MM6 Exploring potential of open badges Mallinson

Editor's Notes

• #4: The current educational climate is moving towards openness in many respects: Open Educational Resources, Open Access Journals, increased use of good open source software, and increased institutional transparency and flexibility. Together with this has come the notion of life-long learning, informal learning, and increased learner autonomy. One aspect of this are the choices that learners are now empowered to make concerning what, how, and when they learn. Note: Massive increase in transparency.
• #5: This leads to the concept of micro-credentialing – recognition or acknowledgement of small competencies, which may or may not be academic in nature. These small credits may add up to achieving a larger award and facilitating the display of skills that constitute a more rounded individual. Micro-credentialing often provides a more granular and accurate picture of what one has learned than a diploma or ‘whole’ qualification i.e. proficiency in a certain skill Badges can be awarded by companies and organisations - very specific micro-credentials either as a precursor for, or an add-on to, existing credentials Gamification mentioned in the 2013&2014&2015 Horizon Report – mid-term horizon In 2015 as part of open learning adoption – disruptive to traditional HEIs Strategy used by MOOCs for reward – concept mastery The development of open digital badge systems is a means through which to digitally award a micro-credit for some competency that has been accomplished by a learner. This award can then be displayed publicly in an online profile or privately within an organisational digital system. The digital badge is a visual symbol used to set goals, motivate behaviour, represent achievement of competency, and importantly, it communicates success in much the same way as physical badges earned previously through social clubs.
• #6: Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDmfE0noOJ8 (3.36m) (MacArthur Foundation – original) Video removed to reduce file size Shorter version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgLLq7ybDtc (2.24m) A badge is a digital representation of a skill, learning achievement or experience. Badges can represent competencies and involvements recognized in online or offline life. Each badge is associated with an image and metadata. The metadata provides information about what the badge represents and the evidence used to support it. Earners can display their badges online and can share badge information through social networks. Badges are used to set goals, motivate behaviours and communicate success. They can support learning that happens in new ways, in new spaces beyond the traditional classroom, from online courses to after-school programs to work and life experience. This motivates learning and signals achievement across communities and institutions. It also provides a more complete picture of learners' skills, achievements and qualities, which can then be communicated to potential employers, educational organizations and communities.
• #7: The notion of an ‘open’ badge is that which is transferable between digital / online systems and whose display is managed by the earner. Importantly, the digital badge contains embedded meta-data concerning the name, description, criteria, issuer, earner, date awarded etc. Open Badges are: Free and open: Mozilla Open Badges is not proprietary. It’s free software and an open technical standard any organization can use to create, issue and verify digital badges. Transferable: Collect badges from multiple sources, online and off, into a single backpack. Then display your skills and achievements on social networking profiles, job sites, websites. Stackable: Whether they’re issued by one organization or many, badges can build upon each other and be stacked to tell the full story of your skills and achievements. Evidence-based: Open Badges are information-rich. Each badge has important metadata which is hard-coded into the badge image file itself that links back to the issuer, criteria and verifying evidence. A digital badge is an online representation of a skill you’ve earned. Open Badges take that concept one step further, and allows you to verify your skills, interests and achievements through credible organizations and attaches that information to the badge image file, hard-coding the metadata for future access and review. Because the system is based on an open standard, earners can combine multiple badges from different issuers to tell the complete story of their achievements — both online and off. Badges can be displayed wherever earners want them on the web, and share them for employment, education or lifelong learning. Open Badges make it easy to: Get recognition for the things you learn; Give recognition for the things you teach; Verify skills; and Display your verified badges across the web.
• #8: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/ •A badge is more than just a static image - its value comes from the information or "metadata" attached to it. •This supporting data contained within the badge reduces the risk of abusing the system (e.g., illegitimately copying badges and putting them on your site) and builds in an implicit validation system. •The metadata may vary based on the particular skill, assessment and issuer. Open digital badge system elements include: the issuing organisation, the badge design and criteria for award, the issuing system, the earner, and the storage and display systems.
• #9: Mozilla Foundation Open Badges project launched in 2011 Purdue Passport - Advocates of open badging systems point to the egalitarian quality of a system where the rules are clear and the platform’s ability to explain much more in the way of accomplishments and goals than a college transcript. Purdue University has developed two mobile apps, Passport and Passport Profile (go.nmc.org/passport), that integrate the Mozilla Open Infrastructure software (go.nmc.org/zonbp). The badging system was adopted by Purdue in order to identify skills that are not represented by a student’s degree, and to provide educators with another outlet to recognize student accomplishment and concept mastery.
• #10: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges – Open badge help you share your interests and skills with the world. Note: Personal management Earn from: job training, online learning, volunteer program  to backpack Display from backpack  web presences (LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc)  share with your personal networks
• #11: History: uses etc Designing & Issuing: Creating Meaning – style, design, backpack Policies & Procedures: Childrens’ Online Privacy & Protection Act; Systems & Standards Storage & Security: Portability, Expiration, Revoking, Counterfeit
• #12: Examples of Moodle badge meta-data Example of Accreditrust Badge meta-data on Mozilla backpack – Palisades84
• #13: Badges are a good way of celebrating achievement and showing progress. 2 way compatibility with Mozilla – export Moodle badges to your Mozilla backpack, and link to your backpack to display your backpack badges on your Moodle site via your user profile. Backpack connection If the email address a user has for Moodle is the same as their Open Badges email address, then they will be automatically connected here and may choose to disconnnect if they wish. If the email address a user has for Moodle is not the same, then they can add the email address which will connect them to their backpack. They can then choose to "push" to their backpack badges which they have earned on Moodle. The badge must then be added to a public collection for it to be visible on their Moodle profile. DEMO – in Saide Moodle (5m)
• #15: Badge details: Name, description, Created on, Image, Issuer details, Badge expiry, Criteria, who can award? recipients … Badge design using openBadges.me Organisation: Saide Earners: sub-Saharan Africa academic community
• #17: Open digital badge system elements include: the issuing organisation, the badge design and criteria for award, the issuing system, the earner, and the storage and display systems. In this pilot exploration of awarding open badges, the system elements were: Saide (issuing organisation), the badge was designed in-house using an open design system OpenBadges.me, awarded via the Moodle learning management system, the criteria were for completion of the ‘Facilitating Online Learning’ fully online course on Moodle, and the earners were the course participants drawn from the sub-Saharan Africa academic community. As an aside to the course, the participants were informed about open digital badges and their uses, and instructed on how to register a Mozilla Backpack for storage and display. They were fully aware from the outset of the course what the criteria for completion were, and the time frame within which to earn the credential. They were also shown how to save and export their Moodle badge earned in the course to an online storage system.
• #18: The interest shown in the badging system was considerable, and many, but not all, the participants managed to export their badges for display. This would enable the participants to flexibly display their badges online, thereby providing evidence of increased digital competency via both the medium and the message. The Moodle badging system proved to be robust and delivered as specified. The Saide course facilitators found the digital badges very easy to design and implement in Moodle, and the future use of this form of digital credentialing was approved for further use in Saide capacity building courses and workshops.
• #19: Preserve the integrity of the teaching and learning process and environment by using ICT to support (not drive) teaching and learning Employ flexibility to ensure the ICT support is appropriate for: the topic, level of study, student context and the expertise of the teachers / tutors / learners
• #20: Take a few moments to reflect – will feed into later online discussion
• #21: OpenBadges.me is open access; Online Icon Maker is a free trial; But you can use any graphics tool- must save as a .png file BadgeSafe developing their Badge Vault – Accreditrust Credly - platforms for verifying, sharing and managing digital badges and credentials BadgeOS™ is a powerful free plugin to WordPress that lets you easily create achievements and issue sharable badges as your users succeed. See DigitalMe’s badge design canvas: http://www.digitalme.co.uk/assets/pdf/DigitalMe-Badge-Design-Canvas-(1).pdf