OpenBadges Potential

MOOC "Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials" - Understanding the Open Badges Ecosystem and Building a Badge System

CHALLENGE TWO: Define the Currency of an Ecosystem
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Tania  a Spanish teacher in an Auckland (NZ) secondary, undertook a year long Professional Learning course. Her focus is on improving her classroom pedagogy and deepening her understanding of second language learning acquisition. A fluent Spanish speaker who has travelled extensively to Spain and South America before settling into work and family life, she has developed a love of all "things Spanish" and often refers to her experiences as a language learner to support her students' learning experience and help them empathize with others' culture and ways of doing things, the Language curriculum resting on developing language as well as intercultural competencies for the purpose of communication.
Tania, through experiencing with Task Based Learning with expert support during her course, now realizes the importance of assessment for learning, and of providing timely feedback and feedforward to support her students' next step in their learning. This practice helps her and her students manage the evaluation of the internally assessed standards. She initially felt she was assessing all the time but now she sees her students identify their next step more rapidly. Tania also realizes the importance of providing authentic learning opportunities to motivate her students' engagement and scaffold their language learning. By authentic she understands authentic for her students, learning that will serve them in real life. Tania connects "real life" to jobs using languages. She has coffee with Ian, in charge of the school's career program and they discuss where languages currently fit in career pathways, in connection with assessment standards and credits. As always, Languages are not prominently featured, and retaining students from one year to the next can prove difficult.  It is a timely conversation though:  Ian reminds her to focus on the skills involved in learning a language, such as communication and use of technology to access native speakers for instance, and how these skills, if made explicit, have huge currency for employability.
Tania prints the "Know your own skills" quick reference published by CareersNZ  and takes it to her Department meeting. This prompts the team to revisit the Key Competencies, the "capabilities for living and lifelong learning" as outlined in the NZC. The NZC states that Key Competencies ought to be kept track off continually, monitored rather than assessed. Her school has not explicitly identified a focus on these Competencies, and they have not always been at the forefront of her and her team's attention when developing their learning programs which are articulated around content knowledge.
Yet the deliberate crosschecking by the Language team of the Key Competencies and the employment skills reveals a wide range of common vocabulary. Tania undertakes to unpack the Key Competencies, break them down in more granular skills, especially around Managing Self and Participating and Contributing, which are two competencies that develop in the unfamiliar learning context of Spanish immersion learning:  Managing Self because students need to structure their portfolio of evidence, use a range of tools to produce this evidence and meet deadlines for submission. Participating and Contributing as students must practice to be understood, and interactions in Spanish require that they are both listeners and speakers.
Tania decides on a set a key words for each competence and uses them to label the resources and activities she has uploaded on her Moodle course. She decides that she is going to track how her students develop these particular competencies for a term, as well as draw students' attention to them explicitly in her teaching, making connections with the skills they will require in the workplace.

Abbi is close to making her choices for her subjects for her final year. She has considered more than once to drop Spanish. It is tough and it requires quite a lot of self study for her to complete her assignments. Managing deadlines for submitting portfolio pieces, alongside the volume of her activities in other subjects and out of school is difficult. She finds it hard too to communicate verbally in the target language unless she has learnt a piece off by heart. But through listening to her teacher's consistent use of formulaic phrases in the classroom, she is starting to build a repertoire for herself. She is reusing some of it quite successfully now and can even provide some feedback to her peers when they are working on a common task together. Neither of them can speak English in the classroom (or else, which is "enforced" in a friendly manner by her teacher!) so she is developing new strategies to communicate, sometime using gesture, or her laptop to look up phrases, practice saying them, and then use them when interacting with others. It is really what has been keeping her in the Spanish class that, the fact that tasks require that they work in small groups, assign roles and go and find a way together to solve the problem at hand. It is a nice change from her other academic subjects where she is doing a lot of writing. Verbal interactions are captured by way of videos too, so she and her friends can make good use of their smartphone. Feedback she receives regularly from her teacher helps her decide when she ought to give recording a go. She has now worked out how to upload her video files to her ePortfolio, and she has made good use of the forum function to first ask for help and now to give a few tips on how best to do it. Her teacher recently has started to talk about work skills, and as a class they have spent sometime deciding on a set of labels that describe what skills they are actually developing in class. Since she contributed to the list, she understands all of what these words mean. A girl in her class pointed out in the group forum that Miss was using these labels on Moodle activities. This leads the conversation to the use of tags when organizing evidence of learning in their portfolio. Abbi can see her tag cloud develop and the word "helping others" and "communicating" get bigger. Her teacher has noticed she has helped others in the ePortfolio system through posting replies in the group but also has observed that Abbi is showing peers tips to access good Spanish podcasts and other resources online.  Her teacher awards her a "helping others" badge that she pins on her lapel alongside her Captaincy badge and her Service to Charity badge. Moreover Abbi can identify these two skills are developing now and can relate to this as she has recently filled in a Careers Questionnaire which indicated that if she wanted to work in Early Childhood Education (something she is considering at this stage) these skills were important to foster. Upon reading her Spanish teacher's feedback on her latest assignment she realizes the "time management" word in her tag cloud is yet to appear: her dad has been moaning over dinner at how poor at time management some of the people he employs can be. She makes note to self to ensure she will meet the next deadline. Abbi has noticed her teacher has changed her approach to delivering her lessons. She is starting to get into the swing of self and peer assessment rather than always relying on her teacher to get to her. While she would not say she is taking risks with her learning, she understands from the feedback she gets regularly that she takes initiative and is curious to learn more. Abbi might well take Spanish next year, as she has gained confidence in her ability through persevering. Some practical skills acquired along the way are developing, and are made visible as her teacher makes them explicit in her lesson outlines but also through her tagging. Abbi is starting to see the relevance this subject has with what her life may have in store after school.

Greg notices Abbi's new badge on her lapel as he drives her to school. He congratulates his daughter and asks her how come she has been awarded it. To his surprise, as Abbi usually is quite vague when it comes to talk about school matters, Abbi launches into a list of what she has done to get it, and is quite eloquent when describing how she uses her ePortfolio system. Greg is surprised but suddenly realizes that school is actually preparing his daughter for the real world.

My attempt at a first visualisation

This story takes place in a secondary school (NZ) environment where most of the learning is happening face to face in a classroom setting, with only some elements of the course delivered digitally and some opportunities to use devices. Few connections between Learning Areas are made explicit to the learner. The potential to make the Key Competencies visible, traceable and "rewardable" is being explored and it could help with this.  The teacher is the assessor, she and her students are unpacking the Key Competencies together in their unique way, in their context. This teacher is "creating a mechanism to make students learning visible" (OpenBadges for Life Long Learning, p.3), in a formal context.  The Key Competencies are "future focussed, student centered and interconnected", and school is one of several environments where they can be gained.  To move from a 'Physical badge" system to an Openbadge system would further enhanced the interconnected nature of these competencies. But first of all, the system would need to be tested with other learning areas. It may be with the in school careers' program initially as students have the opportunity to identify a career journey. This would require that Tania took risks to continue her investigation through teaching as inquiry, was willing to share her ideas with colleagues (she is already working well with her Department) and was prepared to face ambient cynicism about change and new ideas. Secondly, it could bring to the fore that the badge can communicate information about the holder which could complement the NCEA qualifications. To that effect, it would be necessary to develop consistent, reliable and valid assessment activities with a determined success criteria to issue a badge, that is valid and recognized across the learning areas of the school. This could be tested by working in tandem with one other department at a similar year level for instance. MyPortfolio/Mahara as badge displayer with Moodle as issuer  would require more teachers and students jumped into the innovation bandwagon to make use of the learning systems available in the school. Badges would have more value if used school wide and recognized for what they represent. Schools have been in the business of issuing badges to recognize achievement outside of the classroom for a long time. What needs to be established is the specific skills they each represent, define a learning path (on and offline) to capture them, to ensure that the badges represent the development of the competencies. It is a dynamic process, a living record. Students have to see for themselves what is in it for them. That will motivate them to lead the development of their own Key Competencies and encourage them to seek opportunities to earn badges. If students recognize the value of badges for themselves and for the reputation of their peers, then there could lay the most potent strength of the system.

Meet Abbi

MOOC "Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials" - Understanding the Open Badges Ecosystem and Building a Badge System

CHALLENGE ONE: Define a Current Ecosystem.

Consider an industry or community of practice where you anticipate that badges could have a positive impact

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       Meet Abbi. Abbi is quickly coming to her seventeenth birthday, with mixed feelings about leaving school. She lives in Takapuna, north of Auckland New Zealand. She started college in brand new buildings 4 years ago. Abbi is in year 12 now, and in a year's time in December she will have to have decided what she wants to do next. Abbi does not mind going to school, even if sometimes the 5 lessons a day get in the way of all the other things she really wants to do. She is quite athletic, and with the school' s soccer team training in winter and the surf life saving club in summer, she keeps fit.  Abbi's efforts in both disciplines are often celebrated, as her soccer team came first of their division this season under her captaincy, and she has received many a trophy already for her surfing ability. Abbi is a popular girl with a good group of friends and she often signs them up as a team for charity events, organized both at school and the community. Her goal this year is to get the largest team to raise money for CanTeen, since her team only came second last year and missed on the "big prize"! She knows she needs to draw on her organizational skills as well as on her time management to pull this off this year: her part time job at the local supermarket is now taking up 10 hours a week. She needs to save up as much as she can for when she leaves school, should it be for university or training or maybe a gap year.  Abbi is busy. She goes from one lesson to the next with long to do lists of assignments deadlines for her 6 different subject areas. Most of her NCEA standards  being assessed internally, she has to compile a portfolio of evidence over the course of the year, culminating to selecting the best pieces for final submissions. Her teachers are on the whole pretty helpful and keen to support her but she finds she needs constant help with unpacking the achievement objectives. Above all the sheer volume of what needs to be produced for each of her courses puts her under pressure. Abbi does not actually have neither the time, nor is she regularly offered the incentive to step back and consider and reflect on her learning. She wants to achieve with Excellence as her mum keeps telling her that it will give her more options for after school. While she has overall above average literacy and numeracy, she gets little feedback in the way of the skills she is developing through managing all of this coursework, participating in all the extra curricular activities . She is also considering going back to handing her work in written form since her teacher, while providing positive oral feedback on her creativity, found it hard to assess the cartoon strip she designed with an online tool and presented as evidence towards her History credits via her ePortfolio.  Abbi is concerned mainly by getting school work done, rather than how she is getting it done.


        Meet Tania. She is Abbi's Spanish teacher. Tania is in her early 30s and likes her job. The school environment is pleasant, she has been here for three years now and has built a good rapport with her colleagues and her students, who respect her. She likes the area, her young family and partner live nearby, and they can enjoy the proximity of the ocean year long. Tania has had to change a lot to her teaching since she started ten years ago. The New Zealand Curriculum was implemented in 2007, and was quite a departure from the previous documents. This fairly slim document intends to be a holistic guide to all New Zealand schools to review their own curriculum and align it with the firmly student centered vision of the National document. Tania has been involved from the outset to grasp all of its intent, based on community engagement, learning to learn, and future focus. She is experimenting with her teaching, and has moved away from the painstakingly crafted units of work she used to base all her teaching on.  She is making some use of the School Moodle where she posts resources for her students to access. She'd like to use it more as she sees the potential but she has also undertaken a year long Professional Learning course which aims to accompany her pedagogical evolution towards a task based approach to teaching and learning. Tania uses the teaching as inquiry cycle to ensure her teaching meets the learning needs of her students. Tania is busy. She has a range of classes and responsibility for her learning area. She knows she could engage in her inquiry with more depth. Tania does not actually have neither the time, nor is she offered the incentive to step back and consider and reflect on her learning as a teacher. She also knows that deadlines for the high stake NCEA assessment are always looming. Despite having been aligned to the New Zealand Curriculum, offering students a more personalized and individualized pathway to achievement, the managing of portfolio of evidence proves very tricky and imply students taking "more ownership of their learning". Tania witnesses that all of her students are also getting to grip with their new responsibility, and the response varies greatly according to their level of engagement. Plus, Tania is intent on getting good grades, as the overall image of her Faculty and of her school, will be reflected on the results. To maintain her students' level of success, as measured by the tests, she is putting on the back burner discovering with them what online tools they could use to produce work, and her students, while they BYOD, use their device mainly for research, word-processing or sharing a googledoc and sometime use language learning apps. Tania feels she "does" teaching to her students while she wishes she could do more to get them to make sense of their own learning, as intended by the NZC. She also knows that the Key Competencies too often slips under her and her students' radar. When she stops and considers, she knows they ought to be the common language across all learning areas, as they encompass knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. Tania knows too that these competencies are for teachers, learners and anyone beyond the school community.


        Meet Greg. Greg owns a medium size business, based on hydraulic engineering. He still drops his daughter Abbi at school in the morning: she can sleep in a bit longer if she rides with him rather than bus it. He has an engineering qualification and his business, thanks to a recent contract with a Chinese manufacturer, is doing quite well. Greg has been in the area for twenty years and benefits from the import/export activity generated by the Port of Auckland, the most active in the country.  Greg typically employs between 25 to 30 people. He would like this to stabilize but the lower skill employees come and go, often at the drop of a hat. He has also found it hard to find suitable match to join his management team, as he is often left disappointed that the qualification and veneer presented on the resumé does not convert into workplace skills once hired. Overall, he finds critical thinking and problem solving skills, often coupled with below par communication skills, are sorely missing. Greg is busy. He needs to travel to get more work. Competition from cheaper countries is a constant threat. While he knows he ought to do something to invest in the professional development of his employees to retain them and also to support them gain more quickly the skills he views are essential, he needs to invest in other areas first. Greg always wonders what the kids really learn at school. 



These descriptions showcase there are some good bases on which to dream a badge system development in New Zealand.
Here comes the not so distant future:

Abbi will start gaining badges, hopefully Openbadges, identifying and showcasing her sporting and community engagements and successes, issued by the reliable institutions that are offering these opportunities. Those institutions will find badges a natural digital extension to the cups, badges and certificates they already issue.  She will display them on her ePortfolio (MyPortfolio powered by Mahara, available to all New Zealand schools as SaaS) which won't be the rather dry venue where she has only been collected her speaking and writing evidence for Spanish. She will see her achievements accumulate. Abbi will start to engage in keeping a more consistent record of her learning, and possibly seek more opportunities to earn badges.  Or, why not, start issuing some to her friends when they achieve the Canteen challenge?
Through seeing the badges displayed on Abbi's portfolio profile, and engaging in conversation with her about their significance, not only will Tania get to know her student just that little bit more, but also will start thinking how she will herself issue badges. Not only it would get her to look more deeply into Moodle functionalities, she has always wanted to do to spend more time on that, but it will also be a way to finally evidence the Key Competencies in a concrete, visible, understandable manner: students getting expandable badges for essentials skills they progress on, but also for the aptitudes and competences they develop. Issuing badges credentialing time management, intercultural competence, communication skills... Tania is getting very exciting at the prospect! The visual badge would go a long way in materializing the complexity of each of these concepts, the task is now to be break them down in simple manageable steps.
When Greg reads Abbi's report inviting him to view Abbi's eportfolio, as she has not had the time to show him her badges, he will discover the Openbadges Abbi has been collecting and the competencies she has developed. Greg will relate to the vocabulary being used in the description, as these are the very things he wishes to see his employees develop or at least articulate. Short of thinking he could build badge issuing into the professional development plan he is currently considering to offer to retain his employees, he understands the value the Openbadges would bring to the interview table, or better still, prior to that as he selects the resumés. Greg  will start to see that kids in New Zealand schools really learn to learn at school.

I would argue that the New Zealand strong sport and service community coupled with a forward thinking education system offers, in appearance, a fertile ecosystem where there could be a multitude of opportunities to try and build a Badge System with a concerted approach. The next challenges will definitely allow to dive more deeply in the complexity of what it entails.


Pascale Hyboud-Peron
20th September 2013

A Lot of Learning

A week on, I can articulate (I think!) some takeaways from the Tauranga StartUp Week End
Rewind back 7 days:  I pitched, my idea did not get traction, went round the room, liked a few ideas, hard to put forward my "soft skills" when people just want to get going, needing a developer or a designer, and then chose to hang around an idea that inherently involved learning and self directed learning, as well as speaking competence and ability, and enhancement of these through feedback and feedforward, through the development of an online community dedicated to do just that. All stuff that I relate to through language teaching, ePortfolio development, understanding of what good expert and peer feedback consists of,  credentialing of evidence with Open badges, online community building experience both as a user and a facilitator... The SpeakEazy idea talked to me on many levels.
Now to make a Minimum Viable Product from an idea like this and turn it into a convincing business plan...That's the challenge.

Lean Canvas

This is where the words Motivation, Team and Leadership come alive. Those very words that are the foundation for a positive productive and supportive learning environment.
The team had a difficult challenge, the one they set themselves to solve.
The team had the tools: each other's experience, expertise and contribution, the devices, the internet, an outline of the success criteria, and the Lean Canvas.
The team had the support: honest mentors with a range of expertise, a set framework, food, drink, attentive organisers
The team had time: well not really (54hrs sounds a lot but...) in fact yes there was time since we were in "locked down" doing anything but work on the project uninterrupted.
Challenge+Tools+Time+Support =  Motivation.
> Isn't this level of engagement that we want in school?

Co constructed under effective leadership

The team members have never met before.The team recognised the role individuals within the team could play, and the strengths and limitations each has. There is respect, there is collaboration and there is ownership.  The sum of their contributions will lead to solving the problem if the pathway to it is underpinned by a thought through strategy, facilitated by a leader. The team was well lead indeed, by someone who not only had given careful consideration to what it will take to succeed but who also could articulate the steps, as well as enable team members to contribute at their level of competence, while providing opportunities to stretch beyond.
> Isn't this the type of  leadership of learning we want in school?

Then came the evaluation, the 5 minute presentation of the project to the Judges, in front of your peers turned audience, culmination of the hard work but also the competition. And the celebration of success, not just for the winning team, but for all that have fully immersed in the experience, each individual taking away with them something to reflect on, grow, emulate, extend.
> Isn't this the type of individualised learning we want in school?

In learning mode...

Just felt I have actually lived Ewan McIntosh's Design Thinking for Learning, including the ah ah moment! That ah ah moment applies actually to ThinkAgency as I have been working on getting to the value proposition. It is about serendipity also!
Isn't this the type of success what we want all learners to experience?   ;-)

A different kind of a week end...

How to find real life learning, with an authentic purpose, in a supportive, energetic environment, where collaboration and competition keep momentum, curiosity and drive going?
How to test what I can add to a team of people I don't know, in an unknown setting with an unknown challenge?
I have signed up for Tauranga StartUp Weekend•, a 54hr "learning curve" where up to 80 people from various professional backgrounds (tech, design, marketing, entrepreuneurs...) get together to form/join a team on an idea that is pitched on the first night, build a viable business, convince investors.
This is going to be a little... "uncomfortable"!

So what shall I take with me to "pad the ride?"
- a bit of tech end user experience,
- some facilitation skills
- a burgeoning understanding of the Design Thinking mindset (I'll have to tell you about that as I am putting this in real time practice for ThinkAgency!)
- my ability to generate ideas
- a capacity to look for, find and analyse relevant information
- my "to do" list obsession
- an aptitude to look for "work arounds"
- all that the world of teaching and learning has armed me with: patience, stayability, keeping things simple, working with others, curiosity, solving problems... will all this come handy?
- an open mind, ready to fill the kete!
- my brand new phone (again!) my laptop, my chargers.

And here is what I shall leave behind:
- preconceived ideas
- fear of the unknown
- feeling overwhelmed in front of awesomeness
- worry that I will be out of my depth.

So will I pitch on the night or what? One minute to convince an audience that your idea is worth spending time and energy on? It has got to be done.

• About Startup Weekend: Startup Weekends are 54-hour events designed to provide superior experiential education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs.  Beginning with Friday night pitches and continuing through brainstorming, business plan development, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekends culminate in Sunday night demos and presentations.  Participants create working startups during the event and are able to collaborate with like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks. All teams hear talks by industry leaders and receive valuable feedback from local entrepreneurials. The weekend is centered around action, innovation, and education.  Whether you are looking for feedback on a idea, a co-founder, specific skill sets, or a team to help you execute, Startup Weekends are the perfect environment in which to test your idea and take the first steps towards launching your own startup.

ePortfolio: what tools, what functionalities?

I have recently come across two amazing examples of professional ePortfolios:

- @traintheteacher is a regular and prolific blogger whose reflections are tagged, using the Registered Teacher Criteria, collected and selected for the purpose of her PRT ePortfolio using Wordpress (a powerful blogging platform)

- Don Presant's career ePortfolio presents selected personal information, his CV as well as the services he offers, alongside much evidence of his research and presentations, using Mahara(a purpose built ePortfolio system).

A range of online services can be used and combined and together make an ePortfolio for their owner who want to showcase and flesh out their achievements, skills, and competences beyond the wording on their CV.

Typically the blog (like this one!) is a place of where one goes to put down ideas, or accounts of experience, or reflect on what they have done, where they are now and what they can do next. 
What else is there?
Vizify can be used as a visually pleasing aggregator of the stuff one produces in a range of spaces, for a range of interests (eportfolio for life wide learning!)
About.me can be used as a cover page to your ePortfolio.
Belonging to groups (on Facebook for instance), nings , listserves,  having a twitter account,  etc is a way to bring in the social component to one's learning, where you get some and you give some and where ideas can be tested out.

Using online services like those imply that the user has embedded a level of comfort with publishing online for a purpose that is usually self determined, or for personal branding.

Developing an ePortfolio, and the mindset to go with it, is the result of a range of factors: it is undoubtedly beyond the "tick the box" requirement that any professional body or employer may require. ePortfolios are a place where one can let things stew and develop, as work in progress. They also allow the owner to showcase their stuff when/where/to whom it is necessary or timely. One does not become a reflective practitioner the minute they create an account on MyPortfolio nor do they always keep organised, meaningful traces of their learning with Instagram or SoundCloud. Nor necessarily act on the feedback left on way of comments... That is why I am talking about adopting a ePortfolio mindset! And having a self chosen purpose to get started.

Developing an awareness that any of these tools actually support learning by making it visible to the owner while at the same time making the owner visible to a chosen audience or to the world at large is well worth investigating. ePortfolios have the potential to accompany the development of a range of digital competencies as well as being a space to display them.

I have also recently stumbled upon netice.fr a French start up focused on providing ePortfolio services as well as a Mahara instance, for employability with an emphasis on insertion in the world of work (post formal education or after unemployement)  supported by the development of digital competencies. Netice.fr has caught my attention, in particular as it seems to be what I would like to be part of here in NZ!

So that finally takes me to the point of this entry, phew! Why a dedicated ePortfolio space like Mahara for instance rather than a suite of etools that the owner bundles together? After reading the report of ePortfolio use at Plymouth State University to which Ellen Mary Murphy contributed (and which link is no longer available), here is what I came up with to start visualising what functionalities support ePortfolio development, when they accompany the development of digital competencies and require an element of privacy and control over what is published. Work in progress...