Learner recognition should not stop at course completion. Digital badges give learners a way to document what they have achieved and share that progress beyond the learning platform. That’s why digital badging is already part of the Edly SaaS learning experience.
Edly SaaS previously supported digital badges through Badgr. Now, with Credly integration also supported, institutions have another option for issuing verifiable digital credentials linked to course and program achievements.
For universities, professional training providers, and organizations delivering online education, course completion is an important measure of learning success. Yet even motivated learners can struggle to stay on track, especially when balancing coursework with professional and personal responsibilities.
One way to make the learning journey more rewarding is to recognize achievement in a way that learners can see, share, and use beyond the classroom. That’s where digital badges for online learning can make a difference.
Unlike conventional completion certificates, digital badges can provide verifiable evidence of specific achievements and competencies. They help learners demonstrate what they’ve accomplished while giving institutions a way to connect educational milestones with professional recognition.
Through its newly supported Credly integration, Edly SaaS can automate badge issuance when learners meet configured course or program requirements. This extends Edly’s existing digital badging capabilities rather than introducing badges for the first time.
For institutions that use Credly, the integration connects learning outcomes with credentials that learners can share with employers and professional networks.
Why Online Course Completion Remains a Challenge
Online learning has made education more accessible than ever. Learners can develop new skills, pursue professional qualifications, and participate in educational programs without the constraints of a traditional classroom.
However, flexibility alone does not guarantee completion. In self-paced learning environments, students must often manage their own schedules, maintain motivation, and work toward goals without the structure of regular face-to-face interaction.
As courses become more demanding, several factors can affect their commitment:
- Competing priorities: Work, family, and personal responsibilities can interrupt learning.
- Limited visibility into progress: Learners may struggle to recognize how far they’ve come or what they’ve achieved.
- Delayed recognition: When achievement is recognized only at the end of a long program, intermediate accomplishments can go unnoticed.
- Unclear professional value: Learners may find it difficult to connect course activities with the skills they want to demonstrate to employers.
- Lack of sustained engagement: Without meaningful feedback, support, and achievable milestones, learners may gradually disengage.
These challenges have implications for learning providers as well. Low completion rates can limit the impact of educational programs, weaken long-term learner relationships, and make it more difficult to demonstrate successful learning outcomes.
Addressing these issues requires more than simply encouraging learners to finish their courses. Institutions need learning experiences that provide structure, relevant feedback, ongoing support, and meaningful recognition. Digital badges can contribute to this broader engagement strategy by making achievements visible and helping learners understand the value of their progress.
What Are Digital Badges in Online Learning?
Digital badges are electronic credentials awarded to learners who meet defined achievement criteria, such as completing a course, passing an assessment, or demonstrating a particular competency. Unlike a simple graphic or completion icon, a verifiable digital badge contains information that helps establish what the credential represents and who issued it.
A digital badge can include:
- Issuing organization: The institution or training provider responsible for the credential.
- Achievement details: The course, skill, or competency the badge represents.
- Earning criteria: The requirements a learner must satisfy to receive the badge.
- Issuance information: Details about when the credential was awarded.
- Verification information: A way for viewers to check the authenticity and context of the credential.
This additional information makes a digital badge more than a visual reward. It becomes a portable record of a recognized learning achievement.
For example, a learner who completes a data analytics course might receive a badge documenting that achievement. By sharing the credential on LinkedIn or in a professional portfolio, the learner can give employers additional context about the training they completed. For institutions, this creates an opportunity to extend the visibility of educational achievements beyond the learning platform.
How Digital Badges Can Support Learner Engagement and Course Completion
The value of digital badges goes beyond recognizing learners after they finish a course. When incorporated thoughtfully into a learning program, badges can help connect educational progress with meaningful outcomes.
Here are four ways digital badges can support learner engagement.
1. Make Learning Progress More Visible
Long online courses can feel overwhelming when learners focus only on the final outcome. Breaking learning pathways into clearly defined stages gives learners smaller, achievable goals to work toward.
For example, a professional development pathway might include foundational, intermediate, and advanced courses, each associated with a separate digital badge.
As learners complete each stage, they gain a tangible record of their accomplishments. This approach can make progress feel more meaningful and provide a clear sense of direction throughout a longer learning journey. However, achieving this benefit requires intentional program design. Badges must be tied to real learning milestones rather than awarded for activities that do not demonstrate meaningful achievement.
2. Connect Learning Achievements With Professional Recognition
One of the challenges of online education is helping learners understand how their coursework translates into professional value.
A certificate may establish that a learner completed a program, but a verifiable digital badge can make specific achievements easier to communicate across professional platforms.
Learners can share badges on LinkedIn, include credential links in their resumes, and add them to digital portfolios. Because the credential includes information about the issuer and achievement criteria, employers can better understand what the badge represents. This creates a connection between completing an online course and building a visible professional learning record. For career-focused learners, that connection may provide an additional reason to pursue their educational goals.
3. Encourage Continued Learning Through Structured Pathways
Digital badges can also support learning pathways that extend beyond a single course. Consider an institution offering a series of cybersecurity courses.
A learner might begin with a foundational cybersecurity course, progress to network security, and eventually complete an advanced security program. If each course awards a distinct badge, the learner can build a collection of credentials that reflects their developing knowledge. Institutions can use these connected achievements to communicate the value of continuing into more advanced programs. Over time, this creates opportunities to support lifelong learning and encourage learners to pursue additional training.
4. Reinforce Achievement Without Replacing Effective Course Design
Digital badges are not a shortcut to higher course completion rates.
Learner motivation is influenced by many factors, including content quality, course relevance, instructional support, workload, and personal circumstances. Research on digital badges also suggests that their educational impact depends on how they are implemented.
A 2024 meta-analysis published in Educational Technology & Society found that digital badges had a significant positive effect on learning achievement, while their overall effect on motivation remained inconclusive. For institutions, the implication is clear: digital badges work best as part of a thoughtfully designed learning experience, not as a replacement for effective instruction or learner support.
When badges recognize meaningful accomplishments and align with learners’ educational or professional goals, they can become a valuable part of a broader engagement strategy.
Digital Badging in Edly SaaS: Existing Badgr Support and Now Credly
While digital badges can add value to online learning, managing them manually becomes increasingly difficult as an institution expands its course offerings.
Administrators may need to track learner eligibility, confirm completion requirements, manage different badge templates, and issue credentials across multiple courses or programs. At scale, these tasks can introduce unnecessary complexity into the credentialing process. Digital badges are not new to Edly SaaS. The platform already supported digital badging through Badgr. Support for Credly is an additional integration option for institutions that use Credly to issue and manage digital credentials.
Credly is a digital credentialing platform that enables organizations to issue, manage, and verify digital badges. Through the integration, Edly SaaS can automate Credly badge issuance based on defined course or program requirements.
Credly support is incorporated into Edly’s existing credentials service, which also supports course and program certificates. Institutions can use the integration without treating digital badging as a separate learning experience.
This allows organizations to connect learning achievements with credential issuance while retaining control over how and when badges are awarded.
How Credly Integration Works in Edly SaaS
The integration follows a configurable workflow that connects institutional credential settings with learner completion outcomes.
Step 1: Connect Your Institution’s Credly Organization
Each Edly SaaS client site, or tenant, can connect to its own Credly organization.
This tenant-specific approach means institutions issue badges under their own organizational identities rather than using a shared Edly issuing account. For organizations running multiple learning programs, independent credential configuration helps maintain control over their badge catalogs, mappings, and recognition requirements. It also allows institutions to align digital credentials with their own branding and educational objectives.
Step 2: Map Credly Badge Templates to Courses and Programs
After connecting Credly, administrators can associate specific courses or programs in Edly with relevant Credly badge groups and templates.
For example, a digital marketing training provider could establish separate badges for:
- Digital Marketing Fundamentals
- Search Engine Optimization
- Advanced Digital Marketing
Each badge would represent a distinct achievement within the overall learning pathway. By mapping the appropriate templates to courses and programs, institutions can create a consistent credentialing structure that reflects the skills and outcomes they want to recognize.
Step 3: Define Badge Eligibility Requirements
Not every learning activity needs to result in a credential. Institutions should award badges when learners satisfy clearly defined requirements.
For the Credly workflow, Edly SaaS supports configurable rules that account for course or program completion and pass/fail outcomes. For example, an introductory course might award a badge when a learner completes all required learning activities.
A more advanced program might require the learner to achieve a passing result before a badge is issued. These conditions help ensure that digital badges represent meaningful accomplishments rather than participation alone.
Step 4: Automate Credly Badge Issuance
Once the badge templates and eligibility rules have been configured, Edly’s credentials service handles the issuance workflow. When a learner meets the designated course or program requirements, the system triggers badge issuance through Credly.
This reduces the need for administrators to manually collect completion records, prepare spreadsheets, or submit individual credential requests. For institutions managing numerous courses and learners, automation helps simplify repetitive administrative work and provides a more consistent credentialing process.
Step 5: Give Learners Shareable, Verifiable Credentials
After Credly issues a badge and the learner makes it available, the achievement can become part of the learner’s professional record. Learners can use Credly’s sharing capabilities to showcase credentials on platforms such as LinkedIn or include credential links in professional portfolios and other communications. Viewers can access the credential’s verification information, including the issuing organization and the criteria associated with the achievement.
This gives learners a practical way to communicate their accomplishments while helping institutions extend the visibility of their educational programs.
Digital Badges vs. Traditional Certificates: Do Institutions Need Both?
Digital badges and traditional certificates serve related but distinct purposes. A certificate commonly documents completion of a course or educational program. A digital badge offers a shareable, verifiable representation of an achievement and can emphasize a specific competency, course, or learning milestone.
Neither format needs to replace the other.
| Traditional Certificates | Digital Badges |
| Commonly document course or program completion | Can recognize specific skills, milestones, or course completion |
| Often delivered as PDF or printable documents | Designed for digital sharing and verification |
| Useful for formal completion records | Useful for communicating achievements across professional platforms |
| Can cover an entire course or program | Can support individual courses and structured credential pathways |
With Credly integration supported in Edly SaaS, institutions using Credly can choose to issue badges alongside Edly certificates or use badges independently. For example, a professional certification program might award both a completion certificate and a Credly badge.
The certificate provides a formal record of completion, while the badge offers an accessible way to share and verify that achievement online. For shorter skills-focused programs, an institution might decide that a digital badge alone is appropriate. This flexibility enables education providers to select credential formats based on their programs’ learning outcomes and recognition needs.
Why Automated Digital Badging Matters for Learning Providers
For universities, corporate training teams, and professional education organizations, successful credentialing requires more than issuing attractive badges. It requires an approach that can support different learning programs, reduce administrative complexity, and provide meaningful value to learners.
Edly SaaS’s existing digital credentialing experience, now with Credly as an additional supported integration, can help institutions simplify this process.
Reduce Manual Credentialing Work
Automated badge issuance reduces repetitive tasks associated with checking learner eligibility and issuing credentials. Administrators can focus more on developing learning programs and supporting learners rather than managing credentials individually.
Maintain Institutional Identity
For institutions using the Credly integration, each Edly tenant can connect to its own Credly organization, allowing the issuing institution to maintain its identity across digital credentials. This helps preserve the relationship between the achievement, the learner, and the organization that awarded it.
Support Credentialing Across Multiple Programs
As institutions introduce new courses and learning pathways, they need credentialing workflows that can accommodate different achievement criteria. Configurable badge mappings and completion requirements make it easier to manage recognition across different offerings.
Give Learners Portable Proof of Achievement
Learning achievements should remain useful after learners leave a course. With Credly integration, badges allow learners to present verified credentials in professional settings, giving their educational accomplishments greater visibility beyond the learning management system.
Create Opportunities for Continued Engagement
When digital badges form part of structured learning pathways, they can help institutions communicate what learners have accomplished and what they can pursue next. This can support strategies focused on continued learning, additional enrollment, and long-term learner relationships.
Best Practices for Using Digital Badges in Online Learning
Making the most of digital badges requires more than connecting a credentialing platform. Institutions should also consider the educational value, consistency, and long-term usefulness of the credentials they issue.
Align Badges With Meaningful Learning Outcomes
Every badge should represent a clearly defined achievement. Avoid awarding credentials for activities that do not demonstrate a meaningful level of participation, knowledge, or skill development.
Establish Transparent Earning Criteria
Learners should understand exactly what they must accomplish to receive a badge. Clear eligibility requirements can also help employers and other credential viewers interpret the achievement.
Design Recognizable Credential Pathways
For programs with multiple courses, consider how individual badges can fit into a broader progression. A structured credentialing pathway helps learners see the relationship between current achievements and future learning opportunities.
Explain the Value of Digital Credentials to Learners
A badge has limited practical value if recipients do not understand how to use it. Provide clear guidance on accepting credentials, verifying them, and sharing them through professional profiles or portfolios.
Measure the Impact Over Time
Institutions should evaluate whether digital badging supports their broader learning objectives. Useful measures may include course completion rates, learner engagement, badge acceptance, credential sharing, and enrollment in subsequent courses. Tracking these outcomes can help education providers refine their badge strategies and identify which credentials deliver the most meaningful value.
Extend Digital Badging in Edly SaaS With Credly
Ready to make learner achievements more visible and valuable?
Digital badging is already part of the Edly SaaS experience through existing Badgr support. With Credly integration now also supported, institutions that use Credly can connect course and program achievements to automated, shareable credentials.
Explore how Edly SaaS can support your institution’s digital credentialing needs, from recognizing meaningful learning outcomes to helping learners share their achievements beyond the classroom.
Contact the Edly team to learn more about digital badges in Edly SaaS and the new Credly integration option.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the purpose of digital badges in online learning?
Digital badges recognize learners for completing courses, meeting specific requirements, or demonstrating competencies. They provide shareable evidence of achievement that learners can use beyond the learning environment.
Can digital badges improve online course completion rates?
Digital badges can support learner engagement by recognizing achievements, reinforcing milestones, and connecting learning outcomes with professional recognition. However, they do not guarantee higher completion rates, and their effectiveness depends on course design and implementation.
What is the difference between a digital badge and a certificate?
A certificate generally documents completion of a course or program. A digital badge can represent a specific achievement or competency and includes information that supports online verification and sharing. Institutions can use both formats together.
Does Edly SaaS support both Badgr and Credly?
Edly SaaS previously supported digital badging through Badgr and now also supports Credly integration. For institutions using Credly, the integration connects to Edly’s credentials service. Institutions can connect their own Credly organizations, map badge templates to courses or programs, define eligibility conditions, and automate badge issuance when learners meet the specified requirements.
Can learners share Credly badges on LinkedIn?
Yes. Credly supports sharing digital badges on LinkedIn and other professional channels. Learners can use credential links to provide additional information about their achievements and enable viewers to verify badge details.
Can Edly SaaS issue both certificates and digital badges?
Yes. Based on the configured credentialing workflow, institutions can issue Credly digital badges alongside Edly certificates or use them independently, depending on the needs of their courses and programs.
