Digital credentialing provides learners and non-degree students with digital credentials for certificate programs and individual courses that are secure, verifiable and easy-to-share. Accredible is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus-supported digital credentialing platform.
- View a sample digital badge on the Accredible platform.
- View a sample digital certificate on the Accredible platform.
Policies
Everyone that receives a certificate for non-credit or non-degree credit-bearing coursework should receive an Accredible digital credential. In this way, the Accredible credentials will be helpful in tracking the conferral of our certificates. Some of our non-credit courses and certificate programs are hosted on the Coursera platform, and we use the Coursera-generated certificates for completion of courses and specializations instead of Accredible credentials.
Credentials
A Certificate of Excellence is received upon completion of a “small-c” non-credit or credit-bearing non-degree program. A certificate program typically consists of three courses, but can be longer or can be as small as a single comprehensive course. Such a certificate would NOT be granted for a “big-C” certificate program, such as the Campus Graduate Certificate or Certificate of Advanced Study, as these result in a diploma and include a separate digital credential not managed by Accredible. A Certificate of Excellence should also indicate the number of credit-hours it represents for a credit-bearing certificate, and can indicate the number of CEU’s or PDH’s for completion of non-credit certificate programs.
A Completion Certificate is received upon completion of a single course that is part of a multi-course non-credit or credit-bearing certificate program. A Completion Certificate can indicate the number of credit-hours earned by completing a credit-bearing course, or the number of CEU’s or PDH’s earned from a non-credit course.
A Completion Badge is equivalent to a completion certificate, and can be used in addition to a completion certificate to represent the completion of a program.
The Skill Badge is the standard credential that can be conferred upon the completion of a skill. A skill badge can be conferred upon completion of a course (or course sequence) that teaches one or more skills, or upon completion of the portion of a course that teaches a particular skill.
The Milestone Badge is a step toward a skill badge. Each of these milestones can result in a milestone badge. Milestone badges are optional and less frequently used than skill badges. A skill badge is not required to be composed of milestone badges. Milestone badges can be used to motivate learners and students through multi-step pathways toward more complex skills.
Procedures
Access. Contact accredible@illinois.edu to request access to the Accredible platform for your certificate program, including a list of your program’s authorized representatives.
Conferral. The OPE Platform Team is currently working on the integration of Accredible into the Canvas LMS (both the Canvas at Illinois used for enrolled students and Canvas Catalog which is available to general public learners). This integration will allow the automatic conferral of Accredible credentials upon completion of a Canvas course or module. Until this integration is completed, Accredible credentials will need to be conferred manually by an authorized member of the program. Until this integration is completed, certificate programs have the option to confer Accredible credentials, but are not yet required to do so. The OPE Platform Team has set up a KnowlegeBase entry documenting the procedure to manually confer Accredible credentials.
Accredible Platform Conventions
Accredible “Departments.” By default, certificate programs all share the same campuswide University at Illinois Urbana-Champaign “department” on Accredible that follows the campus branding standards set up by the University’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing. The OPE Platform Team administers this campuswide Accredible “department” and provides support for any programs using it, via the accredible@illinois.edu e-mail alias. Any unit at the college level or higher can set up its own “department” in the Accredible platform, which can allow college and institute specific branded webpages and credentials, but must first commit the necessary marketing and system administration resources as the OPE Platform and Marketing teams will not be available for its individualized support and administration.
Accredible “Collections.” Since many different programs across many different colleges and other units will operate on Accredible within the same University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign department, each program will need to create an Accredible “Collection,” as described at https://help.accredible.com/how-do-i-create-a-collection. Your program’s “collection” entry will tag your program’s specific groups, credentials and other assets to your program’s collection, such that everyone sharing the campus-wide “department” will be aware of the ownership of each of its assets.