Open Badge lightweight accreditation

Posted by David Jennings on March 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment 

Here’s one of several case studies showing how Mozilla’s Open Badge gives credit for learning that takes place outside educational institutions and formal settings.

Clipped from openmatt.wordpress.com

How do we explain Mozilla’s Open Badge Project to beginners? These user stories — drawn from Erin Knight’s “Open Badge System Framework” paper — are meant to illustrate through everyday scenarios.

Eduardo: Connecting learning inside and outside the classroom

Eduardo is a 16-year-old Chicago southsider who finds school pretty dull. But he is actively engaged in developing skills and interests outside the classroom, through informal learning with peers.

Eduardo is learning storyboarding and making short films in digital media workshops, mentoring younger kids at a local “Fab Lab,” and took second prize in a recent hackfest competition. But until now, Eduardo had no way to gain credit or recognition for these skills, or carry them to his school and other contexts.

How badges help:

Badges help Eduardo get recognition for the skills he’s developing outside of school. Eduardo submits his latest movie project and storyboards for the Storyboarding and Movie Maker badge from the Chicago Learning Network.

His peers and facilitators review his work using a defined set of criteria, and issue Eduardo the Movie Maker badge. Eduardo’s storyboards are missing a key narrative element, so based on that feedback, he refines and resubmits them, and earns the Storyboarding badge as well. One of Eduardo’s collaborators also awards him the Good Teammate badge based on their experience together.

Eduardo looks up the badge collection of a peer he admires to see which additional badges he should focus on to “level up” his skill set.  He then shares his badge collection at school. Eduardo’s teachers are impressed and ask him to assist with a narrative activity in class. He leads his classmates through a  storyboarding exercise, building esteem and earning recognition from his  classmates.

The result:

Badges connect Eduardo’s extracurricular work to the classroom, demonstrating his abilities to his teachers, peers and himself. This helps Eduardo’s teachers fully evaluate him as a student, understand his strengths, and capitalize on his interests. Outside of school within the Learning Networks environment, badges help Eduardo build confidence, form relationships, and find new ways to develop his skill set. Read more at openmatt.wordpress.com

 

Filed under Accreditation · Tagged with Accreditation, badges, Drumbeat, Mozilla, prior learning