#badgesummit

[vlewis96]

Fun and learning can go hand in hand. Thanks to @howiparticipate @credly @mymindspark Stackup Alludo Chicago Learning Exchange, and Convergence Design Lab for sponsoring #BadgeSummit this year! (at Chicago, Illinois)

[vlewis96]

The power of connections is at peak when you can do it face to face! Lots of great learning today. @senorgeisel you put on an awesome and inclusive event!#BadgeSummit #ISTE18 #passthescopeEdu (at Chicago, Illinois)

[vlewis96]

Brian Smith @1to1Brian will be bringing it from #BadgeSummit and the #BloggersCafe at #ISTE2017 #notatISTE2017 via #passthescopeedu with lots of great content.

[worldofeck]

(More) Reflections on the Badge Summit

My last post on the Badge Summit was more of a 'here's what happened', but wanted to follow that up with some of my own reflections and inspirations. 

Distributed leadership: We talk a lot transparency and community-driven development at Mozilla, and certainly within Open Badges. Our aspirations are so high, that it would be impossible to begin to even start to meet them without a movement, without markets, without more and more people not just involved, but driving things forward. We want to build a new system for credentialing and accreditation, we want to redefine learning - there's no way one, or even three, organizations could do that. We need the full ecosystem fully realized and fully empowered. But one thing that became even more clear at the summit was that we are well on our way. I was awed by the leadership and work that folks in the room represented. There is so much that other people are already doing and contributing, we just have to make sure we are coming together from time to time to swap stories and celebrate the success. 

Exemplars: The word of the day(s) at the event was "exemplar". There were a few that even threatened to start a drinking game. But whether it was in the conversations about marketing and communications, or in a group focused specifically on higher education or workforce, it's clear that the most critical way forward is to have working proofs of concept for each of the stories that we need to tell or use cases that we want to show. Exemplars allow us to scope and focus in on building something specific quickly, that then can be a model that other similar groups or organizations can follow. They also can also function as a laboratory where were are advancing the tools and experiences, while also learning a significant amount about what works and what doesn't. CSOL is a great example of an exemplar because it includes a bunch of 'new' stuff that before were often only ideas or theories: network-level badging, earning badges across many informal learning experiences, leveling kids up through pathways and translating learning back into schools and local businesses. It's a mini version of the ecosystem that we can see results of in a 3 month time period instead of 3 years, or whatever turns out to be. We need to do more of these. (And I don't mean just 'we' as in Mozilla, but 'we' as the broader badging community. Mozilla will most likely do some but there are many that need to be defined, recruited for, designed, tested, communicated, etc.)

Local: Building off of the last one, there was a lot of interest in 'cities' at the summit - thinking about badges in a local context as a key set of exemplars. To me this is really exciting for a number of reasons, including the same thing I said before which is that we are building mini ecosystems, with all of the players - issuers, learners, validators, employers, schools, etc. - in the mix and at the table from the get-go. This is super powerful because it moves us away from some of the philosophical rabbit holes that we often get stuck in - like "How are badges validated? Do they have meaning?" - and make those questions concrete and addressable. City-level anything, let alone badge systems, are also really hard to do and there is tremendous learning involved. If we can make it work at the city level, then we're in a good place for addressing needs at each org-level and even at the ecosystem-level in many ways. And finally, badges in the local community / city context have real meaning for those earners in their lives right away. So regardless of what happens in the broader ecosystem, those badges meant and will mean something to those learners. Let's do more cities.

Small data: Another recurring theme, which I actually first heard at the DML conference, but then came up again at the summit was "small data". The idea of personalized data tracking or even local community-level data, that can give you real-time feedback on who you are, what you can do, what you are doing, what role you play, etc., and help you choose your pathway or alter your behavior in the process. It's the quantified self idea, but for learning. I'm not sure exactly what it means yet but I love the idea of learners owning their data and that being a powerful mechanism for driving choices, opportunity, evidence, etc. 

Learning GPS: As we sketched out our own perspectives on the current state of the ecosystem a new role appeared several times across the sticky notes. The idea of a person or an organization that helps learners choose pathways. We dubbed it "learning GPS". This exists right now in coaches or career advisors, but badges actually makes this an easier and more powerful role because they can surface the universe or 'map' of learning opportunities, all backed by information and data to show the value and endorsements of each step along the way. Exciting possibilities!

These were just a few of the themes and reflections that I left with. I'm sure there are more and will try to add to this as I continue to process all of the goodness that came out of the two days in Toronto. 

-E

[worldofeck]

Badge Vision Summit

This week kicked off with a meeting of badge minds in Toronto. Around 30 of us packed into the lovely Centre for Social Innovation to discuss the emerging badge ecosystem and how to drive the next era of the badge work together. We were, you know, socially innovating. :)

A common theme was that the badges work is bigger than one organization, certainly bigger than Mozilla. There is SO much to do, and there are many roles that need filling, and more everyday as the ecosystem and market(s) grow. We're already seeing leaders emerging beyond the initial Mozilla, MacArthur, HASTAC work and this meeting was about celebrating and honoring that, as well as encouraging more ownership to tackle key pieces that the ecosystem needs. 

Day 1 was about visioning (what's our shared vision of success) and level setting (what's out there already). Day 2 was digging into some of the key questions, opportunities and challenges, with the focus on building working groups around them and getting actionable plans in place.

Core topics included:

Ecosystem: We talk about this all the time. But what does the ecoystem actually include/look like at this point? What are the roles to be played? What are the pieces that still need special attention? More to come - including a fancy visual - on this piece.

Sector specific needs: What are the specific needs and value propositions for badges from each sector? What's the right messaging for each? What features, answers or examples do they need in order to move forward?

CGI: How can we get to 2M better futures in two years?

Exemplars: What stories do we need to tell and what are the partnerships, strategies and badges systems that we can help build to tell those stories. 

Cities: how can we capture all of our learning from CSOL in a way that makes this easy for other cities to do this 'right'?

Federation / Toolstacks / Localization: How can we design the infrastructure, tools and services to support the most scale, adoption and contribution? Another way to say this, is how do we design and build for a healthy and thriving ecosystem?

Endorsement: This one is huge and means many different things to many different people. Let's put some definition around it and figure out the short term plans for demonstrating the idea (hint: exemplars!)

We also have plans for a shared user research framework and outreach plan, building the overall foundation of research and findings to back the work, creating a shared resource repository, encouraging innovative assessments within the badge ecosystem, and more. It was a busy two days... 

There is a core documentation team that will be generating a report to share all of the conversations, plans, etc. Look for that in the next couple of months. 

All-in-all, I was excited and inspired by the two days and really looking forward to keeping the momentum going. Many thanks to the participants who traveled from far and wide, including across oceans, as well as our fantastic facilitator, Gunner, who kept the motley crew on task.

Additionally, its worth noting that this event was by no means the comprehensive set of leaders in the badge work. We wanted to ensure that key perspectives and specialties were represented, but above and beyond that, last minute plans, summer schedules, budget, etc. also influenced the attendee list. We hope and plan to pull many more into the conversations and work as we go (if there are any up there that you know you want to be part of, let us know!). That said, don't wait for an invitation - keep doing what you are doing, share your work, jump into conversations, etc. The only way we win is together. 

More to come - thanks!

-E