My Skills Backpack – Managing badges on behalf of an earner

Find out how to manage badges on behalf of an earner using My Skills Backpack.

Digital badges are a smart, simple, and visual way of recognising informal learning outside of qualifications. Badges can be included on CVs, shared on social media, and are a great way for people of all ages to show off their skills and achievements.

If you are here because you are the parent / guardian of an individual that has earnt a digital badge via Open Badge Factory using your email address, the information below will support you to accept and manage this badge, and future badges, on their behalf.

For more information about My Skills Backpack you might be interested to read our blog Redesigning Records of Achievement.

1. Issuer issues badge to email address belonging to parent / guardian.

2. Parent / guardian receives email from Open Badge Factory and accepts badge on earner’s behalf.

Please see this guide on how to accept a badge that has been issued to your email address.

3. This step is optional, but a fantastic way to collect and store badges that have been issued to your child / ward.

Use your email address that the badge was issued to create an account on My Skills Backpack to collect and store badges.

For more information:

Functionality within My Skills Backpack - please see this guide.
Getting Started and overview - please see this guide.
Setting up a My Skills Backpack account - please see this guide.

4. This step is optional and may need to take place in the future, but it will enable your child / ward to continue storing future badges in one place.

If/when an appropriate time is reached for earner to gain their own email address (school and / or personal) and be issued badges to it, you can add earner’s email address to the account and verify it.

Instructions for adding additional email addresses to an account can be found in step 15 of this guide.

5. This step is optional and may need to take place in the future, but it will ensure your child / ward retains access to their badges after they are ready to manage their own account.

If/when an appropriate time is reached for earner to operate the account, parent / guardian shares log in information with earner. Note that to keep the verification for their badges issued to the parent / guardian, the earner must keep parent / guardian’s email address on the account.