What have your experiences been with using and sharing openly? In what ways have you benefitted? Have you found any great resources that someone else shared? What hasn't gone so well for you? Have you done an adaptation to make an open resource more applicable to your instructional setting? Have you tried unsuccessfully to find an open resource? Tell us about it!
Mary Burgess
Posts made by Mary Burgess
What do you see as the benefits and challenges of Open Textbooks? For creators? Adopters? Adapters? Students?
Post any questions you have here. Feel free to answer them too! The course facilitators will be monitoring this space, but we are very interested in the potential for peer learning so are happy to have you help each other.
Definitely agree with you Jeffrey that there isn't a need for consensus in this case, but I think the conversation is really important to the legitimacy of badges generally. Having robust discussion about how to assess those who want to earn a badge, and resulting clear assessment criteria is one way I think badges will become more legitimate. If we think there is value to issuing badges to recognize work done using open resources for example, we need a way of determining just what the badge signifies. In the case of something like PLAR for admission into an academic program, or for hiring a potential employee, understanding the skill set is key.
Some interesting badge experiences!
Many years ago, I studied for and wrote exams that led to Microsoft certifications. I can't quite remember, but I think if you wrote 4, you were an MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) or 6 to be an MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer). This experience, and my understanding of the way this set of "badges" still works (you get to put a little image of your cert in your email signature and elsewhere) is one of my major concerns about wide badge adoption as a way of showing competency to employers and others. There were test prep resources galore, and many people only used those resources rather than actually learning the skills needed to do the job of managing servers etc, the intended outcome. The certification was awarded based on a score on a multiple choice exam. There was no opportunity for authentic assessment of any kind, and the reputation of the cert has suffered as a result.
I think the idea of rubrics or other forms of clear assessment criteria would be very helpful for potential employers for example, who might not trust that a badge = competency.
That all said, I found this article last night, https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/5/59/OpenBadges-Working-Paper_012312.pdf and found the discussion of capturing the learning path fascinating.