Digital Badges - Dec 1-15, 2012

Christine,

I will do my best to cover "everything" over the first two weeks of December. If topics are not covered and there is enough interest I am sure we could convince Scope to do a follow-up seminar or two... and please don't be afraid to ask anything... I never know where the diamond on the beach question is ;)

I'm totally with you in applying badges to PSE and surrounding areas. I think you will find my approach to badges (and much of life-long learning) is outside the traditional institutions and I will focus on the possibilities of creating badge systems that map to an individuals personal learning. I'm a fan of William Pinar and the importance and benefit of personalizing curriculum. I think badges fit very well here.

So yes... I will spend some time exploring the concept of badges and dive into some history... and I would enjoy discussing business models that may emerge. I've had a few discussions with businesses and CPD and they see business benefit to badges. Not necessarily from where you would expect.

And where badges fit within credentialing (or not) and how they can be within learning. The shape of badges has so many possibilities. So much to discuss... Also looking forward to others contributions in this discussion, so if you know of anyone who would also like to join in, please encourage them.

Thanks so much for jumping into the discussion now... great to get things going early. be well...

Peter

My colleagues and I have been exploring this topic in other communities of practice.  Jonathan Finkelstein of LearningTimes came online and told us about Badgestack.  His presentation started light, easily listenable, but got quite meaty at the end as he showed us through screenshare how you might design and trigger badges according to criteria you can set in BadgeStack. The recording is here: 

http://learning2gether.posterous.com/jonathan-finkelstein-walks-us-through-learnin

Another project you might look into is the Mozilla Open Badge project.  One place to go for more information is Doug Belshaw's blog http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/tag/mozilla/.  I became aware for Doug's work listening to this podcast series on badges

http://www.teachersteachingteachers.org/category/doug-belshaw/

Hope this helps and I hope to follow this thread a little more closely,

Vance

Juanita,

I also am facsinated in how achievement levels (could be considered badges) in games are a motivator for learning the skills to achieve the new levels.

Your questions regarding do badges motivate in educational settings is a good one. One that I believe people believe intrinsically, but I wonder if it applies equally to all people. And I believe that is it still early times with digital badges and the research hasn't been completed to show how / if they motivate in the educational setting... and if this motivation is any different that traditional grades and diplomas etc...

Could badges be used in Library settings... I believe so. And I think it would be a very interesting process to discover what kind of badges could work and what kind of badge system design would emerge. Exciting times...

One of the attributes of the Mozilla Open Badges project is its openness so it could be used across institutions / organizations. But also that I see one of the end goal of this project is the definition of an open standard describing a digital badge so the badges would be portable even beyond the traditional institution / organization. I plan on speaking to this topic later in this seminar series...

Juanita, thanks for contributing to this discussion. really helpful in focusing the seminars. If you know others who want to join in please extend the invite.

My apologies. PSE is short for post-secondary education. Chris

Gina,

Thanks for providing this input. I agree with you about developing another "parallel" credentialing system. But it is early times with all this and it will be interesting to where is all shakes out. And yes, if digital badges do become more accepted with the traditional how these two communicate / transfer between each other will IMHO become important. Personally, I would hope that digital badging begins to focus more outside the traditional. I actually believe there is far greater opportunity for success in the areas outside the traditional and much larger "audience". This is an area of digital badges I am increasing my research efforts and would like to see more dicussion around this. Time will tell...

I intend on spending time looking at how to display your digital badges and provide the hands-on information to do so...

Thanks for your input... it helps me alter the session curriculum so it better meets the participant needs... please feel free to invite other to this scope seminar session on digital badges...

I agree I had no idea about badges until this stream started so I would be keen on hearing on how they are used and Leva's idea about creating one is a step in the right direction!  Go for it!

Leva,

I love the idea of creating badges for this two week event. if we can figure out the graphics and some bccampus hosting location, I could take care of the rest... I like the idea of three badges

1. learner badge (mostly for lurking over the two weeks)
2. participant badge (contributes to most of the discussion questions)
3. contributor badge (does everything the participant does with some additional contributions like badge design, blogging, etc...)

I am going to build this seminar series badge system design into the series and give us something real to discuss where we feel the impact... by earning a badge.

Thanks for kicking off the idea... looking forward to the discussion....

Peter

Zack,

Thanks for the contribution. Yeah... the possibilities for badges and how / where they are implemented is very wide open. I agree associating with PLE and ePortfolios is a great idea, also how to fold in peer assessment is important...

What I have become amazed about with badges is the diversity. As mentioned previously I titled this seminar series "digital badges" on purpose (rather than "open badges"). This is because there are a number of different approaches to badges that are emerging, with some interesting ways of assessing and awarding of badges. I hope to discuss the differences over the two weeks...

Thanks for chiming in and please invite others who may be interested...

Peter

Here's a good blog post by Doug Belshaw with a fictional example of how a badge implementation might work:

http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2012/11/26/how-to-make-openbadges-work-for-you-and-your-organisation/

Zack, I could not agree more with what you have said. See my post below about a project that I think ties together much of what you have suggested. We have to get beyond the notion of badges as trinkets and there is a lot of work that can be done to do that.

Juanita,

Great post. And references to the S2R and DML competition are both very valuable. I am aware of both of these as they are frequently discussed in the Mozilla Open Badges community call... all good.

We will be discussing both these "projects" and others throughout the two weeks seminar series. There has been so much great work around badges already... I'm looking forward to sharing and collaborating with other over the next few weeks!

Thanks.

Patric,

Thanks for chiming in. I agree, given the engagement already this could become a very good seminar series. I get the gaming connection, and am a big fan of James Paul Gee. I also see a good pattern in how games recognize levels of achievement and keep people challenged along a learnning trajectory.

I do know that Moodle and Mahara has a project underway to integrate Mozilla Open Badges, this is a good thing! http://docs.moodle.org/dev/openbadges

How to deal with the stigma of badges? Yes I have found people with strong objections and an unwillingness to see the value. I agree this is particularly strong within the traditional institutions. And I get it, why do they need another form of accreditation? I believe the greatest success for badges is outside the traditional. More on this later. I have three primary ways to deal with the objections or offer a way in for traditional institutions;

1. Tie badges to co-curricular activities. the co-curricular transcript is being increasingly requested. I believe institutions would do well with using badges here. Its a safe place to start.
2. Begin a discussion around the branding of the institution into the badges. Badges are going to start showing up all over the place (facebook, linkedin, blogs, etc...). All the badges become "free" marketing for the institution and tie back to institutionally hosted course curriculum. Great way to drive more interest toward the institution. Could increase enrollment... I'd hope sceptics could see the value of that.
3. Ignore the sceptics. if badges prove out, they will come around. Just following a standard adoption curve... we are early adopters...

Awesome! If you want to mock up three badges following the pattern I suggested in this forums other post, that would be great! I will dedicate a discussion thread to badge design.

Thanks Patric... looking forward to the next two weeks...

Hi Patric, that's terrific that you can help us with the badge design work. If you need help let me or Sylvia know as we have two crackerjack co-op students from SFU who do wonderful work and could also help out.

Sounds very cool...I don't usually like games just for the

sake of playing but to play a game and learn something

useful as well would be great.

Hi, Bronwyn.

Any chance that you'll be opening up access to teacher education institutions outside of Australia?
Julia

Jeffrey, You may find Passport by Purdue of interest.