The document discusses open education and digital badging presented by Ms. Amy McQuigge. Open education aims to make learning accessible, student-centered and community-based. Badging provides recognition for skills and experiences through digital credentials outside traditional institutions. It can motivate learning and be used for professional development. While badging has potential benefits, ensuring criteria are met and badges have credibility remains important.

1. Presented by Ms. Amy McQuigge
– SER/VE Discussion April 3,
2012

2. WHAT IS - OPEN EDUCATION
 Accessible
 Student Centered
 Community Based
Take-aways:
 Per Ms. McQuigge - These Ideas are not new, but concepts
related to 21st century technology are evolving – internet,
IPADs, etc
 Combines both Peer to Peer as well as “Top Down
Modality”, Assessment are key in the digital environment

3. OPEN ASSETS AND RESOURCES
 Revisable
 Remixable
 Redistributable
Take-aways:
 Creative comment licensing is effective for proper citing
of internet based content, where users still reference
work of others but with new mechanisms

4. OPEN ASSESSMENT – BENEFITS
Recognition for skills, experience and
knowledge
For formal or informal learning
At any level basic to mastery
Do not have to be enrolled at a
college/university
Can be useful for:
Peer assessment
Experts in the field
College faculty
Institutions
Employers

5. HOW IS BADGING DIFFERENT FROM PLA
(PRIOR LEARNING ASSESSMENT)
 Can be at multiple levels of mastery
 Can be for a greater variety of experiences and content fields
 Not just demonstrated learning
 Can lead to higher level of badges
 Can be determined by peers
 Can be recommended for badges
 Can be pushed out beyond college/university

6. WHERE DO BADGES GO?
 Issuer (Teacher, etc)
 Pushed out by Issuer to earner’s Mozilla badges backpack
 Private until earner gives permission
 Authenticated by Issuer
 Earner
 Published out to the others by earner
 Can organize by group or privacy settings
 Digital resume & job applications
 Social Networking sites
 Webpages

7. WHY BADGES?
 Motivating
 Can be used for professional development
 Recognition for skills, experience and life-long learning
 Can learn about assessment and bading by going through
bading process

8. MORE INFO
Mozilla’s Badge Backpack
 Openbadges.org
Examples of Badging Systems
 Stackoverlfow.com
 Khanacademy.org
 P2PUbadgespilot

9. OUR TEAM/CONTENT AREAS
Jim Cochran - Biology
April 3, 2012
Lynn Colucci-Mizenko - Physics Meeting in
Observatory
Jim and I were joined by Dr. O’Oconnor and Ms.
McQuigge for enlightening discussions

10. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
In your group, raise and discuss ideas that open-education and badging
have started
 At first, we mutually questioned what was new about these concepts
 We both recalled teachers who put “stickers on papers”, or even simple verbal
acknowledgement of good work …but as Ms. McQuigge explained more about these
concepts it became clear how useful this badging system could be
 …and how applying an age old concept of motivation to 21st century skills by use of a digital
format…with a “clickable” history
 But, we still wondered…How best to avoid peer to peer subjectivity based on “social
cliques”, etc?
 Per Ms. McQuigge…it is key to link Badges to clear objectives, and to insure that badge
criteria are met for attainment of a badge…
 Also, badge criteria should represent substantial accomplishment…and work has to be
validated for badges to have meaning and validity…and, we agreed !
 Finally, we thought about how be to ensure that badges had credibility?... Students need to
learn the values of badging system, and Teachers will play a vital role through their
interactions with Students and their own use of Badges in Professional Development,
etc…Teacher are important role models once again…not a surprise!
 Badges can provide excellent motivational tools for Teachers to drive skill development that
is not inherently linked to grades or formal classroom assessment

11. DISCUSSION, CONTINUED
What aspects of a class project or complex assignment might fit within a peer review
badge type system?
- P2P is a big deal! Badging is a great tool to utilize this type of informal
assessment
- Badging could be used to assess Final Report-outs from a project (a portion of the
assessment using P2P
- Badging can be used to assess “soft skills”, not inherent in the core curriculum
such as presentation skills, powerpoint mastery, that are not specifically
assignable to content
- Badging can be used as part of the assessment of group project work, where
perhaps peer assessment (within the groups) could be conducted to assess each
person’s contributions on the project based on criteria
- Or…individuals can be nominated to contribute their p2p comments as part of the
badging criteria or assessment

12. MOZILLA…OPEN BADGES
Pretty Easy to Get Started….

13. One Badge Down…and Counting…

14. …But still not a foolproof system !