Badges, bundling, and blockchain:
the importance of human-scale technologies
Dr. Doug Belshaw
Badge Summit, 24th June 2016
v1.0
Tweet-sized overview
The #OpenBadges ecosystem is a human-scale way to credential knowledge, skills, & behaviours using extensible web technologies #badgesummit
Who are you?
Teacher → Senior Leader → Jisc → Mozilla → Consultant
Dr. Doug Belshaw
@dajbelshaw
Contents
0. Human-scale?
0. Human-scale?�
Open Badges is an ecosystem by humans, for humans
CREDENTIALS ARE IMPORTANT AT MOMENTS OF
TRANSITION
K5
K12
College
graduation
How the Open Badges Infrastructure works in practice
(taken from the upcoming refresh of the Badge Alliance website)
Important points to note about Open Badges (1)
Important points to note about Open Badges (2)
+
=
individuals and organisations around the world
The (non-profit) Badge Alliance’s constellation model
Director: Nate Otto
Steering Committee:
Founding members
2. Bundling and unbundling:
who? why? how?�
“Unbundling is a neologism to describe how the ubiquity of mobile devices, Internet connectivity, consumer web technologies, social media and information access in the 21st century is affecting older institutions (education, broadcasting, newspapers, games, shopping, etc.) by "break[ing] up the packages they once offered, providing particular parts of them at a scale and cost unmatchable by the old order." Unbundling has been called "the great disruptor".”
(image taken from EDUCAUSEreview article Data, Technology, and the Great Unbundling of Higher Education)
Unbundling education? (who? why?)
Image CC BY-SA Alan Chia
UNBUNDLED
RE-BUNDLED
“Any eLearning tool, no matter how openly designed, will eventually become indistinguishable from a Learning Management System once a threshold of supported use-cases has been reached.”
Microsoft Classroom
Apple Classroom
“Open systems are open. For people used to dealing with institutions that go out of their way to hide their flaws, this makes these systems look terrible at first.”
(Clay Shirky)
3. Blockchain: an answer
looking for a question�
(remix of an original cartoon about Cloud computing by Scott Adams, discovered via this blog post)
Distributed ledgers, simplified by the Wall Street Journal
“While we wouldn’t want to entirely remove the “human” element around credentialing, a hybrid OBI [Open Badges Infrastructure] and blockchain approach could add value to our current system. Machines and software are extremely good at fact-checking, whereas humans are good at meaning. We need both.”
(Peering Deep into the Future of Educational Credentialing)
Learning is Earning 2026
(a.k.a. the opposite of everything I stand for)
ONE PROBLEM WITH BLOCKCHAIN-BASED CREDENTIALING SYSTEMS IS THAT THEY MAY ENCOURAGE EVER-MORE
HIGH STAKES
TESTING AND ASSESSMENT REGIMES
TRUST
Less
More
Machine
Human
+schools, colleges...
“Some people choose to broadcast their academic history (e.g., display it on LinkedIn), others prefer to disclose it only when needed. We aim to give the learner similar flexibility when using digital credentials. When a learner chooses to share a certificate with a potential employer, only the contents of the specific certificate is shared. It is possible to search the blockchain for other certificates that the learner may have received, but the content of these certificates will be encrypted. There are shortcomings to this design. For example, if an issuer only issues one type of certificate it is possible to search for all transactions this issuer has made on the blockchain, and deduce who else may have received them. That is why we are working on a fundamental technical change moving from version 1 to 2, to make traceability much harder.”
(MIT Media Lab)
(I’ve become skeptical, but if anyone can do badges + blockchain in a learner-friendly way, these guys can!)
4. Final thoughts
“The world of credentialing is evolving. Degrees have long been considered the basic unit of educational currency. But it appears that we’re experiencing an accelerating shift away from the gold standard of degrees and toward a more inclusive credentialing world that embraces badges, microcredentials and nanodegrees and is based on a market-driven floating exchange rate.”
(Carla Casilli)
Get in touch!
5. Q&A
[SPARE SLIDES]
openbadgefactory.com
openbadgeacademy.com
Moodle
Conquerer
(Gold)
Example 1: Borders College
Moodle
Adventurer
(Silver)
Moodle
Explorer
(Bronze)
CPD
badge
Example 2: Open Research Badges
Example 3: City & Guilds
“By using the Mozilla Open Badge framework, TechBac rewards learners who demonstrate their skills and competencies in the form of digital badges.
These badges can be easily transported and shared via social media or collected into the learner’s online CV builder.”
Path of Exile
skill tree