Micro-credentials awarded for in-demand skills give employers deeper detail about a student’s abilities.
Matt Zalaznick. June 7, 2017
While employers increasingly demand that new hires have college degrees, the transcripts supporting those hard-earned credentials are no longer the most informative tool students have to exhibit their skills.
An estimated 1 in 5 institutions issue digital badges, which can be posted to social media, stored on digital portfolios and displayed by other specially designed platforms. When clicked on, the badge lists a range of skills a student has demonstrated beyond grades.
“The reason they’re taking off in higher education is most employers are not getting the information they need about people emerging from higher ed, with previous tools we’ve been using,” says Jonathan Finkelstein, founder and CEO of the widely used badging platform Credly. “The degree itself doesn’t get to level of describing particular competencies.”
For instance, a Notre Dame student who goes on a trip to Ecuador to build bridges can earn a badge for mastering the calculations involved in the construction, says G. Alex Ambrose, associate program director of e-portfolio assessment at the Indiana university’s Kaneb Center for Teaching & Learning.
Students can be pretty certain when they have passed calculus or creative writing, but they don’t always recognize when they’ve excelled in demonstrating soft skills such as critical thinking, communication and work ethic, says MJ Bishop, director of the system’s William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation.
Badges have been most popular in the school of education—including with student teachers who, in turn, have created badges for the elementary and secondary classrooms where they’ve apprenticed, says Anna Catterson, the university’s educational technology director.
The campus library is another badging hotspot. Students there have earned microcredentials for research, 3D printing and other skills. These badges are being shared on LinkedIn and other platforms to obtain internships and scholarships.
The university runs faculty training sessions on badging and has established a review process for when faculty submit ideas for microcredentials.
One pothole to avoid is trying to create a schoolwide badge that’s standardized across a wide range of courses or majors. This can force the involvement of committees that can bog down the process, so it’s better to start with skills within single courses, says Ambrose at Notre Dame.
When creating a badge, system faculty have to identify a business or industry interested in that credential.
Badges that have the backing of a college or university are more impressive to job recruiters than are completion certificates from skill-building websites like Lynda.com.
Students won’t be motivated to earn a badge that’s a stock blue ribbon downloaded off the internet. Many institutions put a lot work into the design, and this can include harnessing expertise from the marketing department and graphic designers
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more on micro-credentialing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredentialing
Join us in Savannah this November for our conference, Microcredentials and Digital Badges in Higher Education,
Micro-credentials and Badges in Higher Education
and learn the strategies and processes that other institutions have used to develop digital badge initiatives and programs. You’ll learn the different ways that badges can add value to the learner experience, key considerations for developing badges, and how to effectively connect learners to industry.
Your instructor panel for this event is an impressive lineup of experienced speakers, all from higher ed themselves, who have been immersed in this work and have likely seen and overcome the same challenges you have. Come ready to learn from the experts.
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more on microcredentialing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredentialing
Bryan and Special Guest Nate Otto,
Director of the Badgr Platform at Concentric Sky
An interactive discussion on badges and micro-credentials
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Bryan Alexander, special guest Nate Otto, and the Future Trends Forum Community will discuss badges and micro-credentials at present, their future and the challenges they face. Nate is the Director of Open Badges Projects at Concentric Sky, where he leads development of the Badgr platform for issuing and managing verifiable digital credentials. Nate’s background in political sciences also informs his work on open standards with a focus on building and maintaining tech ecosystems resistant to monopolies.
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notes from the webinar
Nate Otto Concentration Sky @ottonomy https://badgr.com/
A Beginner’s Guide To Open Badges, https://elearningindustry.com/guide-to-open-badges-beginners
Mozilla discontinue and switch to Badgr platform. free accounts to Badgr. current integration of Mozilla backpack with other platforms such as Moddle will be preserved. Backpack solution, or issue badges.
Steve Taylor: Moodle is one of the platforms integrated with Backpack.
Xapi infrastructure. super messaging protocol https://xapi.com/ . Ryan Harrell question. Nate response, great fit for badging. Badgr Pathways https://badgr.com/en-us/badgr-pathway.html
Ryan Harrell
This is an extremely useful conversation. We’re working on building a dedicated micro-credentialing platform at our University specifically to provide continuing education material based on the material we are already creating in our various programs.
Open badges extensions for education test course. Two extensions: one describes assessment which goes to a particular badge. Second extension allows the issues to describe. Published extensions. Badgr implemented the assessment extensions: the Digital Promise project –
https://digitalpromise.org/.
hurdles to prevent adoption of badges: 1. still not easy enough to start issuing badges, design principles. get ambitious what to do with badges but no ability to start the assessment process. how badges will be awarded. starting small is the way, simple tools, google forms, to help decide what to do. 2. how do we understand the achievements of badges
Designing and Developing Digital Credentials
Part 1: September 13, 2017 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Part 2: September 19, 2017 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Part 3: September 28, 2017 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
https://events.educause.edu/eli/courses/2017/digging-into-badges-designing-and-developing-digital-credentials
Digital badges are receiving a growing amount of attention and are beginning to disrupt the norms of what it means to earn credit or be credentialed. Badges allow the sharing of evidence of skills and knowledge acquired through a wide range of life activity, at a granular level, and at a pace that keeps up with individuals who are always learning—even outside the classroom. As such, those not traditionally in the degree-granting realm—such as associations, online communities, and even employers—are now issuing “credit” for achievement they can uniquely recognize. At the same time, higher education institutions are rethinking the type and size of activities worthy of official recognition. From massive open online courses (MOOCs), service learning, faculty development, and campus events to new ways of structuring academic programs and courses or acknowledging granular or discrete skills and competencies these programs explore, there’s much for colleges and universities to consider in the wide open frontier called badging.
Learning Objectives
During this ELI course, participants will:
- Explore core concepts that define digital badges, as well as the benefits and use in learning-related contexts
- Understand the underlying technical aspects of digital badges and how they relate to each other and the broader landscape for each learner and issuing organization
- Critically review and analyze examples of the adoption of digital credentials both inside and outside higher education
- Identify and isolate specific programs, courses, or other campus or online activities that would be meaningfully supported and acknowledged with digital badges or credentials
- Consider the benefit of each minted badge or system to the earner, issuer, and observer
- Develop a badge constellation or taxonomy for their own project
- Consider forms of assessment suitable for evaluating badge earning
- Learn about design considerations around the visual aspects of badges
- Create a badge-issuing plan
- Issue badges
NOTE: Participants will be asked to complete assignments in between the course segments that support the learning objectives stated above and will receive feedback and constructive critique from course facilitators on how to improve and shape their work.
Jonathan Finkelstein, CEO, Credly
Jonathan Finkelstein is founder and CEO of Credly, creator of the Open Credit framework, and founder of the open source BadgeOS project. Together these platforms have enabled thousands of organizations to recognize, reward, and market skills and achievement. Previously, he was founder of LearningTimes and co-founder of HorizonLive (acquired by Blackboard), helping mission-driven organizations serve millions of learners through online programs and platforms. Finkelstein is author of Learning in Real Time (Wiley), contributing author to The Digital Museum, co-author of a report for the U.S. Department of Education on the potential for digital badges, and a frequent speaker on digital credentials, open badges, and the future of learning and workforce development. Recent speaking engagements have included programs at The White House, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Smithsonian, EDUCAUSE, IMS Global, Lumina Foundation, ASAE, and the Federal Reserve. Finkelstein is involved in several open standards initiatives, such as the IMS Global Learning Consortium, Badge Alliance, American Council on Education (ACE) Stackable Credentials Framework Advisory Group, and the Credential Registry. He graduated with honors from Harvard.
Susan Manning, University of Wisconsin-Stout
In addition to helping Credly clients design credential systems in formal and informal settings, Susan Manning comes from the teaching world. Presently she teaches for the University of Wisconsin at Stout, including courses in instructional design, universal design for learning, and the use of games for learning. Manning was recognized by the Sloan Consortium with the prestigious 2013 Excellence in Online Teaching Award. She has worked with a range of academic institutions to develop competency-based programs that integrate digital badges. Several of her publications specifically speak to digital badge systems; other work is centered on technology tools and online education.
EDUC-441 Mobile Learning Instructional Design
(3 cr.)
Repeatable for Credit: No
Mobile learning research, trends, instructional design strategies for curriculum integration and professional development.
EDUC-452 Universal Design for Learning
(2 cr.)
Repeatable for Credit: No
Instructional design strategies that support a wide range of learner differences; create barrier-free learning by applying universal design concepts.
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more on badges in education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=badges
| ELI Course | Digging Into Badges: Designing and Developing Digital Credentials |
| Register by September 22
Digital badges are receiving a growing amount of attention and are beginning to disrupt the norms of what it means to earn credit or be credentialed. Badges allow the sharing of evidence of skills and knowledge acquired through a wide range of life activity, at a granular level, and at a pace that keeps up with individuals who are always learning—even outside the classroom. As a result, there’s quite a lot for colleges and universities to consider in the wide open frontier called badging.
During this ELI Course, participants will:
- Explore core concepts that define digital badges, as well as their benefits and use in learning-related contexts
- Understand the underlying technical aspects of digital badges and how they relate to each other and the broader landscape for each learner and issuing organization
- Critically review and analyze examples of the adoption of digital credentials both inside and outside higher education
- Identify and isolate specific programs, courses, or other campus or online activities that would be meaningfully supported and acknowledged with digital badges or credentials—and more
Join us for this three-part series. Registration is open.
- Part 1: September 13 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
- Part 2: September 19 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
- Part 3: September 28 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
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more on badges in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=badges
What You Need to Know About Microcredentials
ELI Online Event | July 12, 2017 | Noon–4:00 p.m. (ET)
One in five colleges have issued digital badges, according to a recent survey.* Today, all kinds of organizations, from higher education institutions to professional associations to employers, are issuing digital microcredentials. Are you?
Join us for “Microcredentials and Digital Badging in Higher Education,” where expert presenters from various higher education, industry, and government fields will explore today’s issues. Here are just a few highlights:
Join us for an introductory webinar, “Alternative Credentialing in Higher Education,” on July 10. Both events are free and open to all EDUCAUSE members (available to purchase for nonmembers).
Register Now →
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more about badges and microcredentials
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=badges
