*Benjamin Roome, Ph.D., is Chief Product Officer for Badge List and Ethics Consultant at Ethical Resolve.
While competency-based education (CBE) has been around for many years, a number of forces are now advancing CBE to the forefront of the educational reform. Major initiatives include the U.S. Department of Education, the Lumina Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and many others. This, in turn, is transforming how students, institutions, and employers think about education. Moving away from the traditional metric of “seat time,” proponents of CBE suggest representing learning through the lens of specific competencies. This has re-ignited a debate that has been simmering for decades, which helps highlight one of the many ways digital badges may serve educational reform more broadly.
Randy Bass Georgetown University |
Granularity in evaluative terms may not be particularly helpful if it contains too much data; those looking at badge evidence from social media and in hiring departments may simply gloss over the data if it is not structured appropriately. Long lists of competencies serve to distract from rather than accurately describe the deep learning that occurs in educational contexts.
Well-constructed badges with evidence that includes descriptions of interactions and meaningful data detailing the learning process can create systematization without reductionism. In a system that includes this structure, learning is not merely measured in time, but in what people actually take away from the experience and how they utilize it. Employers are able to see more easily not just “what you know” but “what you can do.”
Benjamin Roome Guest Blogger |
As illustrated by the Big Open Online Courses (BOOCs) discussed on numerous other posts at RMA, it is possible to define competencies in terms of engagement with peers around disciplinary resources and ideas. While some die-hards insist that competencies must be "measurable," it seems to us that this stipulation is rooted in very conventional models of credentialing that rely in paper transcripts and institutional reputation. The badges issued in the the Assessment BOOC can contain virtually all of the work the students completed, all of their peer interaction and promotion, and their actual score on module exams. Because the view of the badge can "drill down" as far into this evidence as they wish, this evidence together makes the specific competencies that the viewer first sees that much more compelling.
By understanding how badges can work hand-in-hand with competency-based approaches, educators can move more swiftly towards an assessment approach that carries much greater meaning than a letter grade or course unit.
By understanding how badges can work hand-in-hand with competency-based approaches, educators can move more swiftly towards an assessment approach that carries much greater meaning than a letter grade or course unit.
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