From Concept to Classroom: Developing Digital Workforce Readiness Badges

Abstract

The evolving demands of the agricultural workforce require skills beyond traditional technical expertise, including communication, teamwork, adaptability, and self-management. These employability skills are critical for fostering innovation and addressing the complexities of modern agriculture. In support of helping community college faculty to address these needs, the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) project developed digital badges for workforce readiness. The project emphasizes the importance of prior knowledge activation and engaging tools to support skill development, drawing from frameworks like collaborative leadership, experiential learning, and gamification. As part of the formative evaluation process, community college faculty members described their experiences and observations of their students. Early discussions with stakeholders noted aneed to help students understand the link between classroom content, co-curricular experiences, and employability skills. The AWT4CL team created digital badges focused on specific employability skills to help students recognize, develop, and demonstrate critical workforce competencies. This paper documents the development process, including stakeholder engagement and formative program evaluation methods that informed the iterative design of the badges.