Badging professional skills in CTE programs

The National Science Foundation's Division of Undergraduate Education awarded a $999,887 Project Grant on August 1, 2025, under the STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076) to SRI International to develop and implement a professional skills badging and micro-credentials system for career and technical education (CTE) programs. Through a partnership with Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California (sub-awardee), the project team will design, test, and deploy badging sequences that enable STEM technician students to document and digitally share evidence of professional skills competencies—including communication, teamwork, lifelong learning capacity, and workforce adaptability—through portable credentials shareable on LinkedIn and resumes. Additionally, the project will create parallel badging frameworks to document faculty learning of instructional strategies for teaching professional skills in their courses.

The project deliverables include: (1) a tested badging sequence framework for student professional skills micro-credentials tied to instructional activities; (2) a badging system supporting instructor integration of professional skills activities and reflections into courses; (3) a strategy for engaging employers and connecting to broader badging ecosystems to build recognition and acceptance of the micro-credentials; and (4) institutional tracking mechanisms for participation, achievement, and workplace validation. The three-year project, concluding July 31, 2028, aims to produce an adaptable badging framework transferable to other community colleges and CTE programs nationally, addressing the field's gap in understanding how badging systems can build institutional capacity to develop STEM technician professional competencies beyond technical skills.

Abstract

Recognizing the growing pressure to deliver career-ready graduates at a reasonable cost, more community colleges are exploring online badges and micro-credentials to provide students and faculty with portable evidence of specific job-relevant competencies. The R & D team from SRI education and evergreen valley college intends to investigate and develop an institutional level badging and micro-credentials program and system. Many badging and micro-credential programs document technical competencies, but the field lacks understanding of how such programs can increase institutional capacity to develop stem technician students' professional skills competencies, such as communication, teamwork, capacity for life-long learning, and adapting to the workforce. The overarching goal of the project is to investigate and develop micro-credential programs for both students and faculty related to teaching and learning professional skills. Stem technical students will use badging to document their development of professional skills for future employment, sharing the badges digitally through linkedin and on their resumes. Stem technical faculty will use badging to document their learning of new instructional strategies to teach professional skills in their classes. Project objectives are to (a) design, test, and implement a badging sequence for professional skills micro-credentials for students to document satisfactory completion of instructional activities; (B) design, test, and implement a badging sequence that supports and documents instructors? Integration of activities and reflections into courses; (C) develop a strategy for engaging employers and linking to badging ecosystems to build acceptance and recognition of professional skills micro-credentials; and (D) explore ways for colleges to track participation, achievement, and workplace testimonials. The team intends the badging sequence framework to be adaptable for use in other college programs and settings. The mixed methods research and development effort is intended to produce three products to guide future badging and micro-credentialing programs for stem technicians' professional skills: (1) a formative evaluation that documents and assesses how to assemble incentives to build capacity for instructors and students; (2) a mixed methods study that tracks how different levels of instructor and student engagement and achievement relate to instructors' teaching confidence and students' career readiness; and (3) a sub-study that disaggregates program trends by instructors' and students' backgrounds and professional experience. By targeting the development of professional skills, the approach aims to establish opportunities and system capacity to foster the participation of a diverse population of highly skilled technicians in stem fields. The project is funded by the advanced technological education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced technology fields that drive the nation?S economy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are planned for this award.