Digital Badges: An Annotated Research Bibliography v1

Announcing Mozilla BadgeKit Why We Need Badges Now: A Bibliography of Resources in Historical Perspective It was something over a year ago when we first began talking about badges as a powerful new tool for identifying and validating the rich array of people’s skills, knowledge, accomplishments, and competencies that happens everywhere and at every age. That’s when we decided that this year the Digital Media and Learning Competition would be dedicated to an array of competitions on badging. I remember when we started writing, blogging, talking, speaking, and in other ways trying to create a conversation around badges as an alternative mode of assessment, people would look at me like I was a little daft. Boy Scout sashes? It has been tremendously exciting and gratifying to watch this conversation catch fire, deepen, yield to debate, mature, progress, and turn into actual deployable badge systems that offer an array of new ways to capture and inspire learning. So why all this excitement about badging? Tragically, this way of counting leaves out so much of what we value.

Conference 2014 Videos Keynote Address: Dr Daithí Ó Murchú Keynote Address: Dr Deirdre Butler & Dr Michael Hallissy Capstone Presentation – Sparking the Imagination Sound Effects [Caroline Carswell] Living Schools Lab Project – Showcasing good ICT practice in schools and exploring ways to upscale and mainstream this in other schools [Karin Whooley & Sarah-Jayne Carey] Making and Managing MOOCs: An Experience from the Udder-side [Mark Brown] Online Resources for Active and Inclusive Learning, incorporating JC Key Skills and SSE [Siobhan O'Sullivan] Rolling With the Punches: Integrating New Technology into a Chicago Public School Classroom [Alex Selkirk] ‘Dance like the waves of the sea’ – Ten top tech tips by WB Yeats [Dughall McCormick] Using “Badges” for sustainable Professional Development for Teachers [Mark Glynn] Back to Top

Digital badges show students' skills along with degree September 11, 2012 WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Digital badges, icons that represent academic achievements or skills smaller than a college degree, are an increasingly popular way for universities to acknowledge the breadth of student learning. Now Purdue University has developed a pair of mobile apps that make creating, awarding and displaying badges much easier. The apps, available online, are called Passport and Passport Profile . A video explaining how Passport works is available on YouTube. Kyle Bowen, director of informatics in Information Technology at Purdue, says badges are an exciting new concept that is being adopted across higher education. "Badges become a way to recognize learning in all of its forms," Bowen says. "Many instructors are moving to new models of instruction, and Passport is a technology that supports many of those new models." "Students learn in many ways and in a variety of settings while attending a university such as Purdue," McCartney says.

Evidencing Employability Skills with Open Badges | Jisc RSC Scotland e-Assessment Concerns, Possible Solutions, Paradigm Shifts and Key Findings There was focused and lively discussion at the Open Badges: Ways to Evidence Employability event I co-facilitated at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) this week. Alongside Tom Caira, Chair of the Industry Advisory Board for Computing and Frances Rowan, Stakeholder Manager (Careers and Employability Service) from UWS, we brought together over 50 technology employers (Directors from multinational and local companies), students, educators and members of the Open Badges in Scottish Education Group (OBSEG) to consider if Open Badges could provide a useful way of highlighting employability skills and attributes employers are looking for. Commencing with an ice-breaker activity we split into groups and asked students to say what attributes they thought employers might look for in potential employees, then employers commented on what they are looking for. Concerns Possible solutions From Flickr by Doug Belshaw Paradigm shift

Website recognizes military skills with digital badges It can be difficult for veterans to explain the skills and training they received in the military to potential employers. A new website attempts to bridge that gap by giving veterans digital “badges” that recognize their skills. When it goes live next month, BadgesforVets.org will be a résumé translation and job search service. The extensive project, which includes badges representing training in more than 1,000 military jobs, is also a particularly promising foray into digital badging -- a much-hyped, although still nascent, form of alternative credentialing that could conceivably undermine higher education's role as a primary way of signaling skills to employers. The badge concept is inspired by patches Boy and Girl Scouts earn for mastering skills and conquering challenges. A Purdue University professor has used badges in addition to conventional grading, while the university has created a badging platform. Anyone can issue a badge, which some say is a quality-control problem.

Badges/Onboarding-Earner A. Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI) Why Are We Doing This? Learners are learning everywhere -- but most of that learning doesn't "count" Skills assessment and communication is limited in current system, e.g. GPA, GED, Bachelor or Master degrees, static resume There are few alternatives to the current accreditation/credentialing system Learning doesn’t happen simply between K - 12 and university; learning happens over the course of a lifetime and frequently in informal settings Goals Description Enabling learners to earn badges wherever they're learning across the web requires support for multiple individual badge issuers. The OBI is built in node.js using express. Diagram Overview Issuer issues a badge on their site, then prompts the Badge Earner to push the badge into their Backpack for portability. Badge The core currency of exchange. Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI) Badge Backpack Metadata Spec The definition of what makes up a badge. Badge Baking Issuer API Verification API Endorsement API

Show Me Your Badge The picture is a digital badge, a new type of credential being developed by some of the most prominent businesses and learning organizations in the world, including Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, the Smithsonian, Intel and Disney-Pixar. The badge movement is being spearheaded by the Mozilla Foundation, best known for inventing the free Firefox Web browser, the choice of nearly one-quarter of all Internet users worldwide. While they may appear to be just images, digital badges are actually portals that lead to large amounts of information about what their bearers know and can do. They are also being used to improve education itself, by borrowing techniques from video games that keep users playing, until they advance to the next level. Badges are gaining currency at the same time that a growing number of elite universities have begun offering free or low-cost, noncredit courses to anyone with access to the Internet and a desire to learn.

Open Badges for Training & PD - Savvyfolio.net Making a Market for Competency-Based CredentialsCorporation for a Skilled Workforce (2013?)Great overview of the state of practice in the United States and makes a case for doing better. Cites Mozilla Open Badges, US Dept of Labor Competency Models, credential stacking. Some good visuals. Digital “Badges” Emerge as Part of Credentialing’s FutureProfessional Examination Service www.ProExam.org Research Brief - ProExam Digital Micro-Credential Market Research (November 2012)Professional Examination Service - research study of employers cited in white paper above"ProExam Digital Micro-Credentials were seen as taking “the fluff off the badges” and giving them real meaning....a secure, embedded linkthat would provide a validation of both the authenticity of the credential as well as its current status."

The Badges of Oz Almost a year ago I wrote a post about being a “skeptical evangelist” when it comes to the uses of badges in learning. This was spurred, in large part, by a workshop run by Mitch Resnick at DML2012 that was critical of the focus on badges. This year Resnick was back, as part of a panel, and the designated “chief worrier.” Then, as now, I find nothing to disagree with in his skepticism. To provide what is perhaps too brief a gloss on Mitch Resnick’s critique, he is concerned that the badges come to replace the authentic learning experiences. Which brings us to Oz, and a charlatan wizard from Kansas. “I think you are a very bad man,” said Dorothy. In the end, he gives them tokens in the book which the three companions take to be real. Now, as someone who sees badges as useful and helpful, it may seem odd to raise this as an example. On the other hand, the Wizard’s actions are about recognizing the achievements of the three. I don’t have a good answer to that, but I have two suggestions:

Home - Savvyfolio.net I Don’t Get Digital Badges Digital badges appear to becoming the next, “new” thing in education. What follows is a description of digital badges as described by Digital Media and Learning: A digital badge is an online record of achievements, the work required, and information about the organization, individual or other entity that issued the badge. The proposed benefits of such a system would be a broader and deeper picture of skill sets acquired both in formal and informal settings. Advocates of this vision for K-12 contend that such badges could help bridge educational experiences that happen in and out of school, as well as provide a way to recognize “soft skills” such as leadership and collaboration. The Functions of Badges Daniel Hickey proposed four functions of badges in Intended Purposes Versus Actual Function of Digital Badges: Recognizing Learning. Badges As Rewards/As a Means for Motivation Daniel Pink discusses a similar occurance in organizational settings: Who Decides?

Open Badges in Bb Open Education #GCUGamesOn | howsheilaseesIT GCU Games On Gold Medal Our online event GCU Games On is now in it’s final week. Each week we have been giving participants the chance to win digital medals which are actually badges but as the event is about the Commonwealth Games it was too good an opportunity to use the term medals. Creating and issuing badges with Open Education is pretty straightforward using gradecentre. Firstly we developed this “event” pretty quickly and we wanted it to be as easy as possible to get the almost instant gratification of winning a badge – which seems to have worked. Now a silver medal! It’s really it’s that pesky email authentication thang in Backpack. Our “event” is not a course or one of those M things. However, overall issuing badges through the open platform does work and we have learned a lot about the practicalities of creating and issuing badges within Blackboard. If you have any experiences/thoughts/tips about badges then please let me know in the comments. Like this: Like Loading...

.........Experimental Blog: #Openbadges Simplest Possible Message about Open Badges I've been working with colleagues to try and refine a very simple message about #Openbadges . Here is work in progress - it is aimed at a Scottish schools audience but could be used in a range of contexts when introducing the concept of Open Badges - comments welcome ! Digital /Open Badges – What Exactly Are They? This is a guide prepared for an audience who may never have heard of Digital / Open badges. Badges are not a new phenomenon in learning. To earn a badge the recipient has to meet a certain level of competency or demonstrate a specific attribute. Digital Badges are really just a simple extension of this philosophy into the digital age. The advantage that a digital badge has over a cloth badge is that a digital badge can contain a lot of additional information (called meta data). So a digital badge becomes an on-line way for a learner to show evidence of their learning. The open in the heading comes from the technology that has been used to support the creation of digital badges.