What is a "Badge" Anyway???

Please check out this funny video clip from the recent "Muppet Movie" to set the stage for our "Badges" overview.

Wondering what it is all about? Here is information on this wonderful digital tool presented by Samantha Hinnant and Hannah Weiser.

What is a Digital Badge?

To begin our overview of digital badges, here are two excellent Youtube videos (approximately four minutes long and two minutes long respectively), describing what a badge is and how it can be valuable to the learning process. Please watch and learn!

Youtube: A Short Story About Open Badges. (2013). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc4xDgNbl6Y June 2015. *An interesting point here: This video was entirely screened on her iPhone!

From these videos, you will see that Badges:

• Are a way of being recognized for passion projects and new skills can be difficult – transcripts and resumes do not always paint a complete picture of what you can do. 
• Allow for online and offline recognition to celebrate demonstration of skills!
• Are information rich – badges carry valuable metadata to provide information across the web about the unique skills and achievements you receive – the criteria you completed for the badge and the issuer.
• Issuers can include employers, nonprofits, educational organizations and more.
• Can be shared across many platforms in a digital "backpack" to showcase your skills in achievements including social networking sites, personal websites, and more.

Who uses badges?

Badges are for everyone!

• Learners – show skills gained from multiple places
• Educators – engage learners in new ways
• Employers – find people with relevant skills

For more information, see:  Slideshare. Lopez, Eduardo. “Open Badges” Making it easy to issue and display badges across the web. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/brian-brennan-mozilla-open-badges-recognition-for-all-types-of-learning-and-real-results?ref=https://tackk.com/badges. June 2015. 

How can I create and receive badges?

Introducing: Mozilla's Open Badges!

Mozilla Open Badges (Open Badge Infrastructure of OBI) is a fantastic program by Mozilla that issues digital badges to recognize skills and achievements learned. Please review this short video for an introduction to this free learning tool.

Youtube: Digital Badges and Mozilla's Open Badges. (2012). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=digital+badges+and+mozilla%27s+open+badge. June 2015. 

An excellent resource regarding badges is the Open Badges site: http://openbadges.org/

• This site provides access to Mozilla Open Badges, free software and an open technical standard any organization can use to create, issue and verify digital badges. 
• The goal of Open Badges is to support life long learning through a “badge ecosystem.”
•  A badge is a digital symbol of recognition representing various achievements and credentials such as experiences, achievements, skills, competencies, learning, associations, community involvement, peer interaction and more.
• The things badges represent can occur online or in person.
• In the Open Badges system, badges include an image and set of metadata that explains the badge and evidence behind it, carrying all the information necessary to understand the value of the badge.
• A badge backpack is given to learners as a repository for collecting and displaying badges. The user can delete badges, import badges, set privacy controls, create and publish groups of badges – the “Mozilla Badge Backpack”

If you are interested in badges, another excellent compilation of resources is available at: https://tackk.com/badges. Some of the resources below have been retrieved from this site. 

Still don't "get' digital badges? 

Here is another wonderful video (approximately two minutes) to help simplify this learning tool...

Youtube: Bates, M. What Might I Say to Someone Who Does Not "Get" Digital Badges (2015). Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/ygw4wZE4guI. June 2015. 

This video has some important key takeaways:

• Badges are a type of "reward" and gamification method
• Digital badges motivate learners to progress even in facing challenges
• Badges are the visual expression and certification of achievement once a skills or experience is accomplished.     

Want to see how badges can be used? 

For an example of badge use in a Boise State University course environment, please watch the following Youtube video (approximately nine minutes long) from Professor Chris Haskell:

 Here are a few highlights. 

• Badges can help us quantify intelligence
• Boise State began issuing badges in 2010 and employing tenants of "game based" learning. 
• Uses a Quest based approach 
• Students are allowed to pursue different opportunities through a branching architecture, badges represent successful completion, creates a flexible path driven by competencies, students start at zero and add points until they reach mastery. 
• Results of issuing badges:
• Dramatic increase in success rate: prior to the badges approach student success was at 71% received A's, B,s, or C;s. After the badges implementation- 93% of students were successful and receiving A's. 
• Course completion rates went from 16 weeks to 12. 5 weeks. 

Youtube. Haskell, C. (2014). Badges for Preservice Teachers. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bCZkhdrn0k&feature=youtu.be (June 2015).  

Still not convinced? 

Here are 8 Reasons why Open Badges are Awesome from www. Learningpool.com to recall the key highlights of Badges:

1. Verify your skills – employers, organizations, and schools can explore the data behind every badge issued to verify individuals skills and competencies.
2. Free & Open Source – Badges are free and open to anyone to use as part of Mozilla’s non-profit mission
3. No restrictions – using free software and an open technical standard means that any organization can create, issue, and verify digital badges, and any user can earn, manage, and display these badges all across the web.
4.  Knit your skills together – badges can build upon each other, joining together tot ell the full story of your skills and achievements
5.  Store important information – each badge links back to the issuer, the criteria it was issued under, and evidence verifying the credential
6. Take your badges everywhere – users now have an easy and comprehensive way to collect their badges in a single backpack and display their skills and achievements on web, social media, and job sites.
7. Earn badges online and offline - for adaptable skill building
8. Create learning pathways  - Learners can pledge to follow a similar path linked with their skills, or can design their own customized career pathway.

Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

Have you received a badge in our course? 

The sample shown above is a badge received in this course, "Sharing is Caring." You may have seen a similar badge or received another throughout this Instructional Design course. The digital badge presented is the topic of our post today. Our professor, AK, uses https://credly.com to "give credit where credit is due" - providing a digital badge to recognize achievements obtained in this course. These badges may be collected in a digital backpack as described herein. 

Take a moment to notice that the badge may be shared in various platforms and that it includes details such as the title of the badge, a fun visual representation of the badge, its description, and its criteria, along with the issuer date and the issuer, AK, to help verify the badge's credentials. 

Yes I have a badge! How do I put it in my backpack? 

1. Create an account at https://credly.com/ and here too, https://backpack.openbadges.org. Make sure you use the same email address for both pages. 

2. Next, visit the Account Settings page, and roll your mouse over the "Social Settings and Auto Share" section and over the "Mozilla.org" option, and click "Link". That will allow you to connect your account to Persona/Mozilla. You can do the same for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well. Once these steps are complete, share your Credly badge to Mozilla by visiting your "My Credit" page, hovering over the badge you wish to to share, clicking the share icon, and choosing the Mozilla Backpack. 

Badges and your Career

If you are like us, we are wondering how these badges transfer to the professional world. Do employers find badges valuable? How can badges help us advance in our careers? 
Overall, the  digital badge ecosystem is still young, but seems to have potential for employees, employers, academic admissions, and networking. 

In March of 2013, Megan Cole-Karagory, director of marketing at Mozilla’s Badge Alliance, estimated that there were 98 issuers of badges, which has grown to approximately 14,000 independent issuers. Educational leaders such as, Pearson, University of California, and Purdue University use badges as well as NASA, Smithsonian and Intel. Mozilla has made a commitment to reach 10 million users by the end of 2016. 
To read more about this, visit, Do Open Badges Matter to Employers and Admissions Officers

Interested in who is currently issuing and designing digital badges?

Visit http://openbadges.org/participating-issuers/

Different Voices in the Digital Badges World

Frank Catalano, an independent industry strategist of digital education and and consumer technologies discusses the dynamics of badges in his February 2014 article, Digital Badges Need Mass to Matter. In summary, he discusses how not all badges will have the same merit, and that they must have mass.  

Mass could mean a weighty, well-known issuer whose endorsement imbues a badge with quality and causes employers and educators to give it a second look.
Mass could mean a rigorous assessment (performance, simulation, multiple-choice test, or other type) as the evidence behind how a badge was earned, proof that the badge represents competency.

Barry Joseph, a contributor to the open badges community also discussed his concerns regarding badges in his article, My Beef with Badges.

The problem that concerns me the most is the lack of a broad ecosystem for badges. I want to  tell youth in our programs their badges will have value outside our museum, and many even need to hear that as a condition for participation. But without such an ecosystem in place, I’d be lying. There are many good efforts in this direction, but they are all works in progress. Yet, often, I hear descriptions of new badge projects designed as if one already exists, as if youth can take their badge from one learning context and find it valued within another.

Although he is part of the community that wants to advance digital badges, he calls for people to look at the whole picture and tackle the concerns through reflective honest practice.

Ready to give Digital Badges a try?!?!

This Instructional Design course is a great opportunity to start taking advantage of digital badges today! Thanks, AK!