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In 2016, Klaus Schwab introduced the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), which is characterized as the explosion of industrial innovation from fast-paced emerging technologies and digitalization across the world. This has yielded profound and systemic changes in organizational structures (Schwab, 2016). The ease of access to information facilitates personalized learning systems and emphasizes highly specialized skillsets of workforce employees. Therefore, Schwab (2016) noted that the job markets in the 4IR will require more high-skilled and specialized workers. This shift is directly connected to the field of education, where the role of professionals is to prepare students to successfully navigate within society. There is a need to analyze how personalized and specialized environments can impact the field of education and in so doing, start the process of altering systems and conventional ways of supporting educators and students so they may be better equipped to succeed in the 4IR.
Leaders in education have begun to address these challenges and experiment with personalization through the creation of and investment in accessible and relevant professional development (PD). This PD, called micro-credentials (MC), is designed to allow educators to explore PD that is meaningful to their practice and advances their skillset. “Four key features define educator MCs: They are competency-based, personalized, on-demand, and shareable. As a personalized learning design, MCs allow educators to focus on a discrete skill related to their professional practice, student needs, or school goals,” (Crow and Pipkin, 2017). Successful earners of a given MC are awarded with an electronic visual, or badge. Badges contain metadata, which can be used to determine who awarded the badge, what the earner did to earn the badge, as well as when the badge was earned and if it expires. The data contained within these badges bring transparency...