Transcription
Good afternoon. I'm Joe Macbeth, the Executive Director of the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals, and thank you for joining us on today's webinar. Last week, the NADSP formally launched our eBadge Academy. After two years of research, design, and testing, we have created a contemporary, accessible, and practical way of recognizing direct support knowledge, skills, and values via digital badges. Many industries and educational institutions are now embracing badging as an indicator of accomplishment or skill that can be displayed, accessed, and verified online. These badges can be earned in a wide variety of environments, an increasing number of which are given online.
Similar to the eBadge Academy, given our industry's well-documented workforce crisis and the lack of innovation to address it, I truly believe that digital badging is the future of direct support skill recognition and potentially one solution to stabilizing the workforce and securing policy support to finally build and fund a career ladder for direct support professionals. I hope you'll join us on this journey toward digital badges and standardized recognition of the complex skills that direct support professionals demonstrate every day.
Now, I want to introduce the architect of our eBadge Academy, the NADSP's Director of Certification and Accreditation, Dan Her Mcdent.
Thank you, Joe. And as Joe said, this is something we've been working on for over two years. We're very excited to be talking about it with you today. Thank you for joining us for this live webinar launching the NADSP eBadge Academy.
Alright, so if you're familiar with NADSP, you've probably seen our mission and vision statements. We have operated a traditional certification program for a little over 10 years now. It was portfolio-based, and some truly wonderful things have come out of it. Those organizations that were able to really invest in it and put a lot of time and effort into supporting DSPs through that portfolio construction process, I think had some really outstanding outcomes. It's really been a privilege of mine to review portfolios that have come in over the years. You really get to see all the wonderful work that's being done by DSPs across the country.
The problem we were having with that traditional certification program is that we just weren't reaching enough DSPs. We know that program was somewhat intimidating. It was somewhat intimidating for DSPs, and it was certainly intimidating for the employers of DSPs. You're putting a tremendous amount of work into this portfolio, and all the feedback came at the very end of the process, often over a year later, you would find out how you were doing.
So, in terms of our mission and vision statement, we want a world with a highly qualified professional direct support workforce. We want to elevate the status of direct support professionals. We want to promote knowledge, skills, and values. And after 10 years, best estimate, we have reached maybe half of 1% of the direct support workforce with that traditional certification program. And that's just not enough. We need to reach more DSPs. We need more DSPs involved in certification.
So, again, something you'll see from NADSP often is this Venn diagram. We truly believe that in order to provide quality support, there are three necessary components: you have to have knowledge, you have to have skills, and you have to have values. And if any of those components are missing, you're going to run into problems. And we also very firmly believe that that quality can really only be effectively measured at the point of interaction. You have here on the screen a quote from our John F. Kennedy Jr. from back in 1996: "Quality is defined at the point of interaction between the staff member and the individual with a disability." And as we've built the eBadge Academy, what we've tried to do is make sure we're incorporating all three of those components: knowledge, skills, and values, and try to make sure, as best we can, that we're measuring that quality at the point of interaction.
So, in terms of that Venn diagram, we're going to briefly touch on each of those components. In terms of knowledge, we use the NADSP accredited training programs in the eBadge Academy. These are the lists of those training programs. You can also find this on our website. We have many different training curricula that have gone through our accreditation process and have been accredited by NADSP, and you can use any of these programs as part of the eBadge Academy. While there are many options, probably the three most popular are the College of Direct Support, Relias, and Open Future Learning.
In terms of skills, NADSP does have a set of competencies. We have 15 competency areas that we feel are vital in direct support. They're skills that direct support professionals need to have competency in, and these were the basis of our traditional portfolio-based certification. We did make a little bit of a change in the eBadge Academy, though. Rather than using our own set of competencies, we are using the CMS core competencies in the eBadge Academy. There are a lot of similarities between CMS's competencies and our own, but one difference is the CMS competencies are written in a way that they're designed to be cross-sector. They're designed to apply equally well to any type of human services that might be provided under CMS.
And of course, there are also frontline supervisor competencies. We won't dwell much on these today, but with the eBadge Academy, this is an area we want to expand into. We want to expand into badges that allow supervisors to showcase their skills, their knowledge, skills, and values as well.
No matter which competency set you're using, the format is very similar. In each of these, there's a kind of an opening paragraph or sentence that we call the overall competency language. This is usually pretty general language that describes what the competency entails. And then underneath that, there will be bullet points of some kind, and we call those bullet points skill statements. The skill statements are much more specific, much more measurable. And in the eBadge Academy, each of our badges is tied to a particular skill statement from the CMS core competencies.
And of course, in terms of values, we really feel the values of this profession are described in our NADSP Code of Ethics. If you're not familiar with it, I encourage you to go onto our website, read our Code of Ethics. We could certainly spend a whole day talking about this Code of Ethics, that's not what we're here to do today, but I think you'll see how it's incorporated into the eBadge Academy.
Alright, so what is an eBadge? An eBadge is a digital micro-credential. It is a credential that recognizes one particular achievement or one specific skill. And because it's an electronic badge, it can be posted online. You can collect them online, share them on social media. It links to the supporting information. And NADSP badges use what's called the Mozilla Open Badges platform, which is also used by many other educational programs, corporations, universities. We have that same format, which allows our badges to be uploaded to what's called the Mozilla backpack, which makes them very portable for DSPs that are in these badges.
And to kind of start introducing individual badges, we want to start by talking about the Code of Ethics Commitment badge. With this Code of Ethics Commitment badge, it's a really straightforward badge. You simply commit to provide services in line with the NADSP Code of Ethics. You check a box that says, "Yes, that is the case. I do agree to that," and then you will be issued this badge. This Code of Ethics Commitment badge is a prerequisite for every other badge in the eBadge Academy, so you have to earn this badge first.
Once you get beyond that Code of Ethics Commitment, you're going to find there are currently at least two major categories of badges. We have a group of badges we call Accredited Education badges. And if you think back to that Venn diagram, these are badges that focus on knowledge. And to claim these badges, you would simply upload your training records that document that you have the appropriate number of hours completed in an NADSP accredited training. So you remember earlier, we showed you that list of accredited training programs. Hours in any of those training programs can be uploaded through you get your transcript, you get your certificates, you upload those documents to the eBadge Academy to claim Accredited Education badges.
The other badge category is Core Competency badges, and these focus more on skills and values. And with these badges, we're asking for a testimonial to be uploaded. A testimonial is really just a direct support professional who's applying for the badge, telling a story, giving an example of their work that lines up with the requirements for this badge. And so that testimonial, it could be written, it could be typed up, it could also be an audio recording. You could pull out your smartphone and make a recording of yourself just telling the story, replying to the prompts for this badge, and upload that audio recording instead of a written submission.
And when there will be prompts for each badge, each badge has its own set of two prompts. Every badge has two prompts to get you started in the process of putting together your testimonial. The first prompt is always focused on skills, and usually, it's just asking for an example of your work that demonstrates the skills that are aligned with this badge. The second prompt is always about values, and often the second prompt will ask you to explain why things should be approached in a certain way, explain how your work aligns with the Code of Ethics. But the second prompt will always kind of ask you to reflect on the values of our profession and how the values of our profession are demonstrated in this example of your work.
And here's an example. Here's our Community Networking badge. And this Community Networking badge aligns with Skill Statement 10a from the CMS Core Competencies. Skill Statement 10a says: "The DSP encourages and assists individuals in connecting with others and developing social and valued social or work roles based on his or her choices." And that comes from the Community Inclusion and Networking CMS Core Competency. We also cross-walked all these badges to our original 15 NADSP competencies, and in this case, it aligns with the Community and Service Networking NADSP competency area.
And like every badge, this badge comes with two prompts. So when you are composing your testimonial for this badge, we would want you to describe one example where you used community networks to help a person you support make connections in their community. And for the second prompt, the values prompt, to explain why it is important for DSPs to assist people in making connections to people or resources in their community.
We did a pilot program for the eBadge Academy, and this is a submission we got for this badge in that pilot program. And this DSP, first of all, assigns a false name to the person that they're assisting, says, "We'll call him Roy." And that's something that's very important to us. We don't like any individually identifiable information to be uploaded to the eBadge Academy. In fact, that would be a reason we'd have to deny a badge application if you included someone's personal information. Confidentiality is one of those tenets of our Code of Ethics.
So, this DSP describes working with Roy, taking him to the local library where he can get on the library computers, he can read the news, he can learn about things he's interested in like the New York Yankees, music. He can get on Facebook. He's making social connections through Facebook. He's reestablished contact with some of his family members through Facebook, and this has helped him feel more connected. So that is the response to the skills prompt, to the first prompt. And then the second paragraph here is tied to that values prompt. And says, "Why do you think this is important?" DSP says, "I think it's important for DSPs to help people to go to the same places that everyone else goes to get to know people." And they go on to say, "Based on my short of a close relationship with Roy, I believe he's learned to trust me, and so now he can form his own relationships and community connections."
So, when that submission comes in, it's going to go to an NADSP badge reviewer, and that badge reviewer is going to ask themselves four questions. I can ask themselves: Does that testimonial demonstrate the skill statement? Did that example of that DSP's work align with Skill Statement 10a? Did it actually demonstrate that skill? Did the testimonial address the first prompt for this badge? Did they actually answer that prompt that we asked them to? Skills prompt. Did it address the second prompt, which was that values prompt? And is this work in line with our Code of Ethics, including that very important tenet on confidentiality? And in this case, as someone who has reviewed eBadges, I can tell you that yes, the answer to all four of those questions would be yes, and therefore, this badge would be awarded. And that's our review process. It's designed to be a really straightforward review process so that we can turn these around quickly. Our commitment is that we'll get back to each badge application within three business days, whereas in our traditional portfolio-based program, that was a much more detailed review process, but it took us up to 90 days to complete. So we want to be able to respond quickly. If there is any confusion, any misunderstandings about expectations, we want to make sure that's clear at the beginning of the process and not later in the process. There's already been a tremendous amount of work.
So, I just real quickly want to show you all the badges. There is a way that you can see these by going into the badge catalog. There's a link to that on the NADSP website, and I believe Nicole is going to be adding it to the questions feature on the webinar as well. So, these are our Accredited Education badges. We have five levels at different numbers of hours. And I do want to explain, these are cumulative totals. So when you get your 10-hour badge, you would just need 15 more accredited education hours to qualify for that 25-hour badge, and then when you have 25 additional hours beyond that, then you would have 50 total, so you could apply for that 50-hour badge and so on. And just to be clear, this does have to be NADSP accredited training. There are many wonderful training programs out there, but it does have to be training that's gone through our accreditation process in order to be recognized for the eBadge Academy.
The Core Competency badges are broken down by competency areas, and each competency area has its own little graphic. So all the badges in these competency areas will have the same graphic. So we have two Communication badges at launch, we have six Person-Centered Practices badges at launch, two Evaluation and Observation badges at launch, three for Crisis Prevention and Intervention, four for Safety, two for Professionalism and Ethics, two for Empowerment and Advocacy, four for Health and Wellness, two for Community Living Skills and Supports, three for Community Inclusion and Networking, three for Cultural Competency, and three for Education, Training, and Self-Development.
And I think what's really exciting is that you can put these badges together to apply for NADSP certification. So just like our traditional certification program, we have three levels: DSP1, DSP2, and DSP3. To earn a DSP1 certification through the eBadge Academy, you would need to compile 15 badges. Of course, one of those would have to be the Code of Ethics badge. We would need you to have the 50 hours of Accredited Education badge, and then we'd want at least one badge from four of those core competency areas: from Crisis Prevention Intervention, from Safety, or Person-Centered Practices, from Health and Wellness. So at least one badge in any of those areas in your DSP1 application.
At DSP2, it would be 30 total badges. Of course, one of those would be your DSP1 badge that you'd already earned. We would need you to have the 100 hours of Accredited Education badge, so you'd have 100 hours of accredited education at this point. And then of your 30 badges, at least one of them would have to be an Evaluation and Observation, at least one in Communication, at least one in Professionalism and Ethics, and at least one in Community Inclusion and Networking. Now, you don't have to wait until your DSP1 is finished to work on those areas. Your Communication badge may have been the second badge you ever earned, right after your Code of Ethics badge. As long as one of your 30 total badges is in that area, it would meet that requirement.
At the DSP3 level, we would need 50 badges. Of course, one of those would be the DSP2 badge. And we would need at least one badge from the remaining four competency areas that we haven't required previously. There are 12 CMS Core Competencies, and by the end of DSP3, you need to have at least one badge in all 12 of those.
And this is not something that exists at launch, but we are looking to expand into badges based on the frontline supervisor competencies. So coming soon, there will be additional badges. We want to constantly be adding badges to the eBadge Academy. We never want it to be a finished product. We always want there to be new badges for people to pursue. And one of the areas we want to expand into is these badges that showcase supervisor skills. So frontline supervisors will have access to these badges as well.
Alright, I think it's time to get out of the slideshow and take a look at the eBadge Academy. I'm going to turn things over to my colleague, John Raphael, who's going to apply for some badges. I can't wait.
Hi everybody. This is going to, I think, illustrate really clearly the process. So I'm going to act as if, you will, somebody that's brand new to the eBadge Academy, and I'm going to claim a few badges and show everybody. And with Dan's assistance here, this process using the platform, the exact platform that you would be using as a direct support professional or anybody that's going to be part of the eBadge Academy. So here we go. So I'm interested, and I work for an organization that has this great badge Academy going, and here I am. I'm very intrigued by this. And so what's the first thing I'm going to do, Dan? I mean, obviously, my organization has advertised that they're doing an eBadge program, and I want to be part of it. So what are some of the first steps I'm going to do?
Well, you'll need to start with the Code of Ethics badge. That's the prerequisite for all other badges. So yeah, if you hover over it, just like that. Look at that. You know, there's a link there to our Code of Ethics if you'd like to review it. Make the screen bigger here. Alright, but yeah, if you click on the title up at the top, you can select the "Get It" button because you'd like this badge. So I have to, to enter into the eBadge Academy. This is something that's a requirement, right? I've got to get this badge.
Go, and we're not logged in. Oh, we've timed out. Okay, so here we go. This is a, this is exactly why we're showing you how easy this is. We just do this. That's right. I'm putting my password in. Hopefully, this will work. Oh, I think I see. I see. I see. I see. Well, this is good to know that it does log out to protect your, obviously, protect your information and your identity and all that kind of stuff. There we go. Okay.
So, given that you don't time out, I have clicked on, as you saw just before we had the re-entry, enroll the Code of Ethics, the Code of Ethics Commitment badge. So here it is, and you can read all about it, but I want to enroll. Yeah, and the way that the system is set up, it treats each badge as a course. Now, it's not a course in any traditional sense, but you do have to enroll in the badge course to have access to the process here. And again, you've got links to the Code of Ethics there if you need to review it.
Excellent. Like that. Go right to code. And there it is. I would, if I'm somewhat unfamiliar with the code, or I've just learned about it, and I'm, I probably should read it. And here it is. It's all linked there for you. So that said, I'm going to commit. You're ready to commit? And I believe it. And here we go. "I agree to provide services in line with the NADSP Code of Ethics." I'm going to tap that, save my choice, and my choice has been saved. And so this goes out into the ether. And this will, Dan, will this get reviewed by anybody?
This badge does not require a review. So I am looking now at the fact that go back to your dashboard, perhaps. We already have the Code of Ethics badge. There it is. There it is. So there's my dashboard, and my end game here is to probably fill up this dashboard with badges. But obviously, as we talked about, I've got to start with the NADSP Code of Ethics.
So let's, let's, I want to claim some other badges. How about this, some accredited education? If you've got some accredited education, we can claim an accredited education path. Got it. So I say, my organization uses Open Future Learning, and I've got some transcripts from what I've done at Open Future Learning, and what I've learned, and that's an accredited educational program that's accredited by NADSP. So I'm going to apply for, I've got about 10 hours of education credits that I want to get credit for. And there it is. And so I'm going to enroll in the 10 Hours Accredited Education badge, and I'm going to upload my training records. And maybe you want to explain this a little bit, Dan?
So whatever format you have, it could be certificates, it could be transcripts, but you would tell us what curriculum you were drawing. Let's see all the different accredited education programs. We're going to choose Open Future Learning, and I am going to download, upload, upload, download, sideload. I'm done. You see, I'm not that versed at this technology. Uh-huh. I'm going to upload a transcript. And here it is. It, you can see it on my screen here, right? It's a transcript on an Excel spreadsheet, John Open Future Transcript. And let me just, I'll just show you quickly. I'll open it up so you get a chance. There it is. And this is not real. This is just to show you, give you an idea of what to, you know, what you can upload to this platform. So I'm going to take this and drag it right into here. Oops, hold on here. Yeah, it doesn't like. Oh, doesn't like me. Well, okay. Well, I'm going to put that in there. No, I'm going to put a PDF in there because I think it will accept PDFs, right? Looks that PDF. So I might want to make sure that whatever I'm going to drag into that box to submit is acceptable by this platform. And that's, so I just probably have to go in there and tweak it a little bit. So there it is. That's obviously not my transcript, but it is something that would represent a transcript. I'm going to submit this, and here we go. It's gone.
So that is going to go to a reviewer. Okay. And the reviewer is going to open up your transcripts. Okay. I'm going to verify that it is an NADSP accredited training program. I'm going to verify that it does represent the appropriate number of hours. Okay. And then they would be approving, if those things are truly, approving that submission, and you would have a 10-hour badge. Okay.
So say, okay, it's way too, it's whatever Tuesday afternoon, and I've submitted this thing, and somebody in, you know, in the NADSP offices are going to be opening it, checking it out. It could be an hour later, a couple hours later, maybe a day later, but I will then get notified, right?
Alright, maybe we can get someone to review that as well more quickly. Maybe we can get somebody to review it, then we can show everybody on this webinar exactly how that's gonna work when I get approved. Take a look here. Oh, that's a little notification on the badge I earned earlier. That's the Code of Ethics badge that I have earned. But this, see this over, you can see where I'm hovering the cursor, there's a message, a message bell, and dashboard. And I'm going to take a look here. I'm getting approved as we speak. I refresh one word. I'm going to refresh. Oh, look at that. I've got another badge. I have obtained my first actually claimed badge where I've submitted my documentation about my accredited training. And look at that. I have a badge that indicates that I have 10-hour accredited training. This is great. This is great.
But I want to go a little bit deeper, Dan. I want to claim another badge. I want to claim a badge that shows my competency in documentation and completing documentation. So here we go. There's the Completing Documentation badge. So I'm going to hover over it and I'm going to earn this. I'm going to earn this badge right now. And here we go. And it's interesting. I'm going to get this badge because what's happened is I have done some real, in my opinion, some very important work in using documentation to make somebody's life much better. So I'm going to enroll in this badge completion and I'm going to submit my testimonial. So it's a little bit, yeah, that submit your testimonial. Okay.
Notice that those, those prompts are right there. So there are always two. The first one always focuses on skills. Yeah. So John, we need you to describe an example in which documentation you completed made a positive difference in the life of a person that you support. Got it. And then secondly, we need you to explain how this completion of documentation in your example aligns with the NADSP Code of Ethics.
Well, tell you what, I've done. I have created an audio recording because I don't feel comfortable writing. I'm not a great writer. So I recorded it on my phone. We have a recording program, and I've transferred it into an MP3 document, and I'm going to, I want to submit that. Do we want to hear a little bit, or do you want, what do we want to do, Dan? Do we want to submit it?
Okay, why don't you just tell us about the example? And then we can, behind the document, very quickly over the, when I worked doing direct support, I worked with a person who had a dual diagnosis, person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and a diagnosis of intellectual disability. And this person would cycle and would get violent and would, would, would, would threaten the community with bombs. And although she wasn't in fact dangerous in that sense, but her quality of life was limited because she would be constantly getting in trouble because she was making bomb threats to a local store, specifically. And so I kept documenting this and when she would, most of the times in which she was more likely to do these bomb threats and get this anger and almost manic behavior that she had. And very long story short, and I actually recorded this on, what I'm going to submit in this example, I worked with her psychiatrist and showed the psychiatrist the documentation. And what the psychiatrist, who worked with this woman very closely and who would work with her medication and psychopharmacology routine, he noticed things in the documentation that I was, when I created over several months, and she had patterns when she would walk near this store. This store represented something for her, apparently, and she would, she would target this store. But of, again, a very long story short, what was in the store was something that reminded her of her family, and her family that basically kind of rejected her and threw her. You know, what was going on inside of her, and in her journey through her mental illness, she didn't, she didn't know what to do other than to threaten that store with violence because she was so upset at losing her family and not being able to be near her family. And because of the documentation that I was able to complete, along with that psychiatrist basically reading between the lines and looking at patterns that this woman was having based on what I documented, it allowed him to help her get a different kind of medicine and discuss some of the pain and grief she had about losing her family to her placement. So that's essentially a documentation.
That's your, you describe the example. How do you feel that connects up with the NADSP?
Because of that, well, two things, I think. One, when it comes to somebody's health and wellness and promoting physical health and wellness, nobody's going to have a real good quality of life or have empowerment if they are constantly being arrested for bomb threats, let alone being put into a position where they're over-medicated and wrongly mis-medicated. And through this documentation process, I think I was able to help this particular person get a better psychopharmacology regimen and promote her emotional and physical well-being, which is one of our tenets. And I included that in this recording.
So as you are listening to this, this is all you can, you're not going to listen to it, but this is what I'm submitting. I'm submitting a recording of what I just shared with Dan into this submission for the documentation. And I'm going to submit it, and it's going to NADSP badge headquarters where it's awaiting review. As you can see by this little chart here, and so you'll be able to monitor anything that you've submitted and have a basically a real-time understanding of where it is in the queue and where it is in terms of its review. But as Dan said, we'll try to get results back to the learners within three business days, which is pretty, which is pretty quick. So it's being reviewed right now at headquarters. I can see it. And you'll see my badge. And I'm just, in a moment, we refresh the screen. Oh, here's my badge. I previously got a few minutes ago, the one on accredited indication. There's that one. And any minute now, you're going to see, huh, we, yeah, we hope soon you're going to see my badge on creating documentation.
Just while we're waiting in these few seconds, I think one real interesting thing about the eBadge Academy's, but specifically the catalog, a lot of direct support professionals, I think they do know that they're good in certain areas, and what they can do is they can almost, they can kind of handpick, cherry-pick, if you will, areas in which they're really good. That they can, you know, maybe they're good at crisis intervention and prevention, maybe they're really good at helping people with household maintenance, what have you. But our badges, because they're aligned with the CMS Core Competencies, with the NADSP Direct Support Competencies, direct support professionals will have an opportunity to really shine. And here we go. Here's my badge. I just earned. Oh, look, I earned the Completing Documentation badge. That is so cool. There it is. My Completing Documentation badge. And so if I click on that, I'm going to see some of the details that went into the review of that badge and some other stuff.
So another option you have there, John, if you go back to that Completing Documentation book, you have that button that allows you to add to your Mozilla backpack. Okay. So what is a backpack? When I think of a backpack, I'm thinking of the thing that I take on the airplane with me. But what is it?
Mozilla backpack is a website where anyone can set up an account, and you can post all your badges, not just your NADSP eBadge Academy badges, but any badges you earn from anywhere that are consistent with the Mozilla standards. And they can be posted there. From there, they can be shared on social media. You can just have all your badges in one place that belongs to you. There it is. There's my backpack, my backpack account. So I want to add it to my backpack. So here we go. I got to log into my backpack. Yeah, we timed ourselves out here. And that was, sorry about that. We are along with it, but you're also seeing the inner workings of how this is going to work, I mean, directly for you. There we go. Aha, there's my backpack. There we go. Aha, there's my Completing Documentation badge. And as I scroll down, and as I accept this badge to go into my backpack, I've sent one badge to my backpack. So I should go look at my backpack and do a little refresher. My backpack. And there it is. Completing Documentation.
I want to add more badges to my backpack, Dan. So what do I do? I just go to my dashboard, and I want to add my Code of Ethics Commitment badge. I want to add that to the backpack. I want to send that to the backpack. Ooh, there it is. There's the Code of Ethics Commitment. I'm going to accept that badge. And here it is. Come look at my backpack, Dan. Look at my backpack. Look at that. Though, there's my second badge. And it goes on. I think everybody can see exactly what's going on here.
So that said, that gives you, I think, a pretty good rundown of what it looks like to claim a badge. Now, John, at some point, you may would they like to go for a DSP1 certification, for example?
That's right. We might jump back into the catalog real quick and enroll you in that. Order at the NADSP logo. Alright, I want to, I want to start getting my DSP1. So the whole time you've been working on your badges, you know, the system has been tracking, well, what you've been doing, what requirements have been met. How do I enroll?
So I'm enrolling. And here I am. There's some introductory language to explain to you, you know, how this process works. But if you're going through the DSP1, you would need to have a Code of Ethics Commitment badge, and you'll know the boxes checked. You haven't, you've met that requirement. That's neat. You have a 10-hour Accredited Education badge, but we're going to need to get you up to 50 hours. Once you get your 50-hour badge, that box will be checked. And you know, we've, at some point, you're going to do a Crisis Intervention badge, at some point, you'll do a Safety badge. But your documentation badge falls into the competency of Person-Centered Practices, and so that box is checked. So as you accumulate badges, this course will be tracking what requirements you're meeting, and when all the requirements are met, you will have access to a DSP1 certificate.
That's great. Well, that's good to know. Thank you, Dan. Back to home, I guess, right?
Yeah, let's go home. And there's my dashboard with all my badges. There it is. I think for everybody watching, I think you get a clearer picture of of what our platforms are looking like here and what not only the dashboard for the eBadge Academy looks like, with the backpack for keeping your own, keeping your badges.
Now, Dan, I know there's one feature of the badges that I can share these. So what do I do with these badges once I have them? Do I print them out? Do I put them on my refrigerator? Do I wear them? What do I do?
You could do all those things to finish, but what you might like to do is post them on social media. Yes, I have a Facebook page or a LinkedIn account or Twitter, or so you do have to put them into a collection because you decide, you know, which badges are going to be visible to the public. So I want to take these two badges, and then I want them to go somewhere. Yeah. So up there at the top, you can share on various social media plugins. So if I want to put them on my Facebook account, which I'm going to do, can I do that right there? There it is. I'm going to share them to my Facebook account. Here's my Facebook account. I'm going to log into that because, of course, I logged out of that. And uh-uh, I just got my NADSP eBadge, rather. So I'll post this to my Facebook page. There it is. So if I go to, but I'm not going to do it right now, but if I go to my Facebook page, it's going to be there, right? Yep. And I'm sure all your friends will be liking and commenting and congratulating you on this achievement. That's wonderful. That's absolutely wonderful. So that said, and if we have a Twitter, if I have a Twitter account, LinkedIn, Google+, use that. So that's pretty neat. Wonderful.
So that said, anything else before we go back to the slides?
Let's go back to the slides. And alright, so just to kind of summarize, I think you can see how this works. I think you can see we worked very hard to make it very flexible. There's sort of this buffet of badges, and not every badge is a good fit for every DSP, but we hope to provide enough options, especially as we add to the program, that every DSP can find different skills they have that they would like to showcase. It's flexible in that way. We didn't talk about it today, but the way that we set this up is that there will be a local administrator at each agency that purchases the eBadge Academy. That local admin will be able to enroll and unenroll learners as needed, but they'll also be able to look into things, run reports, check on people, oversee the process at a local level. I hope you can see how we're really focused on the practical skills at the point of interaction. This is not like a multiple-choice test. This is not just answering a question right and then not necessarily applying it on the job. Badges are given, the core competency badges are given for being able to use your training on the job. So the accredited education badges are about getting those training hours. The core competency badges are about demonstrating that knowledge on the job, taking what you learned in training and actually applying it in the lives of the people that you support. And, you know, lots of DSPs, I know, are full of these great stories that they could use as testimonials. They've got already examples they could use to apply for badges. But at some point, you might run out of stories and you might be looking for opportunities to do work that aligns with a badge. And so you'll be, you'll be looking for opportunities to do really high-quality work because you need an example of that really high-quality work that you can do for a badge submission. I think it's really informative in terms of looking at someone's badge collection. You can really easily see what their skill set is. And, you know, this is good for DSPs who maybe do at some point decide to change jobs and go into an interview at another provider. But it's also good for those providers. If a DSP can come in and show exactly what skills they have, that helps you to not only know that they're highly skilled but match their skills with people who might need support. And again, you can, as a local admin, go in and read these reports and check on the status of your learners. I know we're going to get questions about pricing. So here's that pricing slide. This is also available on our website. The price on the eBadge Academy would be between $50 and $80 per user. The more users you're enrolling, the more seats you're purchasing for learners, the lower the price per learner goes. And if you're an NADSP member, we are going to give you a substantial discount as well. We do want to remind you to check out Frontline Initiative, that's our newsletter on direct support practice that we produce in collaboration with our friends at the University of Minnesota. And we do want you to be sure to be able to go out and find additional information. So we've got some links here. There is a page on the NADSP website that showcases all the things we've talked about. Anyone can go into that eBadge catalog. You don't have to have an account to see the catalog. So if you want to just go browse through the badges, that's available to anyone, even without a purchase account.
My belief, thank you, Dan. I think we have a little bit of time for some questions. We have questions that have been written, and Nicole's going to join us. Nicole, our office, the brains behind this technology, our office controller, our office manager, just kind of give us a few questions that we can hold on here. Do you see any questions, Nicole, that Dan and I haven't answered or Dan has answered?
So one question I am continuously getting is, will the slides be sent to the participants or will they be available?
This webinar is going to be available to everyone. And I just want to, yeah, we're going to make this recording available. So that's probably the low that we disseminate the slides. It's through a recording of the webinar.
Okay, so the next one, a couple of people have asked as well, what happens to those who have already achieved an NADSP DSPR and are working towards a DSPC?
Well, I mean, now there are two paths to that DSP1, or we also called the SPC1 certification. So it's two paths, it's two routes to the same destination. So I think organizations that employ DSPs, you now have options. You can go through our traditional portfolio-based process, and I know there are organizations that are really heavily invested in that process and that are making it work very well, and that's great. We're going to continue that. We're not going to take it away, but you now have an additional option, which would be to pursue those levels through the eBadge Academy.
Do the badges expire?
The individual badges do not. You know, as you're accumulating these things, we've thought about this, and that would just be too many expiration dates to keep track of. But what we're going to do with the DSP1, DSP2, and DSP3 levels, if you're continuing your professional development, if you're at a DSP1 and you're going to get DSP2 within a year, that DSP2 would of course take the place of needing to recertify at the DSP1 level. If you're going to stay at the same level, we are going to introduce some badges that are basically renewal badges where you are renewing your DSP1, DSP2, or DSP3 status for the next calendar year. So that's going to be some additional badges that show up on the eBadge Academy.
Who are the reviewers?
We have reviewers all over the country. And right now, they're people that have existing connections in NADSP, people we know, people that were interested in doing this work and participating. We hope this program will grow to the point where we can't just rely on our friends. And so in the future, we might be looking to hire some additional reviewers, but we have, we have reviewers in mind and assigned initially.
Okay, is there a way for folks to record their audio testimonial directly into the website versus having to upload a file?
Unfortunately, no. You would have to, you would have to have the file and then upload it.
Do you know of any other institutions that also use the Mozilla backpack?
At the top of my head, I probably wouldn't remember them accurately, but there are several colleges and universities that use badging that is consistent with the Mozilla guidelines. Many corporations, especially in the tech sector, have gone to a badging platform for their professional development of their employees. So I don't want to try to remember exactly which, but they're definitely out there.
Nicole, I'm looking at the questions too, and there's a really interesting question that speaks to me in terms of what we've struggled with for years. How would the badges transfer from one agency to another if a staff member was to decide to work for another company that utilizes the eBadge program?
And the one thing that's really so important about this whole Academy, this whole badge Academy, these badges are based on standardized and validated competency sets. And the reality is, unlike any other profession, in other professions, we will take a license from somebody working in New York that's a social worker, and if I want to move to Idaho, I bring my social work license. I might have to sit for a board exam, but because I received that license, that certification, that credential, if you will, I can be, I can do social work in Idaho with, you know, some maybe a couple tweaks here and there. But there, I don't have to go and relearn social work. It's a testament to a direct support professional's competence in a certain area. And if one organization and another organization has bought into the NADSP Academy, or a state has bought into recognizing the NADSP badge Academy as a system of credentialing and certification, it's what we want. It's what we've been striving for so that DSPs don't have to constantly, constantly renew their quote-unquote competence in front of a board. Now, I think the other aspect of this question is maybe a little more technical. We would have the capability through NADSP to remove someone's account from their original employer to their new employer, both employers did purchase the badge Academy and use the badge Academy. There would be an ability to move people from what we call one sub-portal to another sub-portal. So they could continue. And you would want to definitely add your badges to your Mozilla backpack to make sure that you had access to them regardless. You might move to an organization that doesn't already use the badge Academy, and so then having them in your Mozilla backpack would be the way that you will be able to access them even when you're no longer working for that employer that purchased the license for the badge.
Kathy, right, I see a question here. How are submissions validated?
That's interesting. So we are, we were very thoughtful about this. We didn't want any sort of documentation uploaded that would be a confidentiality issue, that would be a HIPAA concern for those HIPAA privacy officers out there. We are evaluating based on what's in the testimony, and we are basically trusting that this DSP that has committed to our Code of Ethics is submitting accurate descriptions of their work. We will have a process where fraud can be reported, and we will rely heavily on those local admins who will be able to go in and look at the work that's being submitted and hopefully would have an awareness as a member of that organization, as a federal employee of that organization, to know that things are being done accurately.
There's an important question here. Is the badge platform just run through a website, or will there be an app?
So this is probably from somebody who uses their smartphone for everything that they do. So there is a mobile version of the website, but there is not an app.
That's good to know. We got a couple more questions. Hold on here. We got lots of questions, people. We're not going to be able to get to all the questions, but we're doing our best here. If people want to email me their questions, they can email me at NS and Nicole D as in David, A as in Mary, at NADSP dot org, and I will make sure that Dan and John get these. Right. And one week, you want to make sure people know that there will be a Facebook Live event at 12:00 p.m. tomorrow. I'm guessing that 12:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Daylight Time, right?
Yeah, there we go.
Alright, well, thank you everyone. This is very exciting for us. Again, you're looking at about two years of work that has gone into this. We're very excited to put it in front of you. There is a web page, of course, on the NADSP website, and there is, if you're interested, there is a form to fill out that you can submit that we can continue the conversation about how to bring the eBadge Academy to your organization. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, everybody. Tomorrow, 12:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Daylight Time, join us Facebook Live.