There are a tremendous range of badge experiments going on out there in the world and I find it hard to keep track of the many variations and applications. For lack of a better way to impose some structure on a rapidly evolving ecosystem I am going to list Academic Examples, Non-credit Examples, Social Motivation Examples, Business Examples, and Others. I hope this will be helpful. I would love to make this resource as complete as possible so please let me know about other useful examples of badge systems. I will continue to add to this page as I have time....
Academic (connected at least tenuously to credit)
Patrina Law has been part of this badge effort since almost the day after badges were created around a table in Barcelona at MozFest 2010 (apparently called Drumbeat in those days). Badged learning opportunities are now an established thing through the Open University though I haven't seen the data about how they are being received by employers etc etc.
Concordia University: MS in Education: Educational Design and Technology
Bernard Bull is another significant badge thinker and developed this master's program. There is a version of this masters program which may be offered as a purely badged learning opporunity. Some, or maybe all of the graduate courses in this program are currently badged as well as credited. It will be interesting to hear if anyone completes this program as a strictly badged opportunity and finds employment.
Academic (non-credit or credit enhancers)
Colorado State University began it's badge work on the non-credit side with their Master Gardener program. This is a great example of a well designed (from a learning and graphic perspective) system. Michael Macklin is the man behind this and is pretty generous with his experience. CSU also built it's own badging platform which may be available as a commercial product soon
Colorado Community College System
This badge system has been developed at the state level to connect employer needs with badges for the community college system. Again a nicely designed system (not surprisingly there is a level of collaboration between CCCS and CSU). Brenda Perea initiated this effort and is largely responsible for it's form but she has moved on to other projects. Jinnie Chieppo is the current contact there.
University of New South Wales: Patsie Polly
Patsie Polly has been working over a number of years to develop tools to validate the acquisition of professional pratice skills by medical students. The work shown in this slide share from 2014 has since been connected to open badges so students can display their acheivement of standards of professional practice that lie outside of the normal skills asserted by coursework. Student stories are compelling.
Social Motivation (still marking learning but important social component)
I first ran into this project when HITEC was in Chicago (2015?) and I noticed the signs. Really lovely work. The organization has migrated to a new name and it's badging system is a little harder to find on the LRNG website so I have linked the Chicago Summer of Learning site as a more accessible example. This project is very much aimed at communities and k-12 learners.
Business
IBM Badges
This is a brilliant system that is also really well thought out. David Lesser is the guy to lead this effort and presented the slide share linked above. This system as well merits some thought and attention for it's potential institutional value.
I haven't explored this badge system as much as I ought to. I think that Doug Belshaw was involved in developing and implementing this system and he is a deep thinker about this form of learning and credentialling. You can find Doug's blog linked on the Badge Thinkers page.
Others (that don't fit well anywhere else)
The link isn't directly to a badge program from MSF but they are in discussions and this link gives you a sense of what they are trying to accomplish for their in country workers in disaster relief who acquire real skills and currently have no way to assert their new skills.
Other stuff....
