Colorado Community College System college locations and badging usage.

1. COLORADO COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM BADGE CONSORTIUM
Colorado Community College System is
forming a consortium of 2 /4 year
higher education institutions, business
and workforce to create a digital
badging ecosystem to address
stakeholders (education,
industry/business and workforce)
needs.
CCCS is hoping to build a
comprehensive badge ecosystem where
digital badges convey value through
micro-credentialed learning.

2. THE JOURNEY BEGAN……LATE 2013
▪ An fortunate set of circumstances
▪ TAACCCT grants
▪ Colorado Workforce asked for other types of credentialing
▪ Colorado Industry demanded shorter turnaround training
▪ An unfortunate set of circumstances
▪ School system implement badges wanting them to articulate up to the community
colleges
▪ In 2012, Colorado State University (CSU) committed to developing a digital badge program
that would allow them to address the learning needs of a broader audience. The pilot
program was a non-credit professional development program that unbundled on-demand
and competency based.

3. EARLY 2014….ONE SMALL STEP FOR COLORADO
▪ Collaboration, Collaboration, and More Collaboration
▪ Higher Education
▪ 13 system 2- year colleges, 2 non-system 2-year colleges and 2 four –year institutions
▪ Industry Partnerships
▪ 3 Business to pilot accepting badges as well as issuing badges based on our criteria and where
applicable aligning with transfer articulations between the CCS and four-year institutions
▪ Other ways to acknowledge expertise
▪ Workforce Partnerships
▪ State agency wanting alternatives to:
▪ Credentialing
▪ for-profit trainings
▪ Fast turnarounds
▪ Negotiate, negotiate and more negotiations
▪ Development of a trust network where education/industry/business/workforce agree on the
recognition and acceptance of digital badges and the validation of badges is comprised of
standards, evaluation and evidence.

4. VISIONING ON HOW TO START….2015
▪ Every badge issued or accepted is tied to: specific standards/or competency,
evaluation and evidence of micro-learning.
▪ Created an OPEN Technical Math for Industry MOOC based off the core
competencies of the 2-year MAT 108 Technical Math course
▪ Open for all and however provided an incentive for Colorado residents
▪ provided a loop to lure participants to higher educational institutions in the
state with challenge test for credit
▪ Vision is that the MOOC would be developed which could be the model for a system
wide badging initiative

5. TARGETED BADGES
▪ Badge competencies were targeted at CTE courses to accelerate students into and through
programs
▪ Examples:
▪ Welding AAS has a MAT108 requirement
▪ Stackable welding certificates building up to the AAS no MAT108 requirement. With badging math
competencies, the value of the certificate increases since industry wants students to have certain MAT108
skills in the field.
▪ Certified Nursing Program has no math requirement, but to be successful need to understand ratio, proportion,
percent, and units of measure.
▪ Badge those areas of the MOOC, then their “application” into the program is ranked higher due to the math
badges
▪ Machining requires basic trigonometry and advanced geometry
▪ Stackable certificates do not require math course, students will be able to show math competency required
for most entry level jobs

6. THE ACCELERATION OF THE COLORADO BADGE
MOVEMENT...LOOK OUT…HERE WE COME
▪ Demand from Industry
▪ Shortage of qualified workers
▪ Colorado Advanced Manufacturing Alliance
▪ Economic development
▪ Executive Branch of Colorado state government
▪ CSULogic supports integration with a wide range of networks and applications,
enabling deployment across sectors and industries outside of CSU as licensable
software.

7. CSULOGIC
BADGE MANAGEMENTPLATFORM
▪ Automation of badge delivery and integration with existing systems while remaining
agnostic to learning management systems and student information systems.
▪ Mozilla OBI Compliant – not reliant
▪ Competency based
▪ Leverages proprietary big-data, text mining, and content analysis tools that allow us to
evaluate and identify needed refinements to our curricula, making it possible to keep
our curricula relevant and responsive to learner needs.
▪ The badge management solution has three core functions: badge development, badge
awarding, and badge communications.
▪ Summer 2014 successful pilot of the Colorado State University OnlinePlus digital badge
platform in non-credit programs
▪ Public-Private Partnership
▪ Adaptable for education, industry and workforce badging

8. POTENTIAL BADGING PROJECTS FALL 2015
▪ Apprenticeships
▪ Colorado Technology Association
▪ CAMA?
▪ BASIC?

9. CC BY AND ATTRIBUTION
This Workforce Solution CCCS’s Badging Possibilities Brenda M. Perea is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond
the scope of this license may be available at www.cccs.edu.
This workforce solution was funded by a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of
Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. The solution was created by the
grantee and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of
Labor. The Department of Labor makes no guarantees, warranties, or assurances of
any kind, express or implied, with respect to such information, including any
information on linked sites, and including, but not limited to accuracy of the
information or its completeness, timeliness, usefulness, adequacy, continued
availability or ownership.