New: Badges for online courses
22nd January 2026
Digital badges are now available to online course participants who successfully complete a 2025/6 term-time course. A digital certificate of completion (PDF) is already available to participants following course completion and the badge is a complementary accessory.
Teachers use badges to help build their professional reputation, to provide evidence of having completed a course and to enhance their CV. Their portability and versatility make them very user-friendly, particularly for use with social media and in other digital environments. We therefore expect that participants will find them a useful addition to our courses.
What exactly is a digital badge?
A digital badge is a secure, portable and shareable digital credential. It usually consists of an image with ‘baked in’ metadata containing the information about the badge credentials. The badge’s ‘credentials’ includes, for example, who issued it, for what and for how long it is valid.
A badge may indicate achievement of certain skills or competencies, or completion of specific learning tasks, including course completion.
The Oide Technology in Education online course badges indicate course completion and are valid for just under three years from the date of issue. They follow an ‘open badge’ format. This means that have a defined specification which is verifiable, shareable, and contains course information – including what the recipient did to earn the badge.
Can I download and share badges?
Participants can download badges, adding them to their own, external badge ‘backpack’. You can collect badges from all education sources and share them with colleagues, other education programmes and future employers. You can also display them in social media accounts in order to share them with others.
An FAQ for course participants gives information specific to our online courses learning platform on how to download our badges and upload or save them to an external backpack.
How do I get a badge for my online courses?
All current courses for which participants can earn a certificate of completion now come with a badge as well, indicating course completion. The badge is issued automatically by email once course completion criteria are met, almost simultaneously with the course certificate.
We have also retrospectively issued badges to those participants who completed a 2025/2026 course prior to January 2026.
