To badge or not to badge?

Mirjam Hauck and Teresa MacKinnon

Our work so far:• OIE task types and badge placement investigated

through Clavier• Quantitative and qualitative data collected and

analysed from pilot• Framework proposed to support design decisions

Preliminary conclusions:

Badges provide a route to the acquisition of complex skills, confidence builds competence.

Badge collection should not become the means and the end, but remain the means to an end, namely enhanced learner motivation.

Badges can help to balance extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

Badge selection and positioning must be informed by learning design and not the other way round.

Badges can gamify learning but should be chosen and placed with care to support learner ownership of learning progress.

Recent developments:• #openbadgesHE conference held in March 2016, showed many existing

examples of use of open badges across UK and Europe. Badges as recognition of achievement, as motivators, as tools for making learning path visible. Applied in staff development, student engagement, in courses. Available in formal and informal settings.

• Open badges 101 course – collaborative, self access course providing lots of resources and updated by open badge users.

• Open badges to recognise digital skills development e.g. Tech Future Badge Academy

Why open badges?Easily verifiable recognition of skills due to hard coded connection with criteria and issuer. More secure than certificates.

When activity is online, it makes sense to provide immediate recognition of achievement in situ.

Open badges can be designed and issued by anyone, e.g. peer to peer networks.

Badge awardee controls display, communicates own value of awards, has agency in process.

“Rather than guessing a person’s skills from a single credential, stakeholders can gather a nuanced picture of a person’s skills through a collection of smaller credentials”.

(Ahn et al. 2014)

6

Where to start? Develop a concept

Towards an ecosystem of open badges for OIE• Badge award needs to be meaningful; best achieved in consultation

with a range of stakeholders (learners, employers, issuers, Community of Practice)• Learning arc (Cross & Galley 2012) presents 3 types of “learning

journey”; allows us to make the pathway explicit and to recognise progression; through resilience to autonomy • Framework proposal is not prescriptive • Risks?

Image CC BY-SA Kyle Bowen

We need your help!• Experience achieving an open badge• Reflect upon that experience and contribute your thoughts• Design a badge for your context, you can make it here.• Review our chapter and blog your ideas, sharing with the

#telecollab2016; we would like to aggregate your/the community’s thoughts on open badges for OIE

References.• Ahn, J.; Pellicone, A. and Butler, B. S. (2014). Open badges for education: what

are the implications at the intersection of open systems and badging? In: Research in Learning Technology. Vol. 22.• Cross, S., & Galley, R. (2012). MOOC Badging and the Learning arc. [Blog

post]Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk/42038• Hauck, M. & MacKinnon, T. (in press). A new approach to assessing Online

Intercultural Exchange: soft certification of participant engagement and task execution. In: R. O’Dowd and T. Lewis (Eds.) Online Intercultural Exchange: Policy, Pedagogy, Practice. Routledge.

With special thanks to:• Inger-Marie F. Christensen, University of Southern Denmark