Brainstorm in Progress: Digital badges

Showing posts with label Digital badges. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Open Ed 13: Badge-Empowered Learning

An example digital badge.

Tami Echard and Jay Heap discuss on open source badge platform.

"Georgia Virtual Learning is developing a series of online professional development programs using BadgeOS, a powerful open source platform for rewarding learner achievement and community engagement and issuing digital micro-credentials [digital badges]. The session will explore options available through BadgeOS for designing, issuing and displaying micro-credentials at any organization. Some of the features available with BadgeOS include customizable implementations, extensive knowledge and community triggers for recognizing achievements and social contributions, and the idea of building an iTunes like open source badge and content library. Digital micro-credentials issued through BadgeOS are compliant with Mozilla Open Badge (OBI) standards and are opening up new job opportunities, exposing new learning pathways, and helping connect people with communities where they can have an impact and where their skills and experience are valued and needed. Digital micro-credentials can be issued to anyone ? in the elementary school setting to the corporate setting to people engaged and committed to lifelong learning"

We will look at software, technical requirements, planning, implementation and then take questions. Planning is the most important thing.

Software made by Learning Times. It used to be a program called "BadgeStack" and now it is a Wordpress plug-in.

Tech requirements: Wordpress and BadgeOS

Planning
Skills for teachers: Participate, navigate, create, communicate, evaluate
Competencies: Planning, web tools, OER and CC, Learning objects
Quests: Locating OER: find and image, text, learning object

Great illustration for their badge system - will link to presentation later.

Implementation
Using Discussion Post/Forums
The facutly posted to a blog or to a discussion post.
The discussion forum was in Wordpress.
There is a "quest" page telling them step-by-step what they needed to do to complete an assignment.
In BadgeOS, users can create quests (e.g. a locating OER quest)
It then lets you decide how they achieve the badge (earned by completing steps,points, submissions, activities, etc.)
There is the option to "Show Earners" and create a "Congratulations Text."

They chose badge awarded on "required steps." It can also be based on "Publish a page."

The system allow users to send to other systems like Credly.

Competency
Describes what the student learned. One could align assignment outcomes to this system.

All the competencies must be linked to a skill - this is why planning is essential.

The course uses "verifiers." A verifier gets paid $49 for verifying a students progress through the course.

They are at https://www.openteachertraining.org

Open Ed 13: Using Open Badges adn an Open Course to Enhance & Extend Learning

Daniel Randall, Buck Harrison, Dr. Richard West, and Garrett R. Hickman from Brigham Young University.

"We will present our design for an open badge system currently in use in an undergraduate technology course for education majors. Our design is an attempt to use badges and an open online course to not only enhance student learning but also to encourage continued learning once our course has ended.

Theoretical Background
Open badges can provide a credential for learning that occurs in a non-traditional setting, a space in which few institutions are providing credentials. This makes open badges a textbook example of a disruptive innovation. However, since badges can also be used in a traditional setting, universities and other traditional credentialing institutions can adapt by using open badges to enhance their current course offers and encourage lifelong learning in a non-traditional setting.

Design of our Badges
By creating and issuing open badges, we hoped to not only motivate students to meet higher standards of learning, but also encourage students to continue learning after completing the course and thus extend our students? learning beyond our one-credit course. To this end, our badge system is multi-tiered, open to students not currently enrolled at our institution, and is integrated into an open online version of the course.

Inspired by Mozilla?s ?constellations? from the early designs for their webmaker.org badge system, we decided to graphically organize and group together the various technologies students could choose to learn. Our system had three different levels of badges. The lowest level consisted of badges with a small scope; the second tier of badges represented mastery of larger technologies and corresponded to major projects in the course; and the third badge level represented course-level mastery of all technologies and concepts taught in the course.

We created additional levels of badges beyond our course to provide a way for teachers to learn how to successfully integrate into actual teaching experiences the technologies they have previously learned in our class.

Design of the Open Online Course
To help our former students continue earning badges (as there are more badges available than are needed to complete the course), or any inservice teacher, we created an open online version of the course. By using asynchronous video discussions, currently enrolled students and inservice teachers can interact with each other and discuss class topics, real-world challenges inservice teachers are experiencing, and ways to use technology in their specific subject. We believe this approach will help our current students have a more authentic experience in learning and preparing to use these technologies and bring to their attention challenges facing current teachers. We believe inservice teachers will benefit by not only learning technologies and earning badges, but by discussing with our current students to gain insights from a younger demographic.

Current findings
We have just recently collected data from the first semester implementation, and in our presentation will share this data on how our implementation of the badges impacted student achievement and motivation."

URL http://iptedtec.org

Sheryl Grant's "5 Buckets for Badge System Design"

Their Course - Integrating Technology in Education
The couirse is a 1 credit course, 3 major projects in which student selected a technology they wanted to integrate into an assignment.
The badge system had a course level badge, project level badge, and lower level badges.
The system had to be flexible to account for choices of technology that the students might choose.
The goal of the class is about how to appropriately plan for tech integration, not just learning tech.

Course is in Canvas but they wanted it to be more open so they used Wordpress: http:iptedtec.org/secondaryed/

All of their tutorials are online and openly licensed. It is open as they could make it and still maintain the integrity of the endorsement.

Clicking on any badge brings up the criteria behind the badge.

Badge issuer available on GitHub msedev/badges

A look at the open online course - using Canvas and running the course as a MOOC. The open online course would let students to get their endorsement and "brand." It is a truly open course - all content is openly licensed. Non-university students enrolled to earn badges but not university credit. Limited numbers. They are using the "free for teacher" account. They liked the quiz system and the feedback that could be provided. It also supports asynchronous video discussion boards.

In-service teachers were encouraged to enroll because the course was free. Only a few inservice teachers made it past the first week.

They have only been doing this for a year.

For the future, they need to scale the assessments. How do you bring in more students while maintaining the quality and academic integrity. They want to create a "smart dashboard." They want to research student motivation, teacher professional development, and employer perceptions.

Open ed 13: Learner-Driven Liberation: Open Badges & New Knowledge Sharing

Emily Goligoski (Photo credit: jdlasica)

"In an age of anywhere, anytime learning, learners and educators who design Open Badges are re-inventing recognition. Credentials no longer need to be limited to transcripts or printed certificates; now they can be virtual, shareable and peer-issued. Advocates of open educational resources can use Mozilla's open technical standard to make symbols of skills and interests portable and interoperable. Our conversational panel will feature badge issuing educational organizations and employers interested in using badges to identify talent. Together, we'll examine real world examples of badges in the wild. Our panel will also explore: a) the ways in which badges can be used to demonstrate interests and competencies; and b) the methods by which individuals are using badges to access new educational and professional opportunities. The conversation will focus on current and future interpretations of skill and interest recognition for organizations, educators, and learners."

Emily Goligoski presented on open badges. I am interested in this because we would like to use a badge system in eLearning 101 - our online orientation. She works with the Mozilla Foundation as a researcher.

What would it look like to use badges for learning? Badges have been used in social networks and in Khan Academy but what would it look like for competency-based learning.

Mozilla is building a shared, universal standards. There came up with a metadata scheme that includes badege name, description, criteria, issuer, evidence, date issued, standards, etc. The badges can show employers what a learner can actually do above and beyond just a transcript. NPR is endorsing badges for Youth Radio for instance.

Digital badges can be used for prior learning and life-long learners.

A learner can earn badges from formal classes, MOOCs, volunteer programs, etc.
The badges are stored in a digital space called a "Badge Backpack" The learner can set display permissions.
There is a Wordpress backpack plugin and one coming for LinkedIn.
Potential employers can tell exactly what the learner can do.
They are making it easier to earn, issue, & display badges across the web.
More and more companies are looking for these because the badges are endorsed and vouched for where as a resume is not.
Looking forward - from earn, issue, adn display to consumption and discovery of open badges. They are using these for employee training and professional development.
They can represent hard & soft skills, peer assessment, & stackable, life-long learning.

Why Integrate with Open Badges?
Increased learner engagement
Easy integration with prior learning
Alignment with paths & programs

They are rolling out "BadgeKit"
Buikd Issue, Assess, Analyze, Discover, Share, and Endorse - all the tools will be free and open source. You can pick and choose to use this with a number of outside assessment tool.

OpenBadges has Community Member Profiles

There is also a weekly community phone call on Weds. mornings

http://ommunity.openbadges.org