Comments on: Badges – another take

By: Open standards for learning – lots of links! | Think Associates Ltd

Open standards for learning – lots of links! | Think Associates Ltd — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 08:07:05 +0000

[…] Two articles from Simon about Open Badges – “Badges for singers” and “Badges – another take“ […]

By: Simon Grant

Simon Grant — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:37:06 +0000

Matt, that’s a really important point: opening up this area means making explicit the possibility of awarding oneself badges, particularly in terms of self-identity and belonging. (While groups are of course allowed to certify membership badges through a group-defined process.)

By the way, another useful resource I only came across later, as it isn’t immediately obvious on the Mozilla pages, is their discussion paper at
https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/b/b1/OpenBadges-Working-Paper_092011.pdf

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:34:19 +0000

Simon, surely this brings us into areas of belonging and the importance of belonging for an individual. To have achieved recognition through an awarded badge will bring a sense of self esteem, however even a self awarded badge may bring a sense of belonging to a certain group or cause (and with it a sense of self esteem), regardless of whether the person is actually an official member of that group (assuming they even have official members).

By: Simon Grant

Simon Grant — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 06:36:00 +0000

Hi John, thanks for the links. You’re right, they have done some work that looks good. I’d still focus on two things that I believe could be real limitations at present, but which are potentially soluble with the right approach.

1. There is no explicit “claim”, and the claim is a personal thing, because it is so much dependent on individual situation. This may not be a problem in games and other relatively closed worlds, but surely is when what one means by the expressive act of displaying a badge could be so unclear. Solution: think more towards e-portfolio ideas, and build in the idea that it is the badge-holder that is making a claim, and that claim needs to be explicit and able to be nuanced by the holder.

2. There is no help towards focusing on skills, achievements, etc. that are likely to be of interest to different parties. Without this, the real risk is that there will be so many badges that no one will recognise them. This could well negatively affect several of the explicit aims on the FAQs page. The solution, I believe, could well lie first in having a common infrastructure for expressing learning outcomes, skills and competences, and that should include formal outcomes not just informal learning. That’s exactly what InLOC will be getting together. Then, the way is much more open to sharing definitions instead of them proliferating, and indeed being explicit about the relationships between badges defined in different places and contexts by different bodies.

By: JohnR

JohnR — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:20:52 +0000

Simon – have you seen the Mozilla backpack infrastructure?
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/FAQs and https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/infrastructure-tech-docs

It seems that approach and proof of concept tools might go a long way to providing/exploring a lot of what you outline – though the issue of verifying the issuers would remain a slight issue.