Have you ever heard of Open Badges? Open Badges are digital icons that are issued in recognition of a specific achievement. In the past year, instructors in UBC Law, UBC Education, and the Digital Tattoo program made course-related badges available to their students, and received an overwhelmingly positive response. Badges sustain student interest by introducing an element of fun into a course, and reduce student anxiety by presenting clearly-defined criteria for earning the badge. Badges also make coursework more meaningful because their digital nature means they can be shared outside the program.
We at Open Badges UBC have been hard at work developing a platform for issuing badges. This platform will allow you to create a badge icon and embed it with information relating to the earning of the badge, such as date earned, issuer name, and criteria. That way, if a student decides to share their badges online, it will be clear exactly what the badge represents. We’ve also developed tools in the WordPress platform so that the completion of an online task can automatically trigger the issue of a badge.
If you would like to learn how to badge a course, we’ve developed a series of modules to help you think through the impact of your badges on your students. You can complete these (badged!) modules on our website: http://badges.open.ubc.ca.
If you teach a course or program and would like to badge it, please contact us as we are currently looking for 20 pilot projects. To submit your application, visit the Open Badges UBC website.
