Archive of ‘gamification’ category
The Still-Evolving Future of University Credentials
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-12-21-the-still-evolving-future-of-university-credentials
Sean Gallagher is founder and executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, and executive professor of educational policy.
The growth of educational platform companies such as Coursera and 2U is being driven in part by a surge in demand for certificate programs and “alternative credential” offerings. The number of open badges awarded nearly doubled from 24 million in 2018 to 43 million in 2020. And major companies and industry groups are increasingly getting into the credentialing game, exemplified by firms such as IBM and Google. Strada Education Network’s consumer polling has shown that 40 percent of working-age adults have earned some type of non-degree credential—and that non-degree credentials are at the top of the list for adults seeking education or retraining.
plenty of confusion or ignorance in the marketplace about the basic differences between “certificates” and “certifications.”
skills-based hiring
badging, embedding certificates into degrees and the idea of offering small credentials on the way to a larger one are emerging as key trends
The future will likely see a continued de-emphasis on merely requiring that prospective employees hold college degrees.
the needs of the job market are changing faster than ever, meaning a greater need for upskilling
a new national survey of C-suite executives that we recently conducted, 70 percent said that U.S. workers should be worried about their skills becoming outdated over the next few years.
Innovations such as stackable non-degree credentials as an on-ramp and low-cost MOOC-based degrees from top universities are likely to only grow access to post-baccalaureate education. The number of MOOC-based degrees is approaching 100
Online education services companies – or “OPMs” as many refer to them, have continued to play a major role in the scaling of online higher education, within, and now increasingly beyond the U.S.
the Lumina-sponsored Connecting Credentials campaign; the launch of the Non-Degree Credentials Research Network; the development of UPCEA’s Hallmarks of Excellence in Credential Innovation,
Laubersheimer, J., Ryan, D., & Champaign, J. (2016). InfoSkills2Go: Using Badges and Gamification to Teach Information Literacy Skills and Concepts to College-Bound High School Students. Journal of Library Administration, 56(8), 924.
https://www.academia.edu/21782837/InfoSkills2Go_Using_Badges_and_Gamification_to_Teach_Information_Literacy_Skills_and_Concepts_to_College_Bound_High_School_Students?email_work_card=title
From online trivia and virtual board games to complex first-person perspective video games and in-person scavenger hunts, libraries are creating games for a variety of purposes, including orientations and instruction (Broussard,2012; Mallon, 2013; Smith & Baker, 2011).
Although the line between gaming and gamification can be blurry, most scholars recognize differences. Games are interactive, involvechallenge, risk, and reward, and have rules and a goal (Pivec, Dziabenko, &Schinnerl, 2003; Becker, 2013). Gamification, on the other hand, utilizes spe-cific gaming elements, often interactivity and rewards, to make an ordinary task more engaging (Prince, 2013). The gamification layer is not the focus of an endeavor, but rather can add enjoyment and a sense of competition toa task.
Battista (2014) argues that well-executed badges could represent an authentic assessment tool, because they often require the student to tangibly demonstrate a skill, competency, or learning outcome.
Use of the badges helped the team organize the Web site and provided a hierarchy to follow once the steps for earning each badge were created.Each badge consists of three to six tasks. A task can be a tutorial, a video, a game, or a short reading assignment on a given topic. An assessment is given for each task
The fourth and final platform the group considered was BadgeOS fromLearningTimes. BadgeOS requires a WordPress installation BadgeOS was designed to work with Credly (https://credly.com/) and Mozilla Open Badges (http://openbadges.org/) as standard features.
LearnDash was the most useful plugin for the project beyond BadgeOS. Available for a reasonable fee, LearnDash adds tools and features that give WordPress the ability to be used as a complete learning management system(LMS).
Available for free under the GNU Public License, BuddyPress(https://buddypress.org/) is another plugin that was capable of integrating with BadgeOS as an extension. The advantage of BuddyPress for the project group was the addition of social media components and functionality to the project Web site.
Go-daddy.com offered comprehensive technical support, easy application instal-lation, and competitively priced hosting packages. A 3-year hosting agree-ment was purchased that included domain registration, unlimited storageand unlimited bandwidth.
compare to
practical application of D2L Brightspace badges for a chemistry course at SCSU
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/11/06/mastery-of-library-instruction-badge/
Library Instruction Chem 151
Micro-credentials: The solution to the skills gap and accessible education
By reformatting existing programs into micro-credentials and certificates, you can market these new programs to employers and bring new learners through your doors.
At the end of 2020, 80% of U.S. employers said they had more difficulty filling job openings due to skills gaps compared to the year before — and the skills gap isn’t going away anytime soon.
In fact, a recent Gartner survey found that 58% of employees need new skills to successfully do their work.
To start offering micro-credential programs:
- Identify gaps: You don’t have to start from scratch to create a micro-credentialing program. Instead, take a proactive approach by comparing the skills offered in your existing courses with the abilities and expertise employers are searching for in their job postings and identify any gaps that micro-credentials can fill for organizations. You can then align the skills offered in your current course offerings with organizations’ needs.
- Create stackable degree programs: You can also make your micro-credentials stackable and build them into a larger qualification (e.g., offer them as degree credits) to entice employees to further their education at your university. This elevates the overall value for learners who may want a degree down the line.
https://www.ecampusnews.com/2021/11/11/viewpoint-can-ai-tutors-help-students-learn/
the Kyowon Group, an education company in Korea, recently developed a life-like tutor using artificial intelligence for the very first time in the Korean education industry.
Kyowon created its AI tutors for two-way communication–teacher to student and student to teacher–by exchanging questions and answers between the two about the lesson plan as if they were having an interactive conversation. These AI tutors were able to provide real time feedback related to the learning progress and were also able to identify, manage, and customize interactions with students through learning habits management. In addition, to help motivate student learning, the AI Tutors captured students’ emotions through analysis of their strengths and challenges.
While AI is being used in various industries, including education, the technology comes under scrutiny as many ask the question if they can trust AI and its legitimacy?
Although there are some meaningful use cases for deepfake, such as using technology to bring historical figures of the past to life, deepfake technology is mostly exploited. However, the good news is that groups are working to detect and minimize the damage caused by deepfake videos and other AI technology abuses, including credible standards organizations who are working to ensure trust in AI.
For education, the best and only way AI tutors will be adopted and accepted
can only be done with innovative real-time AI conversational technology that must include accurate lip and mouth synchronization in addition to video synthesis technology. Using real models, not fake computer-generated ones, is critical as well.
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more on playful pedagogy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=playful+pedagogy
Why faculty need to talk about microcredentials
There is reason to believe that shorter, competency-based programs will play an important role in the university landscape in the coming years.
Australian commentator Stephen Matchett expands: “MCs are the wild west of post-compulsory education and training, with neither law on what they actually are or order as to how they interact with formal providers. … Until (or if) this is sorted by regulators there needs to be a sheriff providing workable rules that stop the cowboys running riot.”
The lack of standards is also an issue in Canada. While degree standards have been agreed upon – the Canadian Degree Qualification framework, contained in the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC)’s 2007 Ministerial Statement on Quality Assurance of Degree Education in Canada, outlines expectations for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees – the CMEC has yet to issue a pan-Canadian framework for microcredentials.
In the absence of a pan-Canadian model or definition, for the purposes of this column I will use the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)’s definition, put forward in its May 2021 report, Making Sense of Microcredentials:
“A microcredential is a representation of learning, awarded for completion of a short program that is focused on a discrete set of competencies (i.e., skills, knowledge, attributes), and is sometimes related to other credentials.”
Developing and running effective microcredential programs is not simply a matter of bundling a group of existing classes into a new sub-degree level program (although there will certainly be some who try that approach). Effective microcredential programming needs to be an institution-wide effort, with appropriate resourcing and guidelines, along with effective recruiting and student support.
department chairs and other unit leaders to lead collegial discussions about the following questions:
- Gaps: who is not being served by our current degree offerings? Is there potential demand for our disciplinary knowledge and skills from people who don’t want a full degree program? Are there ways people could upgrade their skills by taking certain types of our courses? Can we identify potential short programs to meet new, distinct learning outcomes?
- Student diversity: are there opportunities to develop short programs that could introduce a new demographic of students to our discipline? How might microcredentials be developed that meet the needs and interests of Indigenous students, first-generation students, or international students?
- Connection: how might we create partnerships with external organizations to inform our understanding of skill-training needs? Can these partnerships be leveraged to create new career pathways for students, and/or new research opportunities for faculty, postdocs, and graduate students?
- Impact: in what ways do our discipline’s insights relate to Canada’s current and future public needs? How might our disciplinary knowledge be combined with knowledge from other disciplines to train students to help address particular challenges? In what ways could our discipline contribute to student competency development that we consider meaningful and impactful?
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more on microcredentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential
https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.academia.edu%2F25810340%2FGamification_in_Higher_Education_Toward_a_pedagogy_to_engage_and_motivate_students&group=__world__
https://www.d2l.com/events/regional/gamification-network
Engaging Students with a Gamified, Investigative Learning Activity
https://u2b.com/2021/10/15/how-e-learning-can-create-better-remote-workers/
As soon as the coronavirus was declared a pandemic early last year, 88% of multinational organisations began encouraging remote working. By summer 2020, 83% of businesses surveyed said they will continue to offer remote-work options long after the world returns to complete normalcy.
Additionally, Gallup research conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, indicated that employees are optimally engaged when they remote work 60% to 80% of the time. That’s three or four days in a workweek.
microlearning – brief training modules – increases information retention by up to 20%. Whether through videos or short quizzes, implementing microlearning can be beneficial without being time-consuming, allowing remote workers to get back to their tasks as soon as they’re done.
Offering e-learning videos
ncorporating elements of entertainment
Keeping e-learning content consistent
Providing content across devices