In the previous article, we talked about open standards and how open standards give people from anywhere in the world the ability to interact, share and collaborate through compatible technology systems. Open standards are revolutionizing the world of education, and nowhere is this more evident than in the use of Open Badges.

In education, Open Badges are an open standard that allows everyone worldwide to recognize, share and verify learning achievements. They allow learners to aggregate a lifetime of learning in a manner that is organized and relevant to employers and learning institutions. Simply put, it is completely changing how learning is assessed, for the first time offering relevant data that paints a detailed portrait of a learner’s qualifications across a broad spectrum of situational contexts.

Let’s start with the basics. Open Badges are different than the kind of badges you may be familiar with in other contexts. They’re different than badges that the International Youth Council or Girl Guides might issue, for instance. They’re also different from mere ‘digital badges’, although the terms are often used interchangeably.

At first glance, Open Badges appear to be no different than the images you see on the websites you visit every day or the digital badge you received from your favorite social group. However, if you peek inside an Open Badge, you’ll find something called metadata – loaded information that can tell you all types of things – from why the badge was issued, to who endorsed the badge, and even evidence verifying that the badge holder earned the implied credential.

Three reasons why Open Badges are important

There are three primary reasons why Open Badges are becoming increasingly important to the education world.

Education is moving beyond letter grades.
Think about the use of traditional letter grades to assess learning. They don’t provide much detail about the person who receives the grade nor is there context to explain what that grade means in a practical application. When a learner earns a high school diploma or even a college degree, employers are forced to rely on the status or reputation of the degree-granting institution, which only indicates that some learning has taken place.

Open Badges are evidence-based.
Not only can you see who issued the credential and what it was for, but you can see much more contextual detail such as how a credential aligns with curriculum standards, which specific skill sets were mastered, and verifiable evidence that the learner in-fact meets a particular standard or possesses a given skill.

Education needs a way to credential competency-based education
A major development in progressive education over the past ten years has been the movement towards a competency-based education (CBE) model. The value of CBE is that, instead of focusing on mere knowledge, it focuses on what learners can do with their knowledge and skills.

Credentialing for and demonstrating competence have been a challenge. Existing letter-grade systems favor written and knowledge-based tests. These tests are easy to standardize and grade, but aren’t an effective measure of a learner’s ability to apply knowledge to a real-world application, especially in a world that rewards diversity and individual differences. Open Badges allow assessment and credentialing to be tailored to each learner and at a more granular level than a letter grade. Instead of measuring chronological learning time, CBE and Open Badges allow students to ‘test out’ of situations they’ve already mastered, and build a portfolio of useful new skill sets.

Open Badges are portable and prepare learners for an uncertain future
Open Badges are cracking the existing silos of accreditation and credentialing, helping to merge these once separate concepts into a usable system that benefits all stakeholders groups – learners, institutions and employers. In the world of technology, we use the term ‘interoperability’ to refer to systems being able to talk to each other in a standardized way. Open Badges are similar – an open standard that anyone can use.

Badges belong to the learner.
As a learner, you can take them with you when you leave an institution or organization. You can display them wherever you want, and in any combination that makes sense to you or your potential employer.

We often hear about a technology being ‘future-proof.’ In practice, the only way to ensure something is future-proof is to make sure that it’s available for anyone and everyone to use in whatever way they choose. Although there are a multitude of skills and whole bodies of knowledge that will never be out-of-date, we can’t be sure which specific skills and knowledge will be required in the future. As such, Open Badges are flexible and future-proof. They allow us to quickly recognize emerging talents in areas that couldn’t have been dreamed of only a few years earlier.

In our next installment, we’ll look at competency-based education in greater detail, and explore the ways that businesses are helping to change the way that learning is recognized.