Open Badges: Trying to navigate through the melting pot of ideas

A short literature review on open badges in Higher Education generates a large number of conflicting emotions and views around their potential. I’d sum these up as follows;

1. uncertainty
2. excitement
3. potential
4. irrelevance
5. anxieties
6. disruptive
7. game changer
8. questionable
9. learner centred

This short discussion explores what underpins these emotions and opinions, and how a HE Institution might progress with open badges in the short term.

Open badges are relatively new. “There is currently little in the formal literature relating to their use or impact” (Glover & Latif (2013:1402)). Their importance as a means of accrediting learning was highlighted in the Innovating Pedagogy Report 2013, and it is clear open badges play a role in enabling many of the ideas discussed within the Innovating Pedagogy Report 2014.

A digital badge is a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, quality or interest (http://www.hastac.org). From the learner’s perspective this opens up the opportunity of their learning environment no longer being tied to a structured classroom or online space, but being wider, encompassing formal and informal learning opportunities. Badges enable learners to navigate “multiple pathways to gain competencies and refine skills through open, remixable and transparent tools, resources and process” (Mozilla Foundation (2012:4). Within this context open badges are the method to demonstrate the outcomes of this evolving learning journey.

Given open badges are a recent innovation, this discussion is grounded within the knowledge they will undergo significant changes. Carey (2012) states, “many of the first badge systems will fail … they won’t be designed well enough or properly connected to communities of interest”.

The question is, what are the current discussions around open badges?

Glover and Latif (2013)’s study indicates the use of badges in formal education is a conceptual struggle, however students and staff are engaged within creative discussions. For instance, staff wish to explore badges within reference writing, while the students wish to differentiate badges with some only available to high achievers. However, both groups felt employer engagement was important.

Gibson et al., (2015) review of badges in HE see the uses around incentivising learners to engage in positive learning behaviours, identify progress in learner and provide credits for engagement, learning and achievements. They explore the positive potential on a leaners motivation, through status recognition and evidence of achievement.

Carey (2012) explores the impact on traditional assessment and recognition methods in HE. His discussion highlights the disruptive nature of badges and their potential as a game changer. Carey (2012) notes, open badges make the standard college transcript look like a sad and archaic thing. Where the information within the transcript is both limited in quantity and usefulness to employers. On one level this challenges the current locus of control within the the assessment process. For instance, the wider use and acceptance of badges would encourage the learner to develop their own assessment framework.

The previous point hinges on the acceptance of open badges across society. Therefore, the role of employers becomes critical. Open badges enable a learner to present a rich picture of themselves, however, adoption is dependent on them being credible to employers and professional bodies. Therefore, they will succeed or fail on how desirable people find the issued badges (Glover 2013).

Davies et al., (2015) identify there is significant opportunity of using open badges to certify practice compared to the current practice based on a degree and examination route. They outline a top-down design framework and conclude with “a carefully prepared and effeciently implemented certification system based on open badges could potentially provide a transparent, flexible, efficient, rigorous and credible way of certify evaluators” (Davies et al., (2015:161).

Some of the emerging concerns from the literature are around the rigour of the badge and the badging system. Currently, the rigour of the assessment criteria and trust is placed on those who authorized the badge. Therefore, questions must be asked concerning what mechanisms are in place and how is quality assured? Goligoski’s (2012) review summarises public concerns of open badges, and provides a longer term perspective around badges becoming just a commodity, which as digital assets may exclude some individuals, resulting in an uneven implementation. If this occurs, it would be expected open badges will remain on the periphery.

Within the above context, the next question is, how might an institution progress with its open badge initiatives?

The starting is institutions need to start piloting the use of open badges within the formal and informal learning provision.

The less contentious route is to focus on the informal learning mechanisms within an institution as a means of piloting a number of initiatives. The pilot needs to help the institution articulate the questions to ask within its context. For instance, what do students and staff currently perceive as the potential of open badges? What value do local employers place on open badges? How should be manage the open badge infrastructure? While addressing the trickier questions at the heart of the debate, what value does a badge have? Should be we concerned about comparing learning effort across badges?

At UCS the first stage has been to develop the infrastructure, and pilot some uses around informal learning opportunities, including reflections on conferences and workshops, and the completion of study skill workshops. This has developed a broader understanding of the answers to some of the earlier questions, while building up confidence and capacity in a robust and resilient infrastructure. On reflection, within the literature this is prevalent approach, the toe in the water, to help contextualise what open badges mean to us.

However, for successful technological adoption, we’ll need to ensure two key elements are aligned if these small scale, unconnected pilots are to morph into an institutional wide impact.

1. Leadership from the top. At the moment there is no senior / academic lead endorsing and driving the change programme and pilot. However, this is required so they can articulate how the technology supports the institutional strategic vision.
2. Institutional commitment and investment. The provision of ring fencing resources to deliver the change. A successful pilot project will require academic staff input. Therefore, involvement must be recognised as a valid activity for staff and is reflected within workload models.
3. Engage with local employees to discuss their opinion of badges and the potential  role they play

I would suggest if an institution wished to progress on open badges it does not need to go through the early adopter, proof of concept stage, as there are enough lessons learnt within the public domain. They should progress straight to a large scale pilot with top level institutional support.

Further Reading

• Carey, K. (2012) A Future Full of Badges. Available at: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Future-Full-of-Badges/131455/ (Accessed: 17 June 2015)
• Davies, R., Randall, D. and West, R. E. (2015) ‘Using Open Badges to Certify Practicing Evaluators’, American Journal of Evaluation, 36(2), pp. 151–163. doi: 10.1177/1098214014565505
• Gibson, D., Ostashewski, N., Flintoff, K., Grant, S. and Knight, E. (2013) ‘Digital badges in education’, Education and Information Technologies, 20(2), pp. 403–410. doi: 10.1007/s10639-013-9291-7
• Glover, I. (2013) Open badges: a visual method of recognising achievement and increasing learner motivation. Available at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/7612 (Accessed: 17 June 2015)
• Glover, I. and Latif, F. (2013) Investigating perceptions and potential of open badges in formal higher education. Available at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/7173 (Accessed: 17 June 2015)
• Goligoski, E. (2012) ‘Motivating the Learner: Mozilla’s Open Badges Program’, Access to Knowledge, 4(1), pp. 1–8.
• Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (ed.) (no date) Digital Badges. Available at: http://www.hastac.org/collections/digital-badges (Accessed: 17 June 2015)
• Jovanovic, J. and Devedzic, V. (2014) ‘Open Badges: Novel Means to Motivate, Scaffold and Recognize Learning’, Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 20(1), pp. 115–122. doi: 10.1007/s10758-014-9232-6
• Open University (ed.) (no date) Innovating Pedagogy 2014 | Open University Innovations Report #3. Available at: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovating/ (Accessed: 17 June 2015)
• The Mozilla Foundation (ed.) (2012) Open Badges for Lifelong Learning. Available at: https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/5/59/OpenBadges-Working-Paper_012312.pdf (Accessed: 17 June 2015)

Publishing Open Badges to Mozilla Backpack

We have had problems with publishing Open Badges to the Mozilla Backpack directly from LearnUCS (Blackboard), as have all other institutions.

Blackboard have been looking into the problem and have now applied a fix to our database, meaning we can now automate the awarding of an achievement and publishing the Open Badge to Mozilla Backpack.

We have one area already waiting to use this feature, if you would like to offer these skills based awards please speak with a member of the Elevate team, elevate@ucs.ac.uk

Open Badges Generator & Issuer - Feature Updates!

This is a small blog post to update everyone with some recent developments with our Open Badges Generator & Issuer.

New Features:

• Badges issued now reference a unique 8 character ID instead of a row number. This will allow us to maintain a clean data sheet and be able to sort issued badges without disrupting any non issued badges.
• Badges can now have an expiry date. We really wanted this implementation as it allows us to tag certain badges for expiry to indicate a need for refreshing skills periodically.

Removed/Fixed:

• Removed the need for the external proxy script.
• Unified some naming conventions
• Adjusted some guideline notes

The source code has been updated to the latest version, previous versions can be found using GitHub's own version control.

Here is the link to the guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12qRhAc9rzUH7FXBW0J4NtLkY-8RoQVw-Z4yOk3mTJmA/edit?usp=sharing

This documentation is provided on the basis that the viewer has some technical knowledge of Javascript Syntax, basic Google Apps Script and basic HTML/CSS knowledge.

And here is a link to the updated source code:
https://gist.github.com/thedavidmullett/54a5153f6298539ce05d

Open Badge Requirements

After the recent issuing of Open Badges to those who either took an online course or attended an event here at UCS, the team decided to sit down and discuss what exactly what we would advise for issuing further badges.

We were keen to make sure we weren't diluting the achievement based elements of gaining a badge by simply issuing them to whoever turned up to an event.

For our pilot badges we decided to make sure the participant had to actually participant in someway to the event or course.

For example, the students who took the e-Portfolios for the reflective learner course received there badges shortly after completing the course. During the course the students had to complete a short number of tasks and submit a final portfolio. This was their activity or task to prove that they had participated in the course.

The sentiment that the badge should prove that the participant has been 'involved' in their learning by proving active communication, teamwork or critical thinking was echoed in a recent Edudemic post 'Why The Future of Education Involves Badges' (http://www.edudemic.com/future-of-education-badges/).

"Articulating benefits from general education and extracurricular activities. For general education courses, colleges can use learning design principles to define “soft skill” outcomes and then measure competency against these objectives. Students who demonstrate they have acquired these critical job-ready soft skills will earn job-relevant badges in areas like critical thinking, research, oral and written communication, collaboration, leadership and teamwork."

This is why we advise NOT to simply issue a badge based on lets say for instance simply attending a workshop or conference.

We would suggest, instead, offering up a badge for anyone who wishes to submit a reflective piece based around any key messages they have taken away from that workshop or conference. This ticks multiple boxes, firstly it gets the participant actively involved in their learning and secondly it provides a nice conduit for more in-depth feedback about said workshop or conference. It may well depend on what information you wish to capture however we would advise keeping any reflective piece to around 150-200 words.

Issuing Open Badges at UCS - Where are we?

After the development and completion of the Open Badges Generator (http://goo.gl/Vj0ymZ) we trialled the use of open badges at various events over the last few weeks here at UCS. These included the annual Learning and Teaching Day, AMC Development Day and the Research Colloquium as well as badges for attendees to our Digital Literacy Programme courses.

The objectives needed to obtain the event badges were not to simply turn up, but to submit a short (~150 words) reflective piece reflecting on a key message that you had taken away from the event or workshop and how you could use that in your everyday work. This method also helps to provide event organisers with a source of feedback.

These reflections were captured using a Google Form and attendees were given two weeks to submit the form.

After the two weeks had past, a member of the Elevate Team would simply open the Open Badge Issuer selecting the correct badge and using the form information to issue badges to those who submitted their reflections.

We issued 41 badges in total over the various events and workshops.

Here is a brief overview of the process:

1. Initial meeting with event/workshop organiser explaining 'What are Open Badges' and how they could be used for their sessions - 15m
2. Create Google Form (Name, email address, reflection) and send link to organiser- 5m
3. After event, Issue badges - ~30s per response

We have a main open badges page which can be found using the link below which details how we are using Open Badges at UCS.

http://www.ucs.ac.uk/openbadge/How-are-we-using-open-badges-at-UCS.aspx

Looking back over the whole process it's clear to see that for quite a significant result, I.e issuing an Open Badge, the process it self was very administration light.

The only issue we had with this process was one recipient having issues logging into their Mozilla Backpack, the issue was resolved by getting the recipient to use a different browser such as Mozilla FireFox or Google Chrome rather than Internet Explorer.

Each badge that got issued points to a 'Criteria' page on the UCS website where information about the badge is stored. 

Some questions for future use have arisen from the recent use of badges for these events. These include:

• Does there need to be a review of the quality of reflections before issuing of badges and if so, who would do this?
• A need to revoke or expire badges if the badge is for a re-occurring event or CPD which continually needs updating.

The expiring of badges is on the development list for our next sprint with this project. We will also look at scripting in some unique identifiers for each badge to help us track and maintain a clean and error free database. 

With word spreading and interest climbing for the use of Open Badges for face to face workshops and events, scripting in some sort of analytics would help us track 'number of badges issued' for individual events/workshops.

If you are a member of staff at UCS and would like to know more about Open Badges or how you could use them, feel free to contact us :)

Taking stock: the what and why around open badges?

As you are probably aware we have been piloting the use of open badges as a means for an individual to be recognised for what they have achieved, and show the badges in the place that matters.

Given the progress we have been making (how are we using badges at UCS), it is a good opportunity to reflect and take stock.

We'd suggest the following video answers those broader questions, around what is an open badge and why you might start collecting them.

Start at 1:04

Alternative link: http://youtu.be/Xc4xDgNbl6Y?t=1m4s

Open Badges Generator

Having tested the initial generator (http://ucselevate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/open-badges-generator.html) and having since updated to a multi-function system, the first generator will be turned off at the end of the week (Fri 13th).

This will free up some development space for us to debug the current system and make way for future enhancements.

If you have tested the generator above and have any comments, please feel free to email us at elevate@ucs.ac.uk

Open badges: AMC Development Day Pilot - A success

We've published the badges for the AMC Development Day. There was about 9% take up from people attending.

This will act as the building blocks for the next two pilots at UCS, including use within the Teaching and Learning Day, and Research Colloquium

This is the first stage of the pilot, where we've;

1. developed and tested a Badge Generator to provide badges for face to face events
2. set the tone of the discussion at UCS where the criteria for the badge is not simply attending the event, but also the inclusion of a reflective statement about the event / development session.
3. designed and created the actual badge (image)
4. created physical support and awareness material for people attending the event (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1giN1QaU7wGlibJhkbyy6nUWyhQarV34uisxJcGb5fO4/edit?usp=sharing)
5. created the underpinning static web pages
• the criteria of the specific badge (http://www.ucs.ac.uk/openbadge/AMC-Development-Day.aspx),
• how are we using badges at UCS (http://www.ucs.ac.uk/openbadge/How-are-we-using-open-badges-at-UCS.aspx)

Open Badges Generator Update - Source Code

Following on from our previous post on the Open Badges Generator we have updated our system to include both badge creation and badge issuing components.

We have now written up a small guide to help anyone who would like to implement this elsewhere. The system we have built and documented is still in it's initial pilot/proof of concept phase so expect there to be some discrepancies in the source code.

Here is the link to the guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12qRhAc9rzUH7FXBW0J4NtLkY-8RoQVw-Z4yOk3mTJmA/edit?usp=sharing

And here is a link to the source code:
https://gist.github.com/thedavidmullett/54a5153f6298539ce05d

This documentation is provided on the basis that the viewer has some technical knowledge of Javascript Syntax, basic Google Apps Script and basic HTML/CSS knowledge.

Over the coming months we will be piloting the issuing of badges using this system for events here at UCS, such as the Annual Court, Teaching & learning Day and the Research Colloquium. These events will allow us to test out both the system and the processes behind issuing the badges from the initial team talk with the event host to the claiming of the badges from the attendees.

We are keen for recipients to participate towards the event in order to be eligible for a badge, not to simply turn up. So we are asking participants to fill in a form (Name, Email) including a small reflective piece (150 words max) maybe about a key message they took from the event or some feedback.

Currently we have a small list of developments we will be looking at for the next iteration of this system, these include but not limited to;

• Unique ID for each badge issued to allow for row deletion in DB.
• Option of Expiry Date for issued badges, this will help reinforce a potential 'renewal' process, for example, continuing digital literacies programme.
• A statistics component to record and show how many of each badge has been issued.

Finally, if you are a member of staff at UCS and would like to discuss how you could use Open Badges please contact us :)

Open Badges Generator

We have been looking recently at how we could issue Open Badges, an initiative backed by the Mozilla foundation for standardising the issuing of badges for 'verifying learning'.

There are many systems available for issuing badges to recipients, however all of the systems we have come across (including BlackBoard) need the recipient to be a registered user of that specific system. This became a stumbling block for us as we would like to issue badges based on the more frequented face to face elements the Elevate Team offer. Workshops, Masterclasses and group sessions are all based away from systems such as BlackBoard, so how could we issue badges?

The option of creating a new module in BlackBoard's CourseSites was an option, however this would become cumbersome and yet another task a user would have to go through to simply claim a badge.

Whilst searching around various user groups and communities we stumbled across an article on how to use Google Sites as a badge issuer using Mozilla's Open Badges Issuer API by +Martin Hawksey . After testing what Martin had done, including using Google Forms to process user information, we decided to try and modify the system to suit our needs.

The 'proof of concept' we have ended up with ended up being quite different from what was detailed in the article. Martin's project issued a static two badges, we modified this code to allow us to issue any number of custom badges.

The process would be:

1. User signs up, for example a workshop session, leaving Name and Email
2. Attends the workshop
3. After, the Elevate Team uses the generator to select appropriate badge for the workshop, uses Name and Email in the form.
4. Users gets email to claim their badge

What's nice about this process is it only introduces one step for the end user outside of normal operations (Signup form etc), simply clicking a link in an email.

We created a dynamic Open Badge generator where only our team can select which badge we wish to issue and to whom. The script behind the form will dynamically pull the relevant information (Criteria, Evidence) for each badge based on what badge has been selected, rather than having it as a manual process. We intend to extend this function by having another form which will allow us to 'create' a new badge which can be referenced within this system.

If you wish to test the generator in it's development state and issue yourself either a 'Novice' or 'Expert' badge, please visit the Google Form below.

http://goo.gl/3vWfxY

We have integrated a faux-aunthentication function to negate any spamming of badges for unauthorised users, this was simply done by using a required field in the Google Form which had to match some text exactly to submit the form.

For this proof of concept, the Team Code is "pleaseletmehavethebadge" sans quotes.

If you have any feedback on using the system or if you wish to discuss with the Elevate Team about Open Badges, please contact us at elevate@ucs.ac.uk

Please note that by it's very nature, this system is likely to change and possibly stop working altogether.

The Elevate Open Badge Generator will be for the private issuing of badges by our team, however the underlying code and technical functionality will be posted under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC-BY which will come shortly.

With thanks to +Martin Hawksey 's original code and article - http://mashe.hawksey.info/2012/12/open-badges-issuer-gadget-google-sites/

Introducing Open Badges in Mahara

This is a small post to raise your awareness of a new feature which we've introduced to UCS' Mahara e-Portfolio system. Open Badges.

If you are weren't aware, an Open Badge (http://www.openbadges.org) is a Mozilla backed, open standard framework for defining web badges, in all senses similar to a physical badge you used to get in Boy Scouts or Girl Guides.

A badge can be rewarded to an individual for any number of different achievements. Previous pilots and projects over the last couple of years in the higher education sector have been run to promote an achievement or evidence system based around the use of badges, some have used in house bespoke systems, however, there is growing evidence of using a central 'Backpack' like Mozilla's OpenBadges standard. For example:

'Seton Hall – Created campus wide badges for students who participate in campus events. It’s pretty neat because students can simply swipe their ID card at events to earn the badges. They have another program where freshman earn badges by attending mandatory freshman events.' (Croom, A (2014)) - http://adamcroom.com/2014/04/a-brief-history-of-digital-badges-in-higher-ed/

Well, now you can import and visualise a collection of your own badges into your Mahara e-Portfolio page. You can follow the steps below to import your badges:

If you don't have a Mozilla Backpack, follow this link --> http://www.openbadges.org and register using an email address. If you already have a backpack you can skip to the next step.

1. In Mahara, go to your 'Profile' option under the 'Content' tab
2. Navigate to the 'Contact Information' section
3. Make sure the email address listed is the same as your Mozilla Backpack one, if it isn't, click the 'Add' button and add a the address you used to register for your Mozilla Backpack
4. Click 'Save Profile' at the bottom of the page.
5. You will need to validate your new email address (email will be sent)
6. Go to your portfolio page you wish to add the badges to
7. Click the 'Edit this page'
8. Click the 'External Content' option
9. Drag the 'Open Badges' (Shield icon) onto your portfolio page
10. Depending on what badges you have (if any) you will see what 'Collection' you wish to add.
11. You may need to create a collection in your backpack which is public. 

Any badges you are rewarded with, wherever they are from will now appear on your portfolio page.