Badging: A New Way to Recognize Your Continuing Education Efforts with the FSU Stoops CFC Center
Helping professionals are constantly seeking ways to advance their knowledge and meet continuing education (CE) requirements to maintain licensure. However, there is often little reward for meeting these requirements, and fewer opportunities to share acquired knowledge with colleagues, supervisors and social media audiences.
The Stoops Center for Communities, Families, and Children (Stoops CFC Center) at Florida State University’s College of Social Work is on a mission to change the culture around CE recognition. “We wanted to create opportunities for individuals to be recognized for their hard work,” said Ellen Piekalkiewicz, director of the Stoops CFC Center. “By allowing participants to add a badge to their email signature or social media profiles, they not only showcase their new knowledge but also help spark important conversations about emerging research and best practices.”
The Stoops CFC Center currently offers a range of continuing education opportunities on the center's website. These opportunities include professional certifications and online courses focused on specialized topics, including building childhood resiliency, emotional regulation in children, substance use education for professionals, and substance use education and goal setting for teens.
“We are in the early stages of creating these badges and sending them out to individuals who have taken our trainings in the past and those who will take our trainings in the future,” said Savannah Collier, associate director of the Stoops CFC Center. “The best way to stay up to date with this new change is to join our newsletter. For some trainees, we already have your information and can send your badge directly. For others, particularly those who participated in a free or anonymous training, we will send out a survey through our newsletter so you can request badges for any courses completed in the past. The best way to make sure you don’t miss out is to stay subscribed to our newsletter.” Interested individuals can sign up for the newsletter by visiting cfc.fsu.edu/subscribe.
Looking ahead, as individuals complete course material through the Stoops CFC Center, badges will be available for download automatically. Staff at the Stoops CFC Center are working to develop a page on the center’s website detailing the learning objectives met to receive each badge. This way, when individuals display their badges online, they can link their badge to the Stoops CFC Center website, giving individuals who view the badge more information on the knowledge the trainee received to be able to display the badge.
Contact Savannah Collier at ssmith24@fsu.edu with any questions related to badging and CE recognition through the Stoops CFC Center.