Mulligan, B., Passmore, D, Baker, R., Peck, P., "Open Learning Badges and Higher Education - Threats and Opportunities", ALT-C 2012 Conference, Manchester, 11-13 Sep, 2012

1. Open Learning Badges and Higher Education:
Threats and Opportunities
ALT-C 2012 Conference
Manchester, September 11-13, 2012
Brian Mulligan
Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland
Kyle Peck
David Passmore
Rose Baker
Penn State University, USA

2. Learning is happening everywhere!

3. Most does not "count"
• Skills assessment and communication is limited in the
current system,
– e.g. GPA, Bachelor or Master degrees, static resume
• Few alternatives to the current accreditation/credentialing
system

4. The “Badging Movement”
• Badges were:
– Physical or graphic icons representing a rank or
accomplishment.
• Badges are becoming:
– Digital, “clickable” representations of lifelong
learning.
• This seemingly simple notion has potentially
significant implications for vocational training as
well as for K-12 and higher education.

5. Badging and Mastery Learning.
• In Higher Education:
• Outcomes often poorly defined and
communicated.
• Assessment currently weak.
• Grades don’t guarantee competency
– But we can dodge the accountability for this failure.
• Better for sorting students than for developing
higher-order skills.
Badging, if done well, may help us solve these
problems.

6. Emerging Interest in Badging
• MacArthur Foundation Competition
– Kicked off by Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan as well as representatives from NASA,
NSF, NAM, NEA
– 30 demonstration projects funded
• Mozilla has been funded to develop an
“Open Badging Infrastructure”

7. The Open Badging Infrastructure
• Will manage badges, worldwide
– Tools for badge issuers
– Tools for badge recipients
– Tools for badge displayers (like FaceBook, LinkedIn,
etc.)
• Badges will contain data and be “clickable,”
with links to:
– The criteria for earning the badge (Often “mastery”)
– The assessment used to award the badge (optional)
– The work (documents, videos, etc.) submitted as
evidence of learning.

8. Impacts?
David Wiley’s
“Or Equivalent”
Chron
icle o
f Highe
r Educ
ation
, Janua
ry

9. Threat to Higher Education?
• Is there a cartel in Higher Ed qualifications?
• Why do employers value them so much?
• What if there was an alternative system?
• Why might employers like badges?
– Ease of verification
– Detailed information
– Mastery / Competence based
• What if they liked them a lot?

10. What would it need to succeed?
• Authentication
• Reliability
• Robustness
• Cascading
• Quantification
• Aggregation

11. Opportunities?
• Could drive important changes:
– Could improve focus and assessment
• What do we really care about in this course?
• What do we need to see to certify that someone can DO something?
• How will we define competence and communicate progress to
learners?
– Could lead to “mastery learning” and individualization
– Could change “TEACHing”
• Less focus on presentation / More focus on formative assessment
and “certification”
– Could it be the end of “courses” and semesters?

12. Opportunities?
• Could influence students’ enrollment choices.
– Course credits & degrees, or Badges? Or both?
• Why take a course and get only “course credits” when you could get
badges AND course credits?
• Could raise employers’ expectations for quality and for
information communicated about what people know and can
do.
• Could challenge long-standing reputations:
– Standing of institutions not willing to use badges and reveal
their expectations and assessments could quickly dive.
– Institutions ready to do this well (existing or new) could
rapidly develop strong reputations for quality.

13. Opportunities?
• Accreditation could change:
– From accreditation to offer degrees to accreditation to
offer badges
– From accrediting institutions to accrediting individuals.
• Accountability could change:
– Feedback loop? like Amazon.com?
– When employers find a badge-holder who can’t perform,
that could be conveyed to the accrediting agency or to the
general public, like reviews of online products.
– Accreditation could be revoked, and others granted badges
by the same examiner could be asked to perform again.

14. Opportunities?
• Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)
– Quickly verify previous learning
• Including MOOCs
– Aggregate achievements
• Impact on Motivation

15. What do you think?
Let’s talk.