Open Badges Laboratory: Collaboration with Vitrine Technologie Education

by James Willis and Dan Hickey

We are pleased to announce that we were invited to lead an online Open Badges Laboratory with Charles Tsai, the Director for Learning Networks for Ashoka Canada, and Don Presant, the President of Learning Agents. This collaboration is hosted by Vitrine Technologie Education (VTE) based in Quebec, Canada. The first lab will kick-off on Thursday, October 23rd; the registration form is here. Registration in the lab is free of charge.

Source: http://blogs.shu.edu/badges/the-open-badges-project/

The introductory lab on October 23rd (1:30-3:00 p.m. EDT) will cover what open badges are and how they are changing the landscape of education and professional life. The focus will be on the diversity of uses in informal learning in professional and social contexts.

The session on November 20th (1:30-3:00 p.m EST) will consider the elaboration process in open badges. We will be presenting the findings of our Design Principles Documentation research; these findings are valuable to understand the practices involved in the designing, implementing, and sustaining open badges.

The final session on December 11th (1:30-3:00 p.m. EST) will comprise the implementation of badges in digital ecosystems. We will be discussing topics like the value of open badges, the roles of individual and organizational badge issuers, and why students, employers, and social organizations can trust the network of badges issued with specific claims and evidence of learning.

Broadcast in a synchronous Google Hangout format, the series of three labs "will allow participants to receive further information about the events, shape some aspects of the Lab, and build a community of practice surrounding badges in learning contexts." The sessions will focus primarily on the use of open badges in informal learning environments like professional development. While we will be leading the English language sections, French sections will occur at approximately the same intervals. The French sections will focus on open badges in more formal educational contexts. Educational practitioners, researchers, and administrators are encouraged to participate.

We were kindly invited to participate by Christophe Reverd, a Learning Technology Advisor at VTE and lecturer at the Universite de Sherbrooke. We are also working with Alexandre Enkerli, also a Learning Technology Advisor on the English-speaking projects at VTE.