Digital Badges
To help prepare for high-impact learning experiences, student participants can complete an online learning module created just for them. Modules contain an engaging collection of content from a variety of sources as well as original content. We have carefully designed each module to help students acquire beginner-level proficiency in their chosen area, whether that is joining a research team, working with a mentor, and many others.
Each module’s main objective is to help students—especially those with little to no experience in their chosen area—develop essential skills and experience. Once a student completes all the content, they take a short assessment to determine whether they have achieved the learning goals.
Students who successfully complete the assessment earn a digital badge. A digital badge is a micro-credential that, like a transcript, proves a student has achieved specific learning outcomes. Students can share digital badges as evidence of their skills on a resume, LinkedIn, or social media. Their digital badge helps students send the signal that they are qualified and ready to take their learning to the next level in high-impact learning experiences and beyond.
Digital badges that can be earned are as follows:
Pre-Mentoring
The purpose of this badging module is to prepare students for the career planning process, which begins with self-assessment and continues with career exploration. This process benefits from engaging with a mentor or advisor, but students benefit from learning about the process and completing self-assessments to prepare for that engagement. This badging module introduces students to the career planning process and guides them through completion of Focus2 self-assessments and interpretation of the resulting data.
Research Basics
Being a researcher is a lot like any other profession: there are expectations about typical types of behavior that are acceptable. How should you behave in order to get along with others and be successful? Researchers must understand norms of behavior and be able to discuss their reasoning in several areas, including ethics, communication, and the proper role of a researcher that arise at multiple different stages of the research process.
Research Methods
An understanding of research methods helps members of a society evaluate, produce, and use evidence to solve major problems. Fluency in methods can help you make a strong case to policy-makers to take action and to realize your vision for a better society. This learning module introduces you to key tools in the researcher’s toolkit, including features and objectives of qualitative and quantitative social science. While all students can benefit from learning about research methods, this module will be especially helpful to students who wish to conduct original research.
Survey Research
This online learning module has been carefully designed to help University of Iowa students gain fundamental knowledge for understanding survey research methods. In addition to learning how to understand published survey research results, including those in public opinion polls, students learn about key considerations for conducting survey research themselves.
To enroll, please fill out this form. You will receive an email from ICON when you've been enrolled in a module.
For additional information on digital badges, check out the FAQ.