This was a workshop I ran for the Centre for Recording Achievement Residential Conference in November 2014.

http://www.recordingachievement.org/

This was the presentation slides I used for my workshop on building institutional badges. The aim is to encourage thinking about the practicalities for various activities that could lead to a Badge.

Not all Badges are at the same level.
1. Some could be just a visual with links to the criteria.
2. Open means that they could be visible to everyone - using Open Badges and the evidence is via a weblink
3. Closed - behind a institution wall (virtual) so the evidence is held on a VLE for example.
4. Uses - motivational to get students/staff to do something, or for recoginising work undertaken above and beyond the normal practice.

I'm often asked "Who cares?" Well, lots of organisations outside of the ones we are familiar with care. In HE in the UK its quite sparse but outside of the UK in the USA especially (not sure about Canada) I've seen alot of examples of use. Could this be because there is a requirement for providing certificates for everything? (I was told to get a job at a Uni over there you need to have a whole bunch of certificates for everything) Whatever the driver, they have jumped in embraced it and it seems to work.

These are figures for 2013. I read a paper recently (Nov 2014) that said that the figure had gone up (issuers) to more like 750.

This was my take on simplfying for the purposes of the workshop. I explained that there are five stages here, but in reality there was a lot more to consider and I enouraged the participants to take a look at the Badge Alliance Campus wide policy that looks at a much deeper range of issues. I haven't included Branding, engagement etc.

Stage 1: Stakeholders/Audience - Who is it for? Who will see it and how?
Stage 2: How many Badges for your award? is it a series of smaller badges building up to a bigger badge?
Stage 3: What do you have to do to get a badge and how will you prove it? (Not all badges require proof, other than the fact that it has been issued by an organisation)
Stage 4: Who says you can have your badge? Who checks that you have done what you need to?
Stage 5: How will it be issued?


Activity:
List all the co-curricular awards (institutional) that your institution has

This is where I spoke about what we were bringing together at the University of Southampton

One big badge made up of smaller elements
Not necessarily exactly what is listed here but this would be the types of activities

Note not to make it too complicated. This isn't something issued with ordinances and regulations, this is your "Thanks for showing how great and effective you are" something that you felt should be recognised by the University (or institution) to which you served.

Keeping the criteria simple means that there is more chance that a student will be able to complete it. It's not academic activity.

My particular interest in this is recognition. Academic activity doesn't fit here. I'm not trying to motivate in a gaming way, (no levelling up, being the Mayor of a town etc, (Foursquare)).

Our idea is to use a portfolio type tool to help the students easily bring stuff together.

A question at the conference was that if you used a webbased tool online to host the 'evidence' then a student could change it.

The response really is that if a student wants to change it then it could only get better. If it got worse - so they changed what they had in there, removed a piece of evidence, then it would only be detrimental to them. The evidence is only part of the Badge. There is a trust element here - not in terms of the student tweaking or tampering but that we 'trust' the issuer of the Badge. If the issuer has approved the Badge then that is part of the authority of the Badge. Having a selection of online materials that support that decision is a bonus and means that the holder of the badge gets to show what they did instead of just explaining or talking about it.

(sorry long ramble)

Using Badges for the iChamps means that it focusses their attention, and I see it as a supporting tool for their development.

I just saw this today (too late for the conference but like everything I can share this so adding to it makes it richer!)

http://www.iue.edu/ctl/#badges

So this was the bit where we looked at the Awards on offer (see previous activity) and then each table (there were 3) chose an award and went through the stages (triangle slide) to identify the processes that they would need to go through to get that award turned into a badge.

This was the most valuable part because its at this stage of actually working through the sections that I think they began to realise that its not as simple or straight forward as it looks.

Certainly not a trivial matter - neither should it be for the value in these Badges is not that they are easy to get but that there is some rigour in attaining them.