Badges, badges everywhere!

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know we’re proponents of open badges as a means of recognising staff CPD and the informal learning that happens on and alongside university courses (see previous blog posts on the topic).  We’ve also been working with staff here at York St John to develop some in-module pilots of open badges and will see new badge schemes emerge in Biosciences, Sport Science and Residential Services over the coming months. So, I’m always on the lookout for interesting examples of open badges being used to motivate or reward learners, and recent weeks have been full of opportunities to hear from people with the same interest.

Creating Learning Pathways with Open Badges

Learning Pool webinar with Bob Price (Newport City Homes)
On Wednesday 25th March, I attended an open badges webinar by Bob Price (a learning developer with Newport City Homes housing association) hosted by commercial  e-learning and VLE provider, Learning Pool. Bob took us through an introduction to the concept of open badges as a digital, visual means of recognition. Unlike their older sibling, digital badges, open badges are not locked into specific programmes, accounts or apps – they are portable and can be displayed in multiple profiles or circumstances.  Bob noted that in a similar webinar 18 months earlier, the majority of examples of open badge use were North American. Now, however, open badges are growing in popularity this side of the pond and we are also seeing more examples aimed at the school level. Some UK examples include:

• City & Guilds are badging the whole route through their 14-19 vocational TechBac programmes, building an online CV of all learners’ completed activities as well as the skills and competences developed on the course.

Employers are demanding more dynamic and talented recruits – technical skills are just part of what they want City & Guilds has worked with industry to understand what additional attitudes and competencies are important and how to recognise them Through Open Badges, TechBac® rewards learners who demonstrate these characteristics so they can clearly articulate their level of ability to employers. (City & Guilds, 2014, p. 17)

• The Borders College e-Learning team has been awarding open badges to students and staff via a Moodle Badge. Pilots were conducted with NC Digital Media and NVQ Hairdressing level 1 students using three badge levels (Bronze, Silver and Gold Moodle User). Students were awarded their first open badges for best practice in Moodle use (i.e. developing their Moodle profile statement and photo). A higher level Platinum badge is awarded to staff and students deemed to provide outstanding contributions within Moodle or demonstrate best practice in the use of technology in the classroom.

• Pain Community Centre – free badged online courses on pain management from Cardiff University –

• The Open University have started badging their free OpenLearn courses aimed at informal learners wanting to develop their study skills. Their Badged Open Courses (BOCs) differ to MOOCs in that they are designed to be completely asynchronous; there is no start or end date and can be worked through at the learner’s own pace

• Barclays have launched the Barclays Digital Driving Licence (endorsed by City & Guilds) which is an interactive learning experience aimed at helping people of all ages to build their digital skills. Learners can take short modules on basics like online safety, and progress to more advanced topics like analytics and coding. Learners can choose which topics/skills are most relevant or interesting to them and earn open badges for their efforts. 

• A BBC/Digital.Me partnership as part of the BBC’s Make it Digital campaign to inspire the younger generations to get involved and develop their creativity and skills with digital technology, coding and programming.

Having seen some in action, we looked at the types of learning pathways where badges can be applied; designing the badges is the easy bit compared to deciding how they will be awarded. Bob’s advice echoes our own: where possible, look to existing frameworks or standards which are familiar to your students, discipline or profession and map badge competencies or activities to these. There are three broad pathways to earning badges:

• Flat form: badges are not dependent on each other; issued for one-off tasks or events.
• Dependent: key badges are dependent on other badges (X + Y = Z)
• Levelled: graded badges with increasing difficulty (bronze, silver, gold) – rewards progress beyond an initial level.

Open Badges for Engagement, Participation and Progression in the Arts

DigitalMe and ArtForms, Leeds
Thursday 26th March saw a range of Leeds-based Arts providers gather to hear about the recently completed BadgeLab Project. BadgeLAB Leeds was a collaborative arts engagement and research project that ran from September 2014 to March 2015. The project partners, DigitalMe, ArtForms Leeds and Sheffield Hallam University, were funded by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts – Nesta, Arts Council England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council – and arranged this event to engage the wider Arts community in Leeds with the open badges agenda.

The project

The project aim was to explore how open badges could increase young people’s engagement with arts-based activities in and around Leeds, which are often ad-hoc, not formally recognised and via discrete events or short programmes. Tim Riches (@triches) from DigitalMe gave an overview of some successful badge projects that preceded work on BadgeLab Leeds, including the ‘medals’ issued by the SupportertoReporter programme for young football fans developing themselves as budding sports journalists and media producers, and the industry-endorsed skills badges on the Duke of York’s iDEA award, which supports young people in developing digital entrepreneurial skills.
As the arts-based partner, ArtForms elicited support from several local artists and arts organisations to pilot badges within their offer, resulting in badged activities at city-wide events such as Light Night Leeds, and the March of the Robots Parade and Party. Open Badges have also been awarded for session-based activities such as robot making, den building, 3d animation, and making ancient Greeks and Roman-style clay pots. To hear more about the badges issued, watch the project video below or check out the BadgeLab Leeds badge library.

The platform

The project used the Makewaves platform to design and issue the badges. Makewaves is a safe social learning platform for 5-19 year olds targeted at teachers and organisations issuing badges to younger students. It integrates with Mozilla Open Badges Backpack, so students under 13 can earn badges on Makewaves and convert them to open badges when they are old enough. Teachers, schools or organisations create a verified account on Makewaves (only trusted organisations can create and issue badges on the platform). They can then enrol or approve students onto their Makewaves ‘channel’. Students can earn badges from their associated organisation as well as from the browsable public library of badges. Reiterating Bob Price’s point that open badges are now emerging from the school system, hundreds of organisations have featured school-age badges on the Makewaves platform, including Computing At School (in association with British Computer Society), Rising Stars, Comic Relief and the National Literacy Trust.

The research

The future

We aim to create a new digital skills currency which raises the value of authentic learning and uses the web to connect young people to opportunities for education, jobs and fun!
– See more at: http://www.digitalme.co.uk/badgetheuk#sthash.GCU0k7P3.dpuf

Resources