Students Tracking Online Course Progress? DEGREED! @degreed

So, completely by accident (that's how I find most things) when I finished my Microsoft Teacher Academy course, I saw a neat little button saying I could "get credit for your completed MVA courses" on Degreed. I was like, um, what's Degreed? And, strangely, I could just not find much information about it online. So, I clicked on it to learn more.

On their website, you'll find this explanation, which is pretty interesting. So, I signed up and got an account. It was quick.

It took a little looking around to figure out how to "connect" my MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy) account as I had to make my profile public and "share" my courses (under Integrations). But, I eventually figured it out. What's even cooler is that you can connect many other online learning venues! That's really neat. In my Web Design classes, my students work through module on Codecademy and that was on the list!  They also had CodeSchool, Kahn Academy, Udemy, and more. So, if you use some online learning in your classes, students could actually connect many of these accounts and this Degreed website will keep the "list" of complete courses in one nice spot. You do have to click "Import" above the Integration when you wish to update it, though. 

So, here's my Degreed page. I've done the MVA OneNote online class and a Codecademy online class on making a webpage, so it lists both.  Screenshots below or click here. 

Anyway, just thought I'd share. I think helping students to keep track (in an official way on a site that will verify that they actually completed modules) of their online learning, especially if it's part of your course or even a "side project" in your class is super cool. We are adding student growth as part of teacher evaluations in Missouri this year and I think showing these completions, which include the month completed, will help document some of that.

What do you think? I absolutely love this as a way to track self-directed learning and hope it will be motivating to my students!