19th Annual SEDA Conference

Opportunities and challenges for academic development in a post-digital age

13 November 2014 – 14 November 2014

Location: National College Learning and Conference Centre, Nottingham

Daniel, Emma, Arielle & I were recently informed that we were successful in our workshop proposal for the 19th Annual SEDA Conference.

Here are the details of our proposal…we hope to see some of you there…

Title of proposal: “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”

Format:  90 minute workshop

Session Learning Outcomes

By the end of this session, delegates will:

• Have an understanding of the current & futures developments of the Open Badges eco-system
• Have an understanding of how Open Badges could be used to recognise CPD activities & innovative educational practices
• Understand the process of planning, designing and distributing Open Badges
• Have planned and designed an Open Badge
• Have earned an Open Badge for attending and participating in the workshop

Session Summary (no more than two sentences)

This session is about how recent & future developments in Open Badges, and the open badge eco-system, could be used for motivation and recognition of staff CPD activities & innovative educational practices.  We will also consider strategies & techniques to enhance their credibility and adoption, by mapping Open Badges to existing frameworks (such as the UKPSF, SEDA Values, or Vitae Framework), adding to the transferability & recognition of the awards across HE.

Session Outline (no more than 300 words)

The Open Badge system is an emerging technology, which enables the recognition of a wide range of learning. Individuals can earn badges for the things they learn, both online and offline, and then display them in their Backpack, or on their website or social media profiles. With Open Badges, every badge is full of information. Each one has important data built in that links back to the issuer, the criteria it was issued under and evidence verifying the credential.

Used and supported by institutions like MIT, Purdue and Yale universities, badges can be issued as recognition for the things they teach. Open Badges is not proprietary – it’s free software and an open technical standard.

Badges are portable, so they can be taken by the learner anywhere. Institutions such as UCL and Sheffield Hallam, the Scottish Education Group and YSJU, are all either using or exploring the possibilities this infrastructure provides as a means to recognise and reward the formal or informal learning of staff and students.  There is also a natural fit between the use of badges and Gamification as a motivational technique (Glover, 2013; Štogr, 2012).

At York St John University we are currently using Open Badges as a way of motivating participants and recognising achievements, mapped to the SEDA Values, on our accredited SEDA Supporting Learning with Technology (SLT) award.

We propose to further investigate the potential use of Open Badges to provide a means for staff to evidence their professional development mapped to the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF), SEDA Values, or Vitae Framework.  This will support work that the YSJ Academic Development Directorate plans to undertake in 2014-15 as to how we recognise that all our staff who are Fellows of the Higher Education Academy are maintaining good standing against the criteria in the UKPSF.

Session Activities and Approximate Timings

This workshop will be a combination of presentation and group work activities using an Open Badge Design toolkit.

• Presentation – Introduction to the Open Badges eco-system (20mins)
• Activity – What badges would you want to issue? Why would you want to issue them? (10mins)
• Presentation – Badge content design (10mins)
• Activity – Planning and designing an Open Badge  (20 mins)
• Presentation – mapping badges to professional frameworks (15 mins)
• Discussion / QA (15 mins)

References

Glover, I. (2013). Play As You Learn? Gamification as a Technique for Motivating Learners. Proceedings of EdMedia 2013: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology.

Štogr, J. (2012). Badges For (Lifelong) Learning – Gamification, Enhanced Visibility Of Reached Achievements And Continuous Building Of E-Portfolio As Data Source For Learning Analytics. 7th DisCo Conference: New Media and Education. 169-177.