With digital badging becoming established as a trend across educational sectors, it has been shown to recognize and motivate learners, providing evidence for achievements and learning in a variety of formal and non-formal settings. As the diversification of OER across multiple platform types and formats has evolved to suit different learners and educators alike, so the notion of recognition for informal learning in these spheres
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has become accepted provision by some educators and philanthropic providers, where it can be achieved at scale.
For MOOC providers, this recognition of participation is provided across a range of criteria (for example, passing tests or viewing part or all of a course) through the sale of certificates that carry the MOOC provider’s brand. For OpenLearn, a recognition of learning is provided for free through the issuing of the open badge and OU-branded statement of participation (a PDF) in support of open principles and practice. Badge recipients progress at their own pace and not in a cohort, but have to view each page of the course and pass the assessments.
Whether learners value a university-branded provision more or less than something they have paid for from a privately operating MOOC platform is yet to be evaluated.
When it comes to learning for outreach, the issuing of an open digital badge (or overarching, recognition for informal learning) for free may become an important element in the pursuit of open principles in education. This may yet also have a positive impact on employability and — as seen in the case of BOCs — reap a financial reward in the form of new student registrations that are higher than for other forms of informal learning provision thus far developed.
The use of the OpenLearn platform as a test bed for innovation in eLearning has provided some surprising data with positive implications for both the social and business missions of the OU. In addition, understanding media mix in terms of what makes an impactful and engaging OpenLearn course will have positive financial implications and enable better planning and development in an environment where around sixty new (non-badged) OpenLearn courses are being produced each year alongside formal module production. The awarding of a digital badge will also be relevant to the OU’s formal students, who will see this University recognition for non-formal study on their student record and in the future, on their Higher Education Achievement Report.
These particular resources could support student success in retention and completion, employability and academic excellence and, with the application of the Creative Commons license, will give other higher education providers the opportunity to share, re-badge or republish.
This last point is most likely to resonate with non-distance higher education providers more generally — especially those that do not
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have easy access to a production and publishing mechanism for OER but that may prefer to find a home for digital badging in support of undergraduates in their critical first year.
Conclusions
As BOCs become a business-as-usual activity for the OU and the strategy that underpins them extends from introductory to induction and from postgraduate to CPD, new goals will be set to extend their support in emerging areas across curricula. The theoretical frameworks underpinning openness in education have shown themselves to have extensive practical application: open badging is another arrow in the quiver of open applications and practices that support the goal of democratizing higher education.
The early detractors writing about digital badging, discussed earlier in this chapter, described it as dangerous if poorly employed and unlikely to have any comparative value to formal qualifications due to the fact that anyone could (and still can), issue a digital badge.
What is known from the evaluation of BOCs is that learners are keen to display their achievements — to be recognized informal learners — but that branding is key to this desire.
Not surprisingly then, there is a move to address this notion of a lack of credibility, which is currently being spearheaded by the US-based Instructional Management Systems (IMS) organization through a working group called “Open Badge Extensions for Education (OBEE)”.
The group is attempting to improve and implement a consistent approach to badge taxonomy and description to:
• Augment badge metadata to provide valuable information about the credentialing institution, criteria, assessment and evidence for the awarding of an open badge
• Embed data and analytics by imposing meaningful metrics to improve badge “currency”
• Determine how badge consumers e.g. employers, will quickly discern compliant badges and therefore trust what is being represented
• Implement a “conformance certification process” to certify compliance with open badges and OBEE extensions.
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Now, the spotlight of interest in digital badges is being shared by the notion that they might be a way in to educational accreditation and that this might overturn educational institutions’ hold on formal credentials (Jacobs, 2012). Badges may also find themselves in the center of new developments around micro-credentialing — as a set of non-formal learning achievements verifiable to an individual to demonstrate a commitment to professional and skills development. Rather than this being interpreted as a threat to formal credit-awarding bodies, it offers a new opportunity for those developing quality-assured OERs, open badges and practices to offer an alternative route into formal education.
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