open badges - a new way to show skills

Open BadgesA New Way to Show Skills

Mari Varonen Educational Development Services

JAMK University of Applied SciencesJyväskylä, Finland

EADTU Conference 29 & 30 October 2015, Hagen

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Good Evening! My name is Mari Varonen. I’m come from JAMK University of Applied Sciences, Finland. I work as a e-learning specialist for the Educational Development Services. I develop e-learning, educational technology and open learning environments. I also train and support our teachers using information technology in their teaching. Today I’d like to show you how we use open badges in our University.

Jyväskylä, Finland

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JAMK University of Applied Sciences is an international higher education institution with expertise in 8 different fields of study. At JAMK we have more than 8 500 students from over 70 countries. Because long distances and competition for students, we have to develop flexible e-learning methods. All our courses include online elements and you can study some bachelor programme totally online.

29.10.2015 Mari Varonen

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Education changes towards competence-based learning. Students gather their expertise from several sources and an academic degree only will no longer suffice on the future labour market. Job hunting has moved into the Internet and, thus, digital presentation of one’s own skills and e-portfolio are of great significance in the competition for a job. Open Badges are online presentation of skills, expertise and achievements. These small digital certificates are also supporting the idea of lifelong learning where competence is built in many different fields of life, not only in schools and universities. Here is one of my portfolios and these tiny circles are open badges. If you click badge, you see the badge details.


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And here is badge description. There is also criteria page, which shows the exact competencies to receice this open badge. The issuer, for example University, defines description and criteria. Badge issuer sends a badge to a recipient. The recipient then decides whether to receive the badge and save it to a digital repository. The recipient could add evidence dokument to badge too.The badge may be connected to a portfolio page or a social media site, for example LinkedIn.


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Open Badges originate in 2011 when Mozilla started their Open Badges project. Open Badges is an open standard developed by the Mozilla Foundation to recognize, validate and demonstrate learning that happens anywhere. The concept has quickly become popular and well-known worldwide. The open badge is more than a digital badge – it’s verified proof of learning, build on an open standard. Associations, schools and universities were the first open badge users. The second wave is training companies and corporate sector. Since 2014, JAMK University of Applied Sciences has developed and issued Open Badges among the first universities in Finland.


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How to issue open badges? You need platform where create, issue and manage open badges. We use Open Badge Factory. It is an cloud-based open badge management system.


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When you earn the open badge, you receive an e-mail with link to badge. You need service to receive and store open badges. Services are usually free. This is Mozilla Backpack and there is some of my earned open badges.


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This is an another open badge storage, Open Badge Passport. It is quite new, published this year. From Mozilla Backpack or Open Badge Factory you can share open badges on social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. And of course you can show badges on digital portfolio.


JAMK Badges

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Since 2014 JAMK University of Applied Sciences has created and issued open badges. Here is some of our open badges. Unfortunately almost all are in Finnish. We have a different sorts of open badges. When we planned our open badge system we made strategy. We don’t issue open badges of all courses, because badge inflation is our enemy. Next, I will present examples of our badge system.


StaffTraining

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We started our open badge project with staff training. Today, our staff earn open badge from several in-house training, for example e-learning, project management, future thinking and language trainings. My aim is that next year everyone of our staff training is part of our open badge system.


Meta Badges

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This is Our e-learning open badge set. E-learning trainings are part of our staff training. A staff member earn one of the small badges when she or he participate three trainings of this topic or show the expertise with some other way, for example with blog text. E-learning Expert meta badge is automatically awarded to the earner when all required six badges have been issued.


ContinuingEducation

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We use open badges also in our continuing education. Especially our Social Services and Healt Care is very active to create new badges. This badge belongs to Dog-assisted work training.


MOOCs

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Our university organized first massive open online courses last summer: Digital learning materials and self management in Finnish. We issued open badges to students who passed course. I think open badge is good option for MOOC because we can’t granted an official certificate by reason of authentication problem.


Student Union

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We have developed open badges with JAMKO Student Union. The project is in progress but our aim is set of expertise badges, for example tutor badge, position of trust badge and recreation badge.


Self-assessment

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We want to improve quality of our online courses and I am developing self-assessment system with open badges. The idea is every course have achieved the Bronze level and the best courses reach the gold level. The teacher or content producer can show badge in their personal use and course description.

Mari [email protected]

mavaronemarivaronen

Thank You

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I think open badge is an inspiring and encouraging tool. It helps us to show our expertise digitally. Thank you!