Introducing Badges
Introduction to Badges
Badges are currently a hot topic in education as a way of awarding achievement, a bit like earning a Boy Scout badge as a child, but online!
Open Badges is the most common way of issuing badges with universities. It is a free, standard framework provided by Mozilla to verify skills in a recognisable way.
See more examples of Open Badges at Katie Piatt’s public backpack on Mozilla Open Badges.
Scope for Badges at Brighton
Early discussions around the potential of Badges at the university have led to the conclusions that badges can be used to reward non-curriculum activity, as curriculum activity is already rewarded through module credits.
Badges can be unlocked for activities already completed by students, based on what has been done and not as a value judgment on how well it was done which distinguishes badges from other awards which require reflection and assessment.
Current projects
A successful investigation into using badges was run in academic years 2012/13 and 13/14 with the School of the Environment called InfoBadges. This was a local, low technology pilot with good take-up from students as evidence they do respond to this kind of award.
The next stage is to move to using the Open Badge framework, allowing students to take their badges with them outside the university, beyond graduation via studentfolio and their Backpack.
The eLearning team and the CLT are currently running a pilot project to explore the potential of badges with the PASS scheme for semester 1 2014. Following technical investigations and discussion on badge issuing policy at Brighton, we will work with PASS to provide a Mentoring (Pass Leader) badge to students who have achieved this role in February 2015.
Katie is the eLearning Services Manager at the University of Brighton.
Dear Katie,
great to hear from you speaking of Badges. Personally, I like your idea of extracurricular badges. This approach is worth considering at our institution too. However, I don’t see any clash in awarding both course credits and badges at the same time. I believe the badges can enhance the value of credits or course respectively, and extend its meaning outside the University context.
Good luck with badges implementation and greetings from Pardubice.
Linda
When I was a student in City College Brighton they used badges in Moodle. I thought they were great, but they only had a handful (which was disappointing, I would’ve liked to get more). I would definitely recommend them as I found my classmates would ask me about them when they looked at my profile and want to know how I got them. And it inspired me to navigate Moodle (then, Mahara). Now I feel quite confident with elearning software.
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Glad to see this is progressing 🙂