Weekly Sporto bookmarks (weekly)

• Opportunities and Challenges with Digital Open Badges – Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology

  tags: digital badges digital-credentials challenges badges

  • This inability to recognize learning in informal contexts is one of many concerns with traditional assessing approaches. A second concern is that traditional credentials are not always effective communicators of a student’s skill or knowledge
  • These two challenges of how to recognize and reward informal learning, and how to increase transparency in traditional grading practices are two credentialing challenges begging for a solution. In the last several years, advances in the field of microcrendentialing, specifically digital badging, has shown promise in solving these assessment challenges.
  • Structurally speaking, digital badges are small digital images that represent an individual’s learning within a specific domain. These images are embedded with rich metadata that increases transparency into what is actually learned
  • Open badges are a unique type of digital badge with additional affordances built into the technology that allow for the credential to be integrated into any compatible learning or portfolio system. While some digital badges are useful indicators of learning within a closed system (e.g. Khan Academy, Duolingo), open badges can be exported into open backpacks that collect and display these microcredentials from many different formal and informal learning systems.
  • Because of their digital and open affordances, open badges can also serve a variety of functions, including as a map of learning pathways or trajectories (Bowen & Thomas, 2014; Newby, Wright, Besser, & Beese, 2015; Gamrat & Zimmerman, 2015), “descriptions of merit” (Rughinis & Matei, 2013), signposts of past and future learning (Rughinis & Matei, 2013), a reward or status symbol (Newby et al., 2015), promoters of motivation and self-regulation (Newby et al., 2015; Randall, Harrison, & West, 2013), “tokens of accomplishment” (O’Byrne, Schenke, Willis, & Hickey, 2015), a learning portfolio or repository (Gamrat et al., 2014), and a goal-setting support (Gamrat & Zimmerman, 2015).
  • including positive effects on motivation, guidance, and recognition.
  • appeal for a learner’s intrinsic motivation by rewarding effort and improvement instead of performance
  • In fact, many organizations with badging structures include self-direction as a major component.
  • key aspects of personalized learning through digital technologies, including giving learners choices, recognizing different forms of skills and knowledge, and learner-focused assessment. Open badges address these key attributes of personalized learning by increasing learning options, assessing discrete skills at a micro level, and credentialing learning both within and without traditional formal institutions.
  • These badges can then be organized into learning paths that provide guidance to learners in particular domains
  • Digital badges not only illuminate the learning pathways for future learning, but can also recognize learning experiences that previously have not been easily acknowledged through a credential.
  • While digital badges offer promise for solving some difficult educational challenges, critics have pointed out several concerns, particularly with issues of scope, awareness, and assessment practices
  • This flood of badges, particularly “lightweight” badges, can clutter the badging landscape and hinder the ability for the end user (e.g. employer, academic institution, etc.) to determine the value and quality of badges. Therefore, the responsibility of the badging community is to create and issue badges that are rigorous and meaningful.
    • Possible question concerning challenges- Badging flooding or watering down of badges can reduce the value of open badges?
  • Another challenge to open badges is the struggle to be recognized outside of their native badging ecosystem.
  • Ecosystems can be local in nature, where badges are intended to be used within an individual’s learning space, or global where badges are designed to be displayed and recognized beyond the institution’s community. While both badging ecosystems can serve an important purpose, creating a global badging ecosystem requires organizations outside the institution to recognize and accept the badge performance and assessment.
    • How can open badges break away from their local nature and in fact help build a global badging ecosystem that is key to solving some of the problems related to job mobility?
  • because of the portability of the open badge technology, it is possible for like-minded institutions of learning to form consortiums where badges could hold value with peer institutions within the consortium.
    • are there examples of consortiums where several organizations collaborate in the developing of meaningful open badging ecosystems?
  • Professional organizations with a vested interest in those skills might consider endorsing these badges to give them increased weight and importance
  • Much like any start-up organization trying to enter into a new market, new ideas, such as open badges, require brand awareness by consumers to begin gaining cultural acceptance.
  • Generally speaking, consumers must be made aware through positive interactions with a product or idea before they are willing to embrace it
  • Decision makers in government, business, and education appear to be generally unaware of the potential of badges to motive, direct, and recognize learning.

• 5 Sites to Search and Find the Best Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for You

  tags: MOOCs MOOC aggregator mooc moocs

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.