Drilling into new potentials for Open Badges
Open Badges have been with us since their launch in 2012. There have been some changes to badge standards in that time, and certainly in the UK, patchy take up of the concept. Badges tend to have a recognised set of uses in the education and training community, but are these limiting take-up and growth of use? Do we need to start to think about new potentials to determine what is holding the technology back from wider adoption?
HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) is a web based community of educators and researchers. In 2013 the Design Principle Documentation Project captured and analysed design principles from 30 projects that were funded to look at the use of badges across a range of education. The project identified three main groups of badging: recognising learning, assessing learning and motivating learning. Perhaps there is a fourth potential which has been under explored, the ability to authenticate learning.
In the USA Bloomberg has reported that college tuition fees have increased by almost 300% in the last 20 years. Tuition fees are outpacing inflation (US News & World Report) in America and in other countries where students must pay their own fees. The system of loans and debt to gain credentials are becoming unsustainable. If this is the case, then do we need to look at other models for accreditation?
March this year saw the first Open Badges in HE conference take place in the University of Southampton. Whilst many of the academics there recognised the potential value that open badges could bring to higher education, there was also an undercurrent question about the reliability and equality of badges. If you can award a badge for attending an event as much as for gaining an essential work skill, how do you judge the value? Alongside this, if the same badge is awarded by a HE institution and a primary school (eg for digital literacy), how do you have any consistency of recognition of level of ability?
The idea of linking Blockchain to Open Badges has been investigated as a potential for security in the badge world. However, Doug Belshaw has now withdrawn from the development in that arena. One of the questions he raises in a recent blog post is around the ability for either the issuer or receiver of the badge to have “granular permissions”. In some professional circumstances it is neither appropriate, nor desirable, to show all evidence to the whole world. This raises the question of privacy in badging in our ever-more digitally linked world.
Badges have value in the way that metadata is baked into the badge itself. This means it cannot be deconstructed and devalued. However, is it possible to copy or fake badges? In a world where there is increasing CV fraud, is there a space for badges as a form of social token to describe who we are?
The potential fourth use of badges is as an internationally recognised currency to authenticate learning. Something which can be used across borders as proof that you are who/what you say you are. Last year I had a conversation with an Afghani refugee, he and his family had to flee the country as he had been an interpreter for the British army. His ability in English did not have any recognition in the UK so he was struggling to find work, yet it had been good enough to support our forces overseas! This made me think this was a case for credentialing other than simply by a local certificate, something that could have value across boundaries.
The session I am running at Mozfest is to explore this potential. I will present a case study to show how eCom Scotland have developed a badging solution for industry, and the value it can bring. Alongside this I will invite you to explore and debate your thoughts on privacy and security in the badge world. Do we need it? Does it add value? Are there places you can see its use? If you want to join this discussion, then my session is in the Open Badges space on Sunday at 12:30.
