The Story behind
Open Educational Badges
Open Educational Badges is a platform for institutions to make their learners’ skill acquisition visible through digital certificates that are transparent, standardized, and comparable. It is developed and operated by mycelia gGmbH with the support of openSenseLab gGmbH.
mycelia makes learning effective, equitable, and future-ready, bringing scientific insights and educational innovation directly into practice. A key approach is to document skill acquisition transparently, categorize it comparably, and make it usable across educational and institutional boundaries. OEB addresses exactly this by providing a sustainable infrastructure for digital certificates and competency-oriented educational work.
2023–2025: Emerging from MINT.OBadges
OEB originated from the collaborative research project MINT.OBadges, which was carried out by mycelia gGmbH, matrix gGmbH, and openSenseLab gGmbH. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMBFSFJ) as part of the “Mein Bildungsraum” initiative. During the project, an initial functional platform was developed and evaluated in real-world laboratories.
Since 2026, OEB has been systematically further developed by consortium partner mycelia gGmbH. The former partners continue to work together on the vision behind OEB: matrix gGmbH will focus on expanding application scenarios for OEB, while openSenseLab gGmbH will support technical development and test application environments within the NGO and university sectors.
Between 2023 and 2025, MINT.OBadges operated in cooperation with and funded by:
myBadges: Pilot and Foundation
The initial pilot project was myBadges. Its goal was to establish a competency-based credentialing system that makes learning experiences from formal, non-formal, and informal contexts visible. This allowed both technical and social skills to be documented regardless of the learning environment, providing learners with a transparent way to track their progress. During the first pilot phase, six institutions participated, developing over 120 different badges. myBadges was a collaboration between Junge Tüftler gGmbH, mycelia gGmbH, and re:edu GmbH & Co KG, with financial support from the Deutsche Telekom Stiftung.
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