2026 Badge Summit

The market is flooded with "communication skills" credentials that range from rigorous to noise. How do you tell the difference between an assessment that really measures what it claims to and one that doesn't? It's particularly tricky when it comes to soft skills, which are more difficult to measure than technical skills. I present a quality-assurance rubric for assessment uses to help inform employer, higher education, and workforce decision-making.

It evaluates assessment use, meaning an assessment and the context it is used in, as opposed to the assessment on its own. This means there is potential to generate a quality assurance stamp on the issued credential itself. This could help increase employer trust in the credential, complementing existing anti-fraud technologies.

It operationalizes existing industry standards to produce a total score which indicates level of compliance. High-scoring assessments will have ample evidence of validity and fairness. Low-scoring assessments will lack adequate evidence for their claims. Assessment uses with significant issues will receive a red flag or insufficient information score.