We talked about it with Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education, Daniela Mapelli.

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October 2018: after a test period of 1 year with Badges related to extracurricular activities and cross-curricular skills, the University of Padova will start issuing Open Badges concurrent with the end of the degree courses. Initially only for master’s degree courses – starting with Agricultural Science, Veterinary Science, Economics, Psychology – but the aim is to introduce within 1 year open badges for all University courses.


What’s the reason behind the decision by the University of Padova to issue Open Badges for degree courses?

Our university is one of the largest and oldest in Europe and for many years it has actively participated in the meetings of European organisations that contribute to defining guidelines and standards for higher education in Europe, such as the European Higher Education Area. One of the objectives for 2020 was to issue the Diploma Supplement to all students: we were chinese overseas africa database already doing it on demand but from 2018 we do it automatically for all graduates.

A document was published in May (EHEA Paris Communiqué, 25 May 2018) that identifies a strategy for pursuing the objectives of the Bologna process: one of the first steps is to enable the automatic recognition of higher education qualifications in all countries. To achieve this goal, it’s necessary to achieve first one of the other objectives set by European universities: the digital certification of all qualifications in a transparent and practical way.

You cannot achieve automatism without digitalisation: it’s for this reason that Open Badges as an open standard are the ideal solution and they will become even more important once they are certified in the Blockchain.