Jenny Mackness

1. Identify a merit badge you earned during your lifetime.
What did you have to do to earn it? Did you earn more than one badge? And were they awarded by the same organization?

Like others I was in the Brownies and Girl Guides - so I won't mention them any further. The only other badge I am physically in possession of is an Outward Bound badge which I received on completion of a month long Outward Bound course in the Welsh Mountains in 1965.  This is a small circular metal badge, bearing the Outward Bound logo.

2. Describe how you displayed the merit badge(s).
If you earned more than one badge, did you display them together? Did you display badges from different organizations together? I have never displayed the badge. It has been stuck in a drawer for decades. I do sometimes wonder why I keep it. The fact that I went on an Outward Bound course when I was 18 years old is no longer relevant to my CV and hasn't been for many years. At the time completing the course was a real achievement, but I didn't need a badge to tell me this. I only needed a badge to tell others!

It has occurred to me, in remembering this, that the badge itself is only as important as 1) perceived by the person who receives it 2) the institution that awards it 3) perceived by others.

At the time that I received my Outward Bound badge, it was recognised as employers as an achievement.

Please introduce yourself by providing;

1. your name, Jenny Mackness
2. your self assessed understanding of digital badges A means of 'assessing' and/or providing informal (informal at the moment, but possibly more formal in the future) credit for open learning, such that the badges can contribute to a portfolio which would support an application for employment
3. your interest in digital badges (within HE, within peer learning, self directed or other) I am interested in how 'open' learning, which could be unpredicatable and emergent, can be assessed
4. The city and country where you currently live Cumbria/UK
5. other thoughts you feel important I'm only just catching up with the forums (fora? :-)) but my initial response to badges is to be a bit sceptical. I wish they were called something else. Badges really does remind me of 'Brownies', Girl Guides and Scouts - and I'm not sure that the association is helpful.

Your introduction plus a couple of discussion thread contributions will earn you a Learner badge for this seminar series. We have a couple of other badges that can be earned, please read the related discussion thread in this forum. To be honest - I am not really interested in earning a badge - I am just interested in the learning.

Hope I won't have missed the point here - as I am only just catching up on the forum posts - but what concerns me about the badges suggested is the focus on levels of participation rather than on 'quality' of contribution. I can imagine a scenario (in fact have experienced this scenario) where a person could make one contribution of such significance that it could have a significant impact on the 'course', on others' learning and on their own learning.

Hope this makes sense. Will now go and introduce myself :-)

Hi Sylvia - I think it's very exciting that you are using the Value Creation Framework in this way and also that you are making the process visible to us all.

I know you went to one of the BEtreats this year, as I did, so I expect you discussed the framework as we did. The first time I heard it discussed was in the BEtreat I attended last year (2011), when it was hot off the press, so in this year's BEtreat it was interesting to see that quite a few people were beginning to use it in different ways.

What came out strongly for me was the importance of identifying the indicators of value creation for a specific community. An activity that I found valuable in the first BEtreat was (when focussing on a specific community), to go through the indicators listed on pages 25 to 31 and identify which indicators could be used by the community and where the gaps were. We didn't have time to identify a list of community specific indicators (that may or may not be in the lists provided), but I would see that as the next step.

The other thing that I remember was that the indicators of immediate value (Cycle 1 - indicators of activity) and potential value (Cycle 2 - indicators of knowledge capital) were easier to identify than succeeding indicators in Cycles 3, 4 and 5 - indicators of change in practice, performance imporvement and redefinition of success, respectively).

My thinking/understanding is that this process would help to organise the many and diverse stories about the value of participating in a community of practice. Is this how you understood it?

I'm looking forward to seeing how your work on this progresses.

Thanks for sharing,

Jenny

Hi John - I agree with you and Vance that there is value in lurking and 'lurkers' both for the lurkers and for the community. Your comment

Still it has to be said that the number of participants in more or less synchronous time DOES matter -- it DOES tell us something. Just not everything.

has reminded me of something that a colleague once said to me when I was worried about the small numbers of people participating in an online seminar/webinar. He said - whoever is at the table are the people who should be there - or words to that effect.

I have always remembered that comment and it changed the way I think about the numbers of people attendending an online or f2f meeting/conference.  I don't worry about it any more. As you say

it DOES tell us something. Just not everything.

which is also a great way of looking at it :-)