xMOOC, cMOOC, DOCC or BOOC: What's in a name?

Tomorrow is the official start of the Videogames and Learning Coursera MOOC developed by Kurt Squire and Constance Steinkuehler at University of Wisconsin Madison.  In this post I compare the pros and cons of Coursera's more expository "xMOOC" format with the connectivist "cMOOC" format  advanced by Siemans and Downes and show how the the more modest "big" format of IU's Big Open Online Course is turning out to be a useful interim context for design-based research of hybrid formats for future massive courses that can exploit the advantages of these very different formats while minimizing the negatives.

In Theory and In Practice: Digital Badges in Education and the Challenges that Arise.

This post is an article by Roshni Verghese about badges that features an interview with Cliff Manning and Lucy Neale of DigitalMe .  The article describes the possibilities and challenges of incorporating digital badges into Supporter to Reporter (S2R), a program designed to introduce young sports enthusiasts in the UK to sports reporting.

Google Course Builder Merges with Open edX: Implications for Our Big Open Online Course on Educational Assessment

This post considers some specific implications of the recently announced merger between Google's Course Builder platform and the Open edX platform.   These implications are specific to the Big Open Online Course on Educational Assessment that we kicked off on September 9, 2013 using Course Builder and with support from Google (and the blessings and oversight of Indiana University).  This post highlights the successful first week of the course and speculates about the future of several BOOC instructional innovations given this merger. This post is also intended to provide the 400+ students who registered for the Assessment BOOC with some explanation of the features they are now working with and some indication of how things are going.

On MOOCs, BOOCs, and DOCCs: Innovation in Open Courses

This post examines the features of Anne Balsamo's DOCC (distributed open collaborative course) in light of current issues in open courses.  This extended post discusses the pros and cons of a distributed approach to curriculum in light of the BOOC (big open online course) on educational assessment that Indiana University is offering in Fall 2013

Purdue Veterinary Medicine Digital Badges Aim to Excite Youth and Expand Their Knowledge

by Rebecca Itow

Purdue Veterinary Medicine has designed a digital badge system to challenge Kindergarten through high school students to earn digital badges as they learn about veterinary medicine. The PVM Digital Badge system is open to any K-12 student. Youth engage with veterinary medical content online or at PVM events, and then take a short (usually multiple choice) quiz for the chance to earn their badge. This looks the start of a second wave of new projects using digital badge beyond the DML Badges for Lifelong Learning. I am particularly curious about their assessment practices in light of what I learned studying the assessment practices across the 30 DML awardees.  Plus with its campus-wide Passport badging system, Purdue really seems out in front of other universities when it comes to digital badges.

Research Design Principles for Studying Learning with Digital Badges

Web-enabled digital badges are quickly transforming the way that learning is recognized in schools and in informal learning contexts. But there are few examples or models for studying digital badges. This post introduces six design principles for studying learning with digital badges that are emerging in the Design Principles Documentation Project. These principles distinguish between summative, formative, and “transformative” research, and between using conventional forms of evidence and using the evidence contained in digital badges.

This is cross-posted at HASTAC.  Commenting is more likely there but you are required to log in to leave comments at HASTAC.  Comments are moderated here but you do not need to log in.

PS.  There are dozens of comments across several threads at that post.

Design Principles for Motivating Learning with Digital Badges

This post is cross-posted at HASTAC

Katerina Schenke, Cathy Tran, & Daniel Hickey

This post introduces the emerging design principles for motivating learning with digital badges. This is the third of four posts that will introduce the Design Principles Documentation Project’s emerging design principles around recognizing, assessing, motivating and studying learning.

Design Principles for Assessing Learning with Digital Badges

This post is cross-posted at HASTAC

by Rebecca. C. Itow and Daniel T. Hickey

This post introduces the emerging design principles for assessing learning with digital badges. This is the second of four posts that will introduce the Design Principles Documentation Project’s (introduced in a previous post) emerging design principles around recognizing, assessing, motivating and evaluating learning.

At their core, digital badges recognize some kind of learning. But if one is going to recognize learning, there is usually some kind of assessment of that learning so that claims about learning can be substantiated by evidence. Over the course of the last year, we have tracked the way that assessment practices have unfolded across the 30 DML Badges for Lifelong Learning competition winners. We have categorized these practices into ten more general principles for assessing learning with digital badges. These principles are not presented as “best practices.” Rather, these principles are meant to represent appropriate practices that seemed to work for particular projects as they designed and refined their badge systems.

Digital Badge Design Principles for Recognizing Learning

Cross-posted at HASTAC

by Andi Rehak and Daniel Hickey

This post introduces the design principles for recognizing learning that are emerging  from the Design Principles Documentation Project (DPD).  A previous post summarized how the DPD project derived these principles. This is the first of four posts, to be followed by posts outlining the principles for using badges to assess, motivate, and study learning.

Badges Design Principles Database Project: Update on New Principles

by Daniel Hickey

This post is cross-posted at HASTAC. 

This post is a brief update about the design principles that have emerged in our analyses and interviews of the 30 DML badges awardees. We will begin posting the initial set of design principles for using digital badges to support learning. Specifically we will put up consecutive posts about the principles we have found for using digital badges to recognize, assess, motivate, and research learning. The first blog on recognizing learning with digital badges is up at HASTAC and Remediating Assessment. The second blog on assessing learning is posted at HASTAC and Remediating Assessment.