2. badge resources

Why are badges useful?

This presentation below, by Open Badge pioneer Doug Belshaw, will help you understand what the badges are, how they can be used, and what benefit they are to students looking to showcase their learning, skills, reflection, credentials, lifelong learning, opportunities, assessment, etc.).

Even more resources

The Mozila Foundation: “Open Badges for Lifelong Learning”:
“Most existing systems of educational degrees and job-relevant accreditation require enrollment in formal programs and institutions and dictate that learning needs to follow prescribed paths. Informal, peer-based and self-directed learning is only acknowledged to the degree that it supports the formal curriculum.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education:
“Employers might prefer a world of badges to the current system. After all, traditional college diplomas look elegant when hung on the wall, but they contain very little detail about what the recipient learned. ”

Web Pro News / April 2012:
“Open Badges is a really unique concept that gamifies how we display our real world accomplishments. By turning our accomplishments and skills into a digital achievement, more people might be pushed to achieve something greater. We already have people spending ungodly amounts of time to earn achievements in video games so the same should be true for a person spending a lot of time to learn astrophysics.”

My Knowledge Map / 2013:
“Open Badges offer a unique solution to [online learning], providing learners with a library of badges each one demonstrating completion of an online course, achievement of a required quiz score or completion of a set number of CPD hours. Using a combination of automatically issued badges along with badges … a portfolio of personal achievements can be created that a learner can take with them, using and reusing in all of the contexts of their lifelong learning journey.”

Leicester City Council School Tech / November 2012 – hear what the students themselves think:
“Another advantage is that it can boost your career prospects as it can provide you proof of skills gained outside of formal qualifications, which may be relevant to a certain job. It may even enable you to stand out from competition when applying to university, etc. Also, youngsters may see this as a game, which may motivate them to work harder in order to obtain as many badges as they can and although they might think of it just as “fun” it could help them in the future.”

GLOVER, Ian and LATIF, Farzana (2013) Investigating perceptions and potential of open badges in formal higher education. In: Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2013. AACE, Chesapeake, VA, 1398-1402. ISBN 9781939797032 (pre-published version available)