Course:ETEC522/Badges

What are badges?

A digital badge is an online representation of a mastered skill or completed task that can be used, more broadly, to illustrate the full depth and breadth of your abilities, both inside and outside the post-secondary course environment. When designed correctly, issued by a credible source and verified, open badges can be shared across digital platforms to give colleagues or employers a better sense of your skills and abilities, beyond your transcript. For example, badges can help to surface soft skills like communication or teamwork, which most employers consider important, but don’t have a way of verifying. It’s worthwhile to note that badging at the post-secondary level is very different than badging in K-12: The latter tends to be used to control negative and reward positive classroom behaviours. Post-secondary and professional badging has an entirely different mandate, which is to illustrate a more complete story of an individual’s achievements, skills and abilities and to tell this story seamlessly across all relevant learning and professional contexts.

Badging in ETEC 522

Making a badging system work successfully is not an easy task. Many questions arise, such as: What do learners value and want in a system? What do employers value? How do we ensure the information contained in the badge (its metadata) is credible? How can we technically make the system work? Many institutions are currently working on these questions by proposing varying versions of badging systems: ranging from complex proprietary builds to integrating open source WP plugins into course blogs. UBC’s Open Badges site is a great resources that describes the ins and outs of badging experiments at UBC.

One such experiment is taking place in this course, ETEC 522. It is one of only a handful of courses at UBC that’s piloting a badging system and is now on its fifth iteration. In this iteration of 522 we are taking a step back from "system" level badges (those built into the structure of the course by the instructor to explore "nomination" badges (students nominated for badges by their peers).

More specifically, during the course we are looking for you to nominate your peers for three kinds of badges:

Thought Leadership Badge: - Nominate your peers for excellent posts and distinctive contributions to the course.

EVA Badge: - Nominate your peers for participating fully during your OER hosting week (A2).

Teamwork Badge: - Nominate a peer for exceptional teamwork in the production of your OER.

Please review the intent and process of these badges, and be sure to make some nominations when well-earned.