Transcript
Page 1: Open Badges: Novel Means to Motivate, Scaffold and Recognize Learning

ON LI NE LEARN ING

Open Badges: Novel Means to Motivate, Scaffoldand Recognize Learning

Jelena Jovanovic • Vladan Devedzic

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract This report is centered on the emerging concept and technology of Open

Badges (OBs) that are offering novel means and practices of motivating, scaffolding,

recognizing, and credentialing learning. OBs are closely associated with values such as

openness and learners’ agency, participatory learning and peer-learning communities. This

report points to the distinctive features of OBs and how they have positioned OBs as

suitable candidates for addressing some of the pressing challenges in the context of lifelong

learning, including (but not limited to) (1) recognition of learning in multiple and diverse

environments that go beyond traditional classrooms; (2) recognition of diverse kinds of

skills and knowledge, including soft and general skills; (3) support for alternative forms of

assessment; (4) the need for transparent and easily verifiable digital credentials. The report

also offers an overview of the major issues and challenges that might delay or even prevent

widespread adoption of this emerging technology.

Keywords Digital badges � Open badges � Alternative assessment � Recognition �Digital credentials

1 Introduction and Description of the Emerging Technology

An important and relatively new technology that facilitates recognition and credentialing

of different skills and learning achievements and can further increase learning motivation

is that of digital badges, and more specifically Open Badges (OBs). A digital badge is a

validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, competency, quality or interest that can be

earned in various learning environments (Carey Carey 2012). It is an ‘‘online record of

achievements, tracking the recipient’s communities of interaction that issued the badge and

the work completed to get it’’. (The Mozilla Foundation and P2PU 2012).

J. Jovanovic (&) � V. DevedzicFaculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Jove Ilica 154, Belgrade, Serbiae-mail: [email protected]

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Tech Know LearnDOI 10.1007/s10758-014-9232-6

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OBs take the concept of digital badges one step further. They allow learners to verify

their skills, interests and achievements through credible organizations. The information

about the badge issuing organization, the criteria for issuing the badge, the date when the

badge was issued, and the evidence of the accomplishment are attached to the badge image

file, hard-coding the metadata for future access and review.

OBs are based on an open technical specification, called Open Badge Infrastructure, or

OBI (Mozilla Open Badges 2012). OBI defines the badge issuer as a learning provider or

an employer awarding an OB for completing a certain task (tasks) and/or attaining a certain

goal (goals). The issuer creates the criteria that the badge earner needs to fulfill in order to

win the badge. Badge earners can combine multiple OBs from different issuers, display

them on the Web, and share them for employment, and/or further education. OBI comes

with a set of open application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers to

integrate OB services with existing applications, Websites, and social networks.

OBs support a new approach to knowledge assessment and recognition by giving

prospective employers, professional groups, community groups, schools, instructors and

learners a more complete picture of badge earners’ knowledge, skills and abilities (Badge

Alliance 2014). They enable gathering and keeping in one (digital) space badges that

originate from different sources, as well as combining selected badges into custom profiles

(Glover 2013). Since they carry all the information one would need to understand and

value the achievement/status they refer to, and since that information is encoded in a

standard (OBI-compliant) machine-processable format, OBs significantly ease the transfer

of credentials across different contexts and institutional boundaries.

Technology for developing OB systems is already available, and much of it is open-

source and free. BadgeKit (https://badgekit.org/),a badging platform designed and devel-

oped by Mozilla Foundation, helps individuals and organizations to create, assess and issue

OBs. In addition, through the exposed APIs, it can be easily connected with the user’s

Website and services/tools that display digital badges such as Mozilla’s Backpack (http://

backpack.openbadges.org/) OB display tool.

Among other currently popular badging platforms are also:

• BadgeOSTM (https://badgeos.org/), a free plugin for WordPress that allows users of a

WordPress-powered Website to complete learning tasks, demonstrate achievement, and

earn badges

• Passport (https://www.openpassport.org/), a Purdue University hosted platform that

allows for designing OBs, connecting badges with course objectives, setting challenges

(i.e., learning tasks) for badge earners, assisting students while working on those

challenges, and assisting instructors in following each student’s progress

Badge Platform Options for Schools (http://blog.makewav.es/2013/08/05/open-badges-

for-schools-what-are-the-options/) and Platforms for Issuing OBs (http://bit.ly/platform-

chart) offer a comprehensive overview of the available platforms for development and

hosting of OB solutions.

2 Relevance for Learning, Instruction, and Assessment

The available academic literature, project reports, numerous case studies, and personal

experiences reported by educational researchers and practitioners indicate the following as

the main roles that OBs might have in the educational domain (Jovanovic and Devedzic

2014):

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OBs as a motivational mechanism: in this role, OBs act as rewards for learners’

engagement and/or achievements. In addition, they have the potential to motivate learning

by supporting novel learning practices, those based on participatory learning approaches

and peer-based learning communities (Williams et al. 2011). Even though important, this

role of OBs should not be overemphasized and OBs should not be equated with a ‘ga-

mification’ instrument. The reason is that apart from leveraging game mechanics to

motivate learners’ engagement, OBs are often adopted for other affordances they provide

(as explained below).

OBs as a means of supporting alternative forms of assessment: OBs promise to be a

(part of the) solution for the rising dissatisfaction with standardized tests as presently the

dominant approach to knowledge assessment. This is especially emphasized when it comes

to appropriate assessment and recognition of not only subject-specific skills and compe-

tences, but also of generic competences and soft skills. For instance, they can support the

peer-assessment process where learners do not just receive badges but are requested to

comment on them, share evidence around them, recommend their peers for accreditation,

and even become accreditors themselves (as an example of this practice, see, for instance,

Peer2Peer University: https://p2pu.org/).

OBs as a means of recognizing and credentialing learning: OBs enable the recognition

of diverse kinds of learning accomplishments achieved in different parts of decentralized

learning environments, i.e., Networked Learning Ecosystems (Ito et al. 2013) such as

Global Kids (http://olpglobalkids.org/). Moreover, OBs neatly meet the ever-increasing

workplace demands for ever-evolving and tailored skills and competences, thus ‘beating’

formal degrees from higher education institutions that are slower in adapting to the market

needs (Sullivan 2013). The growing open education movement, including massive open

online courseware (MOOC), is also contributing to the demand for alternative certification

and recognition mechanisms such as OBs. For instance, Udacity (http://udacity.com), a

well-known MOOC provider, has recently announced the introduction of nanodegrees, a

form of micro-credentials very similar to OBs (Shen 2014).

OBs as a means of charting learning routes: through the associated badge-earning

criteria and entitlements (i.e., privileges and responsibilities opened up by earning a

badge), OBs enable teachers to scaffold their students in the exploration of the learning

space. In other words, by acting as ‘signposts’ through a curriculum, OBs offer learners

some guidance, but at the same time sufficient freedom in choosing their own path.

OBs as a means of supporting self-reflection and planning: by enabling learners to

continuously track what they have learned, and by offering them insights into what the next

steps might be, OBs support the tasks of self-reflection and planning of learning activities.

These meta-cognitive activities are key to the development of self-regulation skills, highly

desirable for life-long learners.

3 Emerging Technology in Practice

3.1 Projects and Initiatives

A number of projects and initiatives have adopted OBs as a core enabling technology for

motivating, recognizing and credentialing learning achievements:

• Badge the UK project (http://www.digitalme.co.uk/badgetheuk) is making use of the

DigitalMe OB platform (http://www.digitalme.co.uk/) to raise the value of authentic

Open Badges

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learning, skills and talents of young people in the context of their education, jobs and

personal fulfilment.

• Makewaves (https://www.makewav.es/mwhq) is a community of thousands of schools

(junior/primary and high schools/college) and a social learning environment where

young people learn together and share learning resources. Learning is made more

exciting with learning missions where learners’ achievements are recognised and

awarded with OBs.

• GRASS (http://grass.fon.bg.ac.rs) is a recently started EU project that investigates the

use of OBs as a means of supporting the development, assessment and grading of

learners’ soft skills (such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, com-

munication and the like).

• MOUSE Squad (http://mousesquad.org/), a US national educational program aimed at

improving students’ digital media and technology knowledge and skills, uses OBs not

only for the recognition of students’ successful completion of learning modules, but

also as a way of mapping students’ pathways and learning trajectories.

• Pathways for Lifelong Learning (http://www.mypasa.org/news/2014/03/19/case-study-

pasas-open-badges) is an initiative launched by the Providence After School Alliance

and the Mozilla Foundation, aimed at enabling high school students to receive aca-

demic credit—in the form of OBs—approved by the local school system, for after-

school learning experiences and achievements that took place outside the classroom

(e.g., participation in the city debate club, or an art course at a local museum).

For a more comprehensive review of other related projects, see http://goo.gl/r2wIBB.

3.2 A Closer Look at Current Practices and Experiences

Due to their recency, OBs are still unknown to many teachers and educational practitio-

ners, while those who have learned about this new technology are often faced with

numerous questions related to the actual design and deployment of OBs in their curricula.

These questions are sometimes accompanied by hesitancy and concerns, as some teachers

might (mistakenly) perceive the introduction of OBs as a disruption of their teaching

practices. Therefore, it is important to emphasize that the use of OBs in a curriculum

should not be seen as a replacement for traditional forms of grading and certification; OBs

are rather an additional means of tracking individuals’ achievements and progress over

time; they go beyond the traditional grading and recognition mechanisms built into a

course structure. Furthermore, the design and deployment of an OBs system are tightly

connected to the curriculum objectives and the teacher’s chosen pedagogical approach;

they can be seen as a technical affordance that facilitates the implementation of the chosen

pedagogy.

The two above stated points are well illustrated in the OBs system developed for the

Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Major (SA & FS) at University of California at

Davis, USA (UCD 2014).This OBs system has recently been initiated as a complement to

the existing portfolio system, in order to provide additional support for experiential

learning—the pedagogy of choice at SA & FS for over a decade. Their initial experience

with the deployed badge system shows that an important precursor to launching a badge

system is to have a well-defined instructional design (e.g., to determine the right mix of

self, peer and expert assessment for any given badge). In addition, OBs should be aligned

with the program’s learning objectives and requirements. An important part of the SA &FS

pedagogical approach was to motivate students to reflect over their learning objectives and

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learning experiences. Accordingly, the students were also given a chance to design badges

and in doing so to think about all the steps and requirements for earning a badge, thus

focusing on the process of earning the badge, rather than on the pure act of ‘winning’ the

badge.

Only in rare cases OBs are used as an alternative grading and certification mechanism

for a part of regular course requirements. An example of this way of building OBs into the

curriculum comes from Borders College, Scotland (JISC RSC 2013). They have initiated

Supporter2Reporter (S2R), a project-based learning program, with the focus on skills and

confidence development through sports reporting. Through S2R, Borders College students

studying sport and exercise have been given an opportunity to participate in Sports

Journalism as an alternative to attending the Communication Units. The latter used to be a

requirement for course completion, but has received low attendance and completion rates

for years, since sports students often struggled to see its relevance to their specific disci-

pline. An important lesson learned from the S2R project is that delays in implementing

such OBs initiatives can occur if a careful mapping between the badging program and the

course units (in this case, the Communication Units) is not developed on time and is not

approved by the corresponding authority (in this case, the Scottish Qualifications

Authority).

Besides the application in formal learning settings, OBs have been applied—even more

widely—in informal and semi-formal learning programs. For instance, in summer 2013,

the American Museum of Natural History ran a prototype of a digital badging system in

dozens of programs offered to youth aged from elementary through college (AMNH 2013).

The survey conducted with the learners who participated in one of the Museum’s programs

showed that learners were almost equally split between those whose opinion was that

badges had no effect on them and their learning (neither positive nor negative), and those

who reported slight or very positive effect. Those in the latter group perceived the positive

effect of badges on their motivation to learn, their overall experience of the learning

program, their ability to direct their learning trajectory and the feedback loop between

themselves and the instructors. Only a small number of learners reported that the badging

system motivated them through its peer effect (social competition or social capital) or real-

world effect (advances in the education or career within our outside the Museum). Learners

who opted not to participate in the Museum’s badging system were primarily those young

people who: (1) were highly intrinsically motivated and perceived OBs almost as a nui-

sance and/or as something that might diminish their enthusiasm for learning; (2) did not

recognize real-world value of the badges in terms of something that would provide rec-

ognition/credit outside the Museum.

4 Significant Challenges

Since the use of OBs as a means of motivating, scaffolding, recognizing and credentialing

learning is in its early stages, there are numerous open questions and concerns related to

their use in these roles. One of the major concerns is related to the validity or credibility of

an OB. This leads to the question of who should be able to issue and award badges (e.g.,

should it be open to any institution, or should the entities conferring badges be certified?).

A related concern is about the interpretation of the meaning of a badge, i.e., inferring what

it actually says about a learner’s skills. The importance of this concern is expected to

increase as the adoption of OBs gains momentum and learners start obtaining many

Open Badges

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different kinds of badges from different issuers—the badges might be based on divergent

understandings of what the corresponding skills mean and how they should be measured.

From the perspective of their motivational role, the use of OBs raises concern that

students might focus solely on the accumulation of badges rather than on learning activ-

ities/materials associated with badges; this is why, for instance, the creators of the SA & FS

program at UCD were careful to design their badging system in a way that incites students

on learning rather than on earning badges (see the previous section). Likewise, there is a

concern of motivation displacement (Deterding 2013)—a situation when intrinsic moti-

vation (doing an activity for the sake of enjoyment) is diminished by introducing an

extrinsic motivator (in this case, a badge). Thoughtful design of requirements for earning

individual badges as well as chaining of badges in learning trajectories have been sug-

gested as a means of addressing both concerns (Rughinis 2013).

Venturing in practical development of badges and badge systems often reveals other

weaknesses and limitations of the available badging technology. For instance, Mozilla’s

BadgeKit is free and open to everyone, but not as an integrated, hosted badge development

platform. At present, only selected partner organizations can use the ‘‘private beta’’ of the

integrated hosted version. Others can download the current version from GitHub1 and host

it locally, provided that they have the skills required to deal with the intricacies of the

technology. On the other hand, everyone can use the full, integrated version of Passport

hosted at Purdue University, but the pedagogical and learning design options available for

developing challenges and criteria for earning Passport badges are limited. There is a bit

more variety to this end when using BadgeOS, but it is still not complete in terms of what

would be required for designing a pedagogically well-grounded badge system.

Badge discovery should be better supported, as well. Badge discovery refers to the

ability to find relevant badges to earn (i.e., competences and skills to acquire) from various

issuers. Current development efforts in the scope of Mozilla’s OB Discovery2 project take

this issue very seriously. Furthermore, sharing of the earned badges via Mozilla’s Back-

pack is not always that straightforward and frictionless, as reported in a study conducted by

an OBs initiative at University of Michigan, USA (Umich 2013). The GRASS project’s

initial experiences with BadgeOS badges indicate the same. In other words, although the

badge system technology is abundant, it is still not mature enough to allow for the ‘plug-

and-play’ use.

5 Conclusions

It is important to emphasize the misconception that the development and deployment of a

well-functioning badge system is easy. The group who implemented an OB system for the

SA & FS program at UCD confessed that they had to build their system twice—dealing

with many bugs, error messages, and most importantly with students’ and teachers’

reluctance and skepticism was anything but easy (UCD 2014). OBs are still a new tech-

nology in many communities, and it is a very long way from skepticism, to getting people

intrigued, and finally to getting support. Also, anyone who ventures in building a non-

trivial badge system will probably face a huge badge conceptualization problem: what are

the achievements in a specific case, what to badge/reward, under what conditions, and,

most importantly, how to chain and prioritize the achievements? Badge system developers

1 https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges-badgekit/.2 https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges-discovery.

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also have to consider legal issues related to the protection of privacy of students’ data

(learning traces and evidences of learning achievements). These are complex challenges

and it is always a good idea to clarify them before starting the badge system development

by consulting some recommendations and design principles derived from the existing

practices [see, e.g., (Hickey et al. 2014)]. In addition, the aforementioned and other

challenges related to the design, development, deployment and adoption of OB systems are

actively explored by an increasing number of researchers and practitioners who tend to

eagerly share their knowledge and experiences through (online) working groups and

communities. For instance, numerous and diverse working groups initiated by the Badge

Alliance3 offer a lot of possibilities for learning more about specific aspects of OBs and

engaging in the exploration and adoption of the OBs concept and the technology.

In summary, inspite of the above mentioned challenges, OBs have been increasingly

adopted by educational practitioners as well as education-oriented companies and non-

profit organizations. This level of interest and adoption indicates, on one hand, the real

necessity for a novel, less formal and more flexible recognition and credentialing system

(Staton 2014), and on the other hand, that many highly qualified individuals and organi-

zations are putting their efforts in resolving the above stated challenges, and thus leading

the OBs concept to its full potential.

References

American Museum of Natural History. (2013). Summer 2013 Badging System Report. Retrieved from http://www.mooshme.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/AMNHSummer2013BadgingSystemInternalReportPUBLIC.pdf.

Carey, K. (2012). A future full of badges. Retrieved April 15, 2014 from the Chronicle of Higher Educationwebsite: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Future-Full-of-Badges/131455/.

Deterding, S. (2013). Situated motivational affordances of game elements: A conceptual model. Proceed-ings of the CHI 2011 Gamification Workshop. Retrieved from http://gamification-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/09-Deterding.pdf.

Glover, I. (2013). Open badges: A visual method of recognising achievement and increasing learnermotivation. Student Engagement and Experience Journal, 2(1). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7190/seej.v1i1.66.

Hickey, D. T., Itow, R., Schenke, K., Tran, C., Otto, N., & Chow, C. (2014). Badges Design PrinciplesDocumentation Project. January Interim Report. Retrieved from Indiana University, the BadgesDesign Principles Documentation Project website: http://iudpd.indiana.edu/JanuaryReport.

Ito, M., Gutierrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J. et al. (2013). Connected Learning: A researchsynthesis report of the Connected Learning Research Network. Retrieved from the DML research hubwebsite: http://goo.gl/o76iI0.

JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) Scotland. (2013). iTech Case Study: Open Badge Adventure at BordersCollege. Retrieved from http://www.rsc-scotland.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/23042013bordersOB.pdf.

Jovanovic, J. and Devedzic, V. (2014). Open Badges: Challenges and Opportunities. Proceedings of the 13thInternational Conference on Web-based Learning, ICWL 2014, Estonia. (to appear).

Mozilla Open Badges. (2012). Badges/onboarding-issuer. Retrieved January 27, 2014, from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer#A._Mozilla_Open_Badge_Infrastructure_.28OBI.29.

Rughinis, R. (2013). Talkative objects in need of interpretation. Re-thinking digital badges in education.Proceedings of the CHI’13 Conference. Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems(pp. 2099–2108). New York, USA: ACM.

Shen, C. (2014, June 16). Announcing nanodegrees: a new type of credential for a modern workforce. [Weblog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.udacity.com/2014/06/announcing-nanodegrees-new-type-of.html.

3 http://wiki.badgealliance.org/index.php/Badge_Alliance_Working_Groups.

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Staton, M. (2014, January 8). The Degree is Doomed. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/the-degree-is-doomed/.

Sullivan, F.M. (2013). New and Alternative Assessments, Digital Badges, and Civics: An Overview ofEmerging Themes and Promising Directions (CIRCLE Working Paper No. 77). Retrieved from theCenter for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) website: http://goo.gl/zXzyUY.

The Mozilla Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). (2012). Open Badges for Lifelong Learning.Retrieved from https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/5/59/OpenBadges-Working-Paper_012312.pdf.

University of California, Davis. (2014) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems (SA&FS). Open BadgesCase Study. Retrieved from http://www.reconnectlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/UC-Davis_case_study_final.pdf.

University of Michigan. (2013). Open.Michigan Learning Corps. Retrieved July 17, 2014, from http://open.umich.edu/connect/projects/badges.

Williams, R., Karousou, R., Mackness, J. (2011). Emergent learning and learning ecologies in Web 2.0. TheInternational Review of Open and Distance Learning, 12(3), 40–59. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/883.

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