Organizing Campus-Wide Graduate Student Workshops Using Digital Badges

Date

8/10/2018

Authors

Baeza, Victor

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

Academic libraries exist in large part to support users and their learning experience at the university. The spectrum of how to do this has widened to include new types of services and resources. The challenge then is to promote the library’s resources to their target audience. A growing trend at universities is to use micro-credentialing (digital badges) to capture the “soft skills” students gain outside of the classroom through various training and workshop opportunities. Libraries can use this trend as an opportunity to become the campus leader in micro-credentialing, using the system to promote their programming as well as to coordinate campus-wide workshop programming. Oklahoma State University Libraries has used digital badges to become the program administrators for the Graduate College, serving as the central organizer of information on campus training activities for graduate students. The Library now organizes workshops offered to graduate students by the Library, Career Services, the Writing Center, the High Performance Computing Center, University Wellness, and the Institute for Teaching and Learning Excellence. The library has also become the location where the majority of the workshops are held, solidifying the library as the hub of graduate workshops. With the success of the program, the Graduate College has turned to the library to support other training activities using the infrastructure developed to support the digital badges. So the Library is providing the new service of organizing workshops for users, just as it organizes other sources of information and learning, while facilitating distribution, awareness and access.

Description

Victor D. Baeza, Edmon Low Library, Okalahoma State University

Keywords

Digital badges, Micro-credentialing

Citation