SAN FRANCISCO – June 20, 2024 – Udemy (Nasdaq: UDMY), a leading online skills marketplace and learning platform, today announced the expansion of its Badging and Certification preparation offering, making it available to all learners through its Personal Plan subscription. Additionally, Udemy debuted new features for its Udemy Business customers, including curated content to help learners confidently prepare for third-party certification exams, track their progress through a personalized insights dashboard, and signal new skills acquisition to management. As a certified 1EdTech Open Badges v2.0 host, Udemy also enables customers to host newly earned badges and certifications within the Udemy Business platform.

“At Calybre, we believe in investing for the future, especially in learning and development for our workforce. Data and AI consulting is at our core, making certifications of critical and evolving skills for our workforce essential”

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New Badging and Certification preparation offerings available today include:

• Third-Party Certification Preparation: Udemy has seen ongoing demand for IT certification, with more than 10 million enrollments in IT certification training courses on its platform in the past year alone. This inspired the expansion of Third-Party Certification Preparation from Udemy Business to professional learners through Personal Plan. Now, more learners can access curated learning paths designed to support third-party certification preparation for exams administered by AWS, Azure, CompTIA, and many other issuers. Recently, a large professional services organization, based in London and New York, used Udemy’s third-party certification courses to upskill more than 4,500 employees. This resulted in an overall certification exam pass rate of 91.4%.
• Badge Upload / Download: Udemy Business learners can use Badge Upload/Download to create a record of Open Badge achievements on its platform as a result of a partnership with 1EdTech. As the only 1EdTech Open Badges v2.0 Host in the category, Udemy enables organizations to verify employees’ skills and expertise through sources supported by 1EdTech’s standards and verifiable metadata, ensuring learners and organizations are prioritizing in-demand skill sets. Learners can also download or share these badges to socialize achievements with their broader networks. To date, Udemy Business has over 22,000 imported badges across over 1,300 organizations, signaling in-demand certification attainment and skills validation.
• Badge Insights: Udemy Business Enterprise customers now have access to a Badge Insights dashboard with a summary of all badges and certifications earned, as well as progress toward those achievements. These dashboards provide organizations with valuable insights into the skills employees possess while identifying skills gaps that must still be addressed. Badge Insights empowers employers to focus on the most important learning objectives to support professional development, validate critical skills, award performance, and improve retention.
  As organizations seek to keep pace with innovation in the wake of new technologies like generative AI, ensuring employees have the right skill sets has become even more critical for companies to remain agile and competitive. A recent Udemy study revealed that 84% of business customers are focused on implementing a skills-based infrastructure within their organization over the next 12 months to help ensure their business goals and objectives are met.

“GenAI is revolutionizing industries and transforming the business landscape at an unprecedented pace and as a result, demonstrated skills have become the new currency of the workforce,” said Greg Brown, President and CEO at Udemy. “Through partnerships with organizations including Native Computing Foundation, Docker, and ServiceNow, we are helping learners to acquire critical skills and earn certifications in key areas of technology supporting the digital transformation. Our badging and certification preparation capabilities are enabling organizations to support the development, acquisition, and validation of skills across their teams helping fuel both individual and company growth.”

Udemy’s expanded badging and certification preparation capabilities are essential to its Integrated Skills Framework, enabling individuals to validate and demonstrate skills proficiency faster while empowering organizations to evaluate professionals based on proven skill sets without relying solely on traditional measurements like work experience or college degrees. Udemy is not only supporting this new approach to skills validation, but it’s driving industry standards as a contributing member of 1EdTech’s TrustEd Microcredential Coalition, defining benchmarks for mastery to combat varying quality and trust across badges and certifications.

“Digital credentials are valued signals of skills mastery to current and prospective employers. As the number of certification issuers grows, the industry needs to work together to elevate high-quality credential standards on a global scale,” said Curtiss Barnes, CEO at 1EdTech. “Udemy has been a trusted partner in not only defining these industry standards but elevating them to learners. Udemy’s certification to 1EdTech’s Open Badges v2.0 standard enables high-quality data-rich digital credentials that the learner can use to showcase their achievements across the widest range of credentialing platforms.”

Since Udemy debuted its Badging and Certification preparation capabilities last year, the company has seen strong demand for this offering from customers, including data consultancy Calybre.

“At Calybre, we believe in investing for the future, especially in learning and development for our workforce. Data and AI consulting is at our core, making certifications of critical and evolving skills for our workforce essential,” said Ryan Jamieson, CTO at Calybre. “Udemy’s Badging and Certification preparation help us monitor our team’s progress and validate skills development through vital industry certifications, making it a key element of our consultant training and readiness as we work to close key skills gaps.”