Vocational education in Finland is based on competence-based qualification requirements. Meanwhile, digital open badges promote competence-based assessment and shared expertise in digital environments. The educational setting supports gamified learning solutions and enhances student motivation. The current study aims to examine how learners experience the competencebased approach in the badge-driven learning process of professional development. The theoretical framework focuses on the concept of instructional badging in the competence-based approach.

Coordinated by the country’s northernmost school of vocational teacher education, “Learning Online” is a national professional development program (PDP) of digital pedagogical competences for vocational teachers in Finland. The data were collected in 2017 from in-service trained professional teachers and pre-service students (n=329) of vocational teacher education who had earned digital open badges in a Learning Online PDP. A questionnaire was used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. The study provides an example of using two different methods to build knowledge describing participants’ experiences. The study employed constrained correspondence analysis and phenomenography to analyse participants’ different experiences. Both used methods highlight the badge learners’ experiences and offer to deepen the existing knowledge of digital open badge-driven learning complementing one other by explaining different aspects of the phenomenon. The results describe the impact of the competence-based approach on teachers’ professional development in digital open badge-driven learning.