The document discusses the significance and potential uses of open badges, which were designed to recognize learning but are often underutilized. It highlights the importance of engaging badge earners and improving the communication between issuers and earners to enhance the value and credibility of badges. The document advocates for a shift in focus from organizations to individual earners, emphasizing that open badges are connectors that can facilitate social interaction and collaboration.

1. What can I do with my badges?
Eric Rousselle
Discendum Ltd. / Open Badge Factory
Badge Summit 2017
San Antonio

2. About Discendum
• Finnish eLearning service developer and provider
• 6 years of experience as an ePortfolio service developer and
provider
• Active member of the Open Badge community
• Developer of Open Badge Factory and Open Badge Passport
platforms

3. Open Badge Factory –
for creating, issuing and managing
Open Badges

4. Open Badge Passport –
A free and open cloud service,
where badge earners can receive
and share their badges

5. ”What can I do with my badges?”
- Why such a question?
• Shifting the focus from organizations issuing badges to badge
earners
• Mozilla created Open Badges as a disruptive technology
unlocking recognition of learning but yet a few know about
Open Badges
• At the end, the success of Open Badges depends on how
their earners value and use them

6. A lot has been done to increase the value of
Open Badges
• Development of the Open Badge specification (version 2.0)
• Collaboration (collaborative design of badges, endorsement)
• Alignment with competence frameworks
• Integration with different LMS’s and other services
• Improvement of platforms and creation of new services

7. Still challenging for many badge earners

8. Some issues affecting the impact of
Open Badges
• Lack of communication
• Badges are pushed to passive recipients
• Badges don’t match the needs of their earners
• Lack of credibility (badges vs traditional credentials)
• Badges are seen as objects (end result) and not as
connectors

9. How to make Open Badges more valuable for
their earners?

10. Better communication
https://openbadgefactory.com/academy/?direct=portfolioModal-2017-05-15-webinar

11. The value of an Open Badge is
a chain of values!

12. How to engage Open Badge earners?

13. Co-design of badges (issuer and earners working
together) – Learning experience

14. Applying for badges (motivation + production of
evidences + assesment)

15. Badge as a license to become a badge issuer or a
badge application reviewer

16. What can I do with the badges I received?

18. Badges are connectors!

19. Social interaction as a way to grow the
value of badges?

28. Some thoughts
• It’s important to develop strategies to engage earners as well
as customers
• Badges are much more than credentials; they are connectors
supporting collaboration and communication
• It’s important to explore how social interaction can increase
the value of badges
• For several years, the discussion and development around
badges has been mostly organization centric. We need to
restore the balance between issuers, earners and customers
to have a real impact on our society.

29. We often want to find solutions and fix problems, but Open
Badges should be seen also as a disruptive transformation and
exploration tool!
We should keep the concept open!

30. Thank you!
eric.rousselle@discendum.com
@eric_rousselle