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- We’re beginning to see people and organisations looking beyond individual badges towards connected credentials.
- There’s also renewed interest in badges as creating local ecosystems of value.
- For me, the key thing about the web is identity-at-a-distance.
- As an educator, I think the great thing about Open Badges is that they are packaged-up ‘chunks’ of identity that can be put together like Lego bricks to tell the story of who a person is, and what they can do.
- How do we demonstrate the holistic, yet multi-faceted nature of our identities in online spaces?
- I helped set up, but then withdrew from, a group of people looking at ways in which we could use blockchain technology with badges. The trouble is, as Audrey Watters so eloquently pointed out in The ideology of the blockchain, that the prevailing logic when both technologies are used together is be to double-down on high-stakes testing
- Progression pathways
- What we need is a platform (ideally, decentralised and built upon interoperable standards) that allows individuals to display the badges they have, the ones they want, and — through an online dashboard — a constellation map of paths they can follow to employment or levelling-up their skills
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Granular permissions
Something else which would help on the identity front is the separation of badge display from badge evidence store
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Long-term storage
We’re at the stage now where there are large enough vendors within the badges ecosystem to be ensure the long-term survival of digital credentials based on an open metadata standard. However, individual vendors come and go, and some ‘pivot’ towards and away from particular platforms.
- The best way to do this that I’ve come up with is for there to be a non-profit explicitly focused on ‘deep-freeze’ storage of digital credentials, based on a sustainable business model.
- Open Badges is an open metadata standard that connects everyone together.
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A Decentralized System for Education and Assessment | Open Educational Thinkering
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Peering Deep into Future of Educational Credentialing - DML Central
- When people talk about “the blockchain,” they’re almost always referring to the technology underpinning Bitcoin.
- The blockchain is literally a chain of blocks of code serving as a “public ledger” to record transactions within a distributed database
- In other words, you can prove that something took place at that point in time. Those not involved in the “transaction” would not be able to see what actually took place — unless you provided them with the key.
- Examples include extremely sensitive information such as voting patterns, HR records, and, even, nuclear launch codes
- One of the potential stumbling blocks when it comes to the Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI) can be verification. How do I make absolutely sure that the person with this badge is the same person who created the evidence claiming it?
- This would use a “proof of work” system.
- At the moment, the situation is still better than paper-based certificates but, such an approach would allow Open Badges to be used in extremely high-stakes situations
- multiple blockchains that aren’t so tied to cryptocurrencies.
- Ethereum which describes itself as “a platform for decentralized applications.
- Ethereum allows for a situation in the not-so-distant future where smart contracts will allowentirely autonomous corporations to exist.
- With terms of service instantiated in code, such organisations will work on behalf of us to perform tasks that cause problems when subject to human error. These could include automatic issuing and verifying services around trusted credentials.
- If my evidence to earn a badge (or whatever we end up calling such credentials) is part of the blockchain, then I have data upon which to draw that is distributed, public, and objective
- Compare that with our current ad-hoc system of certificates languishing in drawers that struggle to be represented online. Verification moves beyond questions such as “does this look legitimate?”to verified, trusted credentials.
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An Open Can of Tin Badges - Tin Can API
- a crossover between Open Badges and Tin Can (xAPI)
- problem solved by this first version of the recipe: transferring earned badges between systems.
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Download and upload of the badge image.
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Integration with the Mozilla Open BackPack.
Without Tin Can, Open Badges provides two mechanisms for transferring badges:
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- The first option is a poor user experience and a time sink, particularly if there are a lot of learners importing a lot of badges from the same source.
- The second option requires the learner to register and then store their data on Mozilla’s BackPack.
- there’s no way to associate identities within the BackPack
- so earning badges with a mixture of work and personal email addresses is problematic.
- The baked badge image (an Open Badge image containing embedded metadata) is attached to the statement and all of the badge metadata is included within the statement, allowing for easy access without having to un-bake the badge.
- The statements are then retrieved and the badges are displayed both as a list of earned badges and within an activity stream. There’s no need to connect to the Mozilla Backpack or a database; the full record of the badge is stored within the LRS
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Peering Deep into Future of Educational Credentialing [DMLcentral] | Open Educational Thinkering
- an approach would allow Open Badges to be used in extremely high-stakes situations. The blockchain would prove a connection between the evidence and the badge. More details could be unlocked if the earner chooses to share his or her key.
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Open Badges, BlockCerts, and high-stakes credentialing | Open Educational Thinkering
- For many people, that ‘next big thing’ is blockchain.
- it’s enough to
- say that blockchain is a ‘supply-side’ technology, that allows vendors, platforms, and intermediaries a way of verifying ownership or that ‘something’ happened at a particular time.
- MIT have recently launched BlockCerts, which I discussed on this blog recently as being friends of Open Badges. That’s the great thing about open specifications: they play nicely with one another
- the thing that blockchain-based credentials are good for is i
- high stakes situations
- At a time when major employers are saying that they’re more interested in what people can do rather than their high-stakes credentials, it seems strange that we’re doubling down on the digital equivalent of degree certificates.
- Would I use and recommend BlockCerts in my work with clients? Absolutely!
- But only if what was required involved either zero trust between the parties involved in the ecosystem, or high-stakes credentials. For everything else, the verifiable, evidence-based claims of the Open Badges metadata standard work just fine
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Learning Analytics Research for LMS Course Design: Two Studies | EDUCAUSE
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Findings from two research studies at scale reveal the implications of learning analytics research for designing courses in learning management systems.
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Data-driven interventions shine light on our institutional conceptions of learning, who our students are, and our responsibility — or perhaps our willingness — to support students.
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By focusing the lens of analytics on course design, we may be able to define success in a way that is more intuitive and compelling to faculty and thus facilitates a more scalable approach toward course redesign for improved student success.
- When viewing student LMS activity and whether faculty enabled the grade center as an interaction effect — where the effect of one independent
- Grade center use often reflects a course design practice of using auto-graded quizzes, either for formative practice or summative assessment, which an LMS does well. This could support the "testing effect" that learning science research has shown to be one of the best ways for students to learn, by forcing them to recall and apply knowledge, preferably in frequent "low stakes" settings vs. infrequent "high stakes" settings like midterms and finals, that might encourage a cram and purge vs. a learn, recall and apply approach
- The opportunity for early feedback helps students make corrections and improve their self-regulation
- We investigated the top tools used among all courses in the sample
- student inactivity using the LMS was a strong predictor of grade
- both studies clearly indicate that the use of the LMS, and more importantly specific tools within the LMS, are significantly related to student achievement and thus have implications for course design. These studies clearly demonstrate that the inclusion of grade information in LMS courses, as well as student access to those grades, is related to improvements in student achievement
- the use of these tools necessitates deeper underlying changes to pedagogical practices by faculty (namely, changes in assessment techniques) and study habits by students (namely, changes in self-regulated learning).
- learning analytics provides us with a powerful technology and set of methods that we can use to evaluate the impact of these techniques, achieved through commonly available technologies, at a scale and scope dramatically improved from other tools that we have available.
- The analytics also provide evidence for deep pedagogical transformations enabled through technology.
- We can choose to follow the peaks and valleys of the analytics hype cycle, or use this opportunity to reflect more critically on the progress we've made, what we've learned in the process, and opportunities for where to go next.
- refining predictive analytics to inform more empirical studies of interventions that improve student success, we propose using quantitative evidence of impact at a bird's-eye view of any technology system to inform and drive a deeper qualitative investigation
- "If you want to change a culture, shine light on success."
- By focusing the lens of analytics on course design — not just student performance — we may be able to define success in a way that is more intuitive and compelling to faculty and thus facilitates more scalable transformation of teaching and learning
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- These are partnerships between education institutions and industry and professional associations that stack industry certifications within education programs
- certification-embedded education programs
- they’re awarded through assessment and validation that the learner has indeed achieved specific learning outcomes or attained a defined level of knowledge or skill relative to a given industry standard.
- Competency-based
- Here are 10 key takeaways from the survey’s 149 respondents, 80 percent of whom represented community and technical colleges with the remaining representing four-year institutions, employer groups and others:
- At four-year institutions, partnerships to embed credentials are most prevalent in management and business, healthcare, public safety, and information technology programs. At two-year institutions, partnerships are most prevalent in manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, welding, information technology, and healthcare.
- credit-bearing certificate and associate and applied associate degree programs in community and technical colleges
- The main driver of this practice is to enable educational institutions to respond to employer demands
- Respondents from community and technical colleges and employer associations consider embedding industry certifications to be especially relevant to their programs and partnerships; four-year institutions are less likely to see the practice as relevant
- The term most commonly associated with embedding industry and professional certifications within education is “stackable.” “Competency-based” and “embedded” are also used.
- Embedded certifications are being delivered as both a required and optional component of education courses.
- Vendor-neutral certifications include certifications such as the CompTIA suite of certifications in information technology that are not tied to a specific company. The practice of embedding vendor-specific certifications is more prevalent in community and technical colleges than four-year institutions.
- the cost of taking industry certification exams is borne by the student.
- Students can complete both academic credential and industry and professional-recognized certification;
- Colleges’ and universities’ curricula remain up-to-date with industry standards; and
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Saturday, March 11, 2017
Weekly Sporto bookmarks (weekly)
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