Developing Open Badges: a comprehensive approach

Abstract

Open Badges (OBs) have evolved as novel means of recognizing and credentialing skills/competences (either hard or soft skills) acquired in various learning settings (formal or informal, online or traditional classroom). In addition, they offer new ways of motivating learners and scaffolding the learning process, while also promoting values such as openness and learners’ agency, participatory learning practices and peer-learning communities. While OBs are rapidly gaining traction among educational practitioners, education-oriented companies and non-profit organizations, there have been only a few research studies aimed at deep understanding of not only OBs and their potential roles, but also of the larger educational ecosystem within which they operate and evolve. This paper aims at bridging this gap by thoroughly examining benefits, concerns and challenges related to OBs from the perspectives of different stakeholders—learners, teachers, schools, employers, and other institutions and associations. Based on these different perspectives, the paper proposes a comprehensive framework for design and development of OB ecosystems and suggests directions for future research.