Employer Perceptions of Critical Information Literacy Skills and Digital Badges

Victoria Raish is a PhD Student in the College of Education and Emily Rimland is Sally W. Kalin Librarian for Learning Innovations at The Pennsylvania State University; e-mail: [email protected], erimland@psu. edu. © 2016 Victoria Raish and Emily Rimland, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC. Digital badges are an educational innovation used to measure learning of specific skills, such as information literacy. However, few studies have quantitatively surveyed employers for their perceptions about information literacy skills or digital badges. An online survey was developed and sent to employers to gauge perceptions of information literacy skills of college graduates and the use of the innovation of digital badges to represent competencies that students have accumulated. Here are the results of the survey: information literacy and metaliteracy skills are valued in the workplace; employers would like more detailed representations of student skills; and digital badges are a possible way to showcase student achievement.