Yilik, 2021). This study discusses the use of micro-credentials in the world and their reflections on higher education.

As it is shown in this article, micro-credentials have the potential to challenge or complement traditional ways of how learning is taking place, understood, recognized and certified. Research on micro-credentials is still in its infancy and could benefit a lot from more research. Especially research on employers' recognition and appreciation of digital credentials needs to be studied. Also, empirically confirming propositions of literature on micro-credentials could be beneficial.

This study is original in terms of discussing the use of micro-credential in the world and their reflections on higher education and presenting suggestions on this subject.

Alternative credentials are rapidly evolving. The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities arising from this evolution with particular reference to their role in education and employment.

The paper explores the credential initiatives with a unique perspective from introducing alternative credential initiatives that have been influential in recent national policy developments. The paper is led by the experiences of the former General Manager of Microsoft's Education Products Group, former Vice-Chancellor of The Open University and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. His experiences and lessons learnt reflecting on alternative credential development during the last 30 years provides a unique insight in seeing the “signals” and moving beyond the “noise” of micro-credentials for successful integration into educational institutions.

A number of key findings are identified in terms of current development challenges that impact on alternative credential use and identifying further developments. Relevant examples and references are provided throughout, with a particular focus on North America, Europe and Australasia where the most progress has been made in alternative credentials.

Implications for those wishing to develop badging and microcredentialing solutions, especially in higher education, are identified for all seeking to maximise the success of alternative credential systems.

Martin Bean has a unique perspective having explored credential initiatives whilst General Manager of Microsoft's Education Products Group and whilst Vice-Chancellor of The Open University and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. Martin Bean has also been influential in recent national policy developments in Australia. Martin Bean’s experiences and lessons learnt witnessing alternative credential development during the last 30 years across three continents, and within both public and private sectors, are summarised here to provide context for discussions of some of the key global concepts and related work.

The purpose of this column is to express a viewpoint about stackable micro-credentials in the library profession.

This is an opinion piece.

There are no formal research findings.

This is an original viewpoint.

Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) are internet-native self-governing enterprises where individual groups, communities, agencies, consumers and providers work together using blockchain-led smart contracts (SCs). This study aims to examine the role of DAO marketplaces in technology-led autonomous organisation design for enterprise technology sourcing industries, with algorithmic trust and governance.

The authors examined the importance of an enterprise marketplace governance platform for technology sourcing using DAO as a decentralised/democratised business model. A total of 98 DAO products/services are evaluated across 11 industries that envisage DAO as a strategic choice for the governance of decentralised marketplace platforms.

The research findings validate how a DAO-led enterprise marketplace governance platform can create a cohesive collaboration between consumers (enterprises) and providers (solution vendors) in a disintermediated way. The proposed novel layered solution for an autonomous governance-led enterprise marketplace promises algorithmic trust-led, self-governed tactical alternatives to a strategic plan.

The research targets multiple industry outlooks to understand decentralised autonomous marketplace governance and develop the theoretical foundation for research and extensive corporate suitability.

The research underpinnings boost the entrepreneurs’ ability to realise the practical potential of DAO between multiple parties using SCs and tokenise the entire product and service offerings over immutable ledger technologies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is unique and the first of its kind to study the multi-industry role of algorithmic trust and governance in enterprise technology sourcing marketplaces driven by 98 decentralised and consensus-based DAO products across 11 industries.

Since new digital micro-credential technologies emerged a decade ago, there has been a rapid rise in micro-credentials in the education landscape. Much has been promised about these educational technologies, yet there is much confusion by key stakeholders in the digital micro-credential ecosystem. This confusion has led to significant efforts globally to define micro-credentials to ensure quality learning and generate beneficial impacts to learners, employers, education providers and edtech organisations.

This commentary reviews relevant literature on digital micro-credentials and other alternative credentials to determine how these educational technologies can meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to nurture lifelong learning for working learners.

Universities are being challenged to address the changing needs and uncertainty being introduced by the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions, particularly with implications for workforce upskilling and lifelong learning. To adapt, universities will need to rethink their roles and shift their institutional mindsets in how they may approach the challenges through mechanisms such as digital micro-credntials.

This paper focuses on the analysis of five policy statements about micro-credentials. While these policy statements represent a sample, there is a representation of Western education-related systems. Thus, they skew the findings towards Western education systems thinking.

Understanding how micro-credentials are being positioned within education-related systems is useful for applying the educational technologies by, for example, universities, learners and employers.

Provides an overview of how these educational technologies may provide beneficial impacts for society as it plans to adapt to economic uncertainty and change.

The commentary provides a policy context for the emerging use of micro-credential technologies to examine demands for workforce upskilling.

This study aims to analyze the construction of gamification service in university libraries in China and to help university libraries improve service and user experience.

This study took 147 university libraries in China as research object, analyzed the gamification services announced by these libraries on official websites, Weibo, WeChat and other platforms during the period from July 1, 2021 to August 20, 2022, and investigated the gamification services from the four aspects of functions, forms, game elements and mechanisms.

The results show that the gamification service of university library in China is often used in the popularization of scientific and cultural knowledge, information literacy education, reading promotion, library service promotion and library entrance education. Questions and answers, points contests, passing the game level and treasure hunting are common forms of games. At the same time, many gamification services combine game elements such as points, leaderboards and grades with the game mechanism to enhance readers’ participation.

This study investigates gamification services of university libraries in China and provides suggestions for optimizing gamification services, which can provide reference for libraries in China and other countries.

This study argues that to drive users' continuance use behaviors, it is necessary to satisfy their desire for a meaningful experience when using information systems (IS). Therefore, this research explores the influencing mechanism by which gamified IS (immersive-related interaction, achievement-related interaction, and social-related interaction) impacts users' perceived benefits and continuance intention.

In this research, 367 users of Ant Forest are investigated in two waves through random sampling and the use of a structural equation model with SmartPLS 3.0 software.

The research results reveal the following: (1) both achievement-related interaction and social-related interaction can affect the user's continuance intention, while the direct impact of immersive-related interaction on the user's continuance intention is not supported; (2) users' perceived self-benefits fully mediate the relationships between achievement-related interaction and social-related interaction and users' continuance intention; and (3) perceived social benefits fully mediate the relationships between achievement-related interaction and social-related interaction and users' continuance intention.

This study supports the retention effects of gamification design on users' continuance intention by evocating users' dual perceived benefits.