See the PowerPoint slides from this presentation: Engaging Students with Professional Development through Open Badges.
Mozilla's Open Badges are a new, free, and increasingly effective way of digitally recognising individuals' learning and professional development. Open Badges can be created on a variety of platforms and are embedded with important data about the issuer, criteria and verifying evidence. As such, they are an innovative, digital way to promote students' professional development and reflection on the skills they are developing which are part of their professional identity.
Thus far Open Badges have not been widely used in the further or higher education sectors, but I co-led a workshop with Maz Nathoo at the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) conference today where we shared our work at Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) to help participants develop ideas for their own Open Badges in their own institutions. EUSA has worked in partnership with the University of Edinburgh's Information Services division to implement one of the first Open Badge schemes used in the UK higher education sector.
The first part of the workshop focused on a short presentation followed by discussion to familiarise participants with the concept of Open Badges and described EUSA's model of badges, badge criteria, and implementation processes. Questions included: 'What are Open Badges? How can you use them in your work to promote student engagement? How can Open Badges showcase your students' professional development?'
The second part of the workshop focused on discussing the impact of Open Badges. We gave examples of impact for both individual students and for the Students' Association of how the badges have increased student engagement with reflection and achievement-sharing via blogs and on LinkedIn. This was followed by brainstorming and activities to explore how to best measure and showcase the impact of Open Badges in further and higher education. In particular, we discussed what success and impact mean when implementing open badges, particularly focusing on how they can be recognised and gain currency within higher education communities and beyond with employers. Participants highlighted the importance of clear information about what badges are, quantitative success with numbers, but also qualitative success including the reflection and achievement of individuals.
Mozilla's Open Badges are a new, free, and increasingly effective way of digitally recognising individuals' learning and professional development. Open Badges can be created on a variety of platforms and are embedded with important data about the issuer, criteria and verifying evidence. As such, they are an innovative, digital way to promote students' professional development and reflection on the skills they are developing which are part of their professional identity.
Thus far Open Badges have not been widely used in the further or higher education sectors, but I co-led a workshop with Maz Nathoo at the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) conference today where we shared our work at Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) to help participants develop ideas for their own Open Badges in their own institutions. EUSA has worked in partnership with the University of Edinburgh's Information Services division to implement one of the first Open Badge schemes used in the UK higher education sector.
The first part of the workshop focused on a short presentation followed by discussion to familiarise participants with the concept of Open Badges and described EUSA's model of badges, badge criteria, and implementation processes. Questions included: 'What are Open Badges? How can you use them in your work to promote student engagement? How can Open Badges showcase your students' professional development?'
The second part of the workshop focused on discussing the impact of Open Badges. We gave examples of impact for both individual students and for the Students' Association of how the badges have increased student engagement with reflection and achievement-sharing via blogs and on LinkedIn. This was followed by brainstorming and activities to explore how to best measure and showcase the impact of Open Badges in further and higher education. In particular, we discussed what success and impact mean when implementing open badges, particularly focusing on how they can be recognised and gain currency within higher education communities and beyond with employers. Participants highlighted the importance of clear information about what badges are, quantitative success with numbers, but also qualitative success including the reflection and achievement of individuals.
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