Archive of ‘badges’ category
The Pandemic Has Increased Interest in Digital Transcripts. Will They Displace Degrees?
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-02-15-the-pandemic-has-increased-interest-in-digital-transcripts-will-they-displace-degrees
Proponents of digital credential systems argue that giving students ownership over a digital wallet of what they’ve learned that includes a broader and more reflective range of personal achievements could help them better communicate with future employers, if hiring managers start to take them seriously.
EXCLUSIVE Pearson buys certification group Credly in deal valued at $200m
https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-pearson-buys-certification-group-credly-deal-valued-200m-2022-01-31/
The UK-listed firm, a major supplier of courseware and assessments in schools and colleges in the United States, Britain and around the world
Pearson CEO Andy Bird told Reuters that verified credentials were becoming more important as technology adapts, leaving many companies with a skills gap where staff need training on how to work with processes such as artificial intelligence.
Pearson, which has been buffeted by the shift from physical courseware to online learning, bought AI and analytics group Faethm in 2021, which spots skills gaps for organisations.
Credly partners with organisations such as IBM, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services to provide certifications, or digital credentials, to workers both inside their firms and out who have attained a certain level with their product. Based in the United States, half of the people earning credentials on the platform are outside America, with India one of its biggest markets.
Pearson will now be able to combine the diagnostic tools of Faethm with its own digital learning programmes and Credly’s certification capabilities to offer a full service to companies.
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more on microcredentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential
more on Pearson in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=pearson
Are microcredentials the future of higher ed?
Canada has reflected that global interest, with major government investment over the last two years: $59.5 million announced by the Ontario government in late 2020 to fund microcredential development and related student loans; $9 million announced by British Columbia’s government since 2020, with federal support; and $5.6 million announced by Alberta’s government last August for microcredential pilot projects after the Business Council of Alberta (BCA) issued a report in 2020 urging the provincial and federal governments to expand microcredential opportunities. Ontario’s government-backed digital learning organization, eCampus Ontario, has been working in this area since 2017. Microcredential development is included in the strategic plans of the University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie University. As far back as 2015, the University of British Columbia promoted the use of “open badges” to recognize discrete skills that students had acquired within for-credit courses. It started running several non-credit microcredentials in 2021, thanks to provincial funding.
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https://www-suitable-co.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.suitable.co/knowledge-center/blog/what-are-micro-credentials
https://www.suitable.co/knowledge-center/blog/what-are-micro-credentials
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more on microcredentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential
Building Better Digital Badges: Pairing Completion Logic With Psychological Factors
https://www.academia.edu/21600030/Building_Better_Digital_Badges_Pairing_Completion_Logic_With_Psychological_Factors
This article analyzes digital badges through mechanics and psychology. This approach involves understanding the underlying logics of badges as well as the experiential nature of badges-in-use. The proposed model provides additional insight about badges and recommends design strategies to complement existing scholarship. Procedure. This article examines an existing model of completion logic for digital badges. This model is expanded upon by pairing these formal mechanics with relevant psychological theory, summarizing key principles that pertain to how people interact with badges. It then considers three dimensions of badges in use—social, cognitive, and affective—reviewing examples and analyzing the relationship of badging to debriefing.
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More on micro credentialing in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredential
https://www.ecampusnews.com/2021/12/22/higher-eds-essential-role-in-upskilling-and-reskilling/
There is a greater need than ever before to provide increasingly specialized disciplinary knowledge, coupled with advanced workforce skills, without diminishing the role and importance of a broad-based education that ensures critical thinking and analytical reasoning along with social and communications skills and understanding. Simultaneously, in the context of millions of employees with some or no college and no degree, there is a need for academia to play an increased role in facilitating the continued employability of people already in the workforce through short-term credentials and certifications, enabling an updating of their knowledge and skills base.
Coskilling: The integration of knowledge (broad based and specialized) and relevant job skills into degree programs so that both facets are mastered simultaneously requires that institutions of higher ed focus on four key aspects simultaneously: (a) Increase opportunities for students to gain a well-rounded education intertwined with professional skills; (b) Respond at a significantly faster pace to the needs of the job market and be better aligned with advances in technology and information; (c) Create more flexible and personalized pathways for students to convert knowledge and learning to skills that result in earnings capacity; and (d) Change the “stove pipe” structure between academe and the workplace to enable greater alignment between the curriculum and new areas of workforce need.
Coding and “skills-building” bootcamps, enhanced career development services, and credentials and certificates are increasingly being offered by community colleges and universities either by themselves, or in conjunction with, external entities. Some are forming partnerships with corporate giants such as Boeing, Amazon Web Services, Cisco, and Google,
Upskilling
a greater need for employees to be “upskilled–mastering new skills, developing an understanding of a higher level of use of technology, and operating in a highly data-driven world. While a portion of upskilling can be undertaken “on the job,” institutions of higher education have the responsibility and opportunity to develop new certificates and courses, both self-standing and stackable, towards post-baccalaureate degrees that will build on existing levels of knowledge and skill sets.
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.
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