What are badges?

For all Digital Champions participating in Blended Learning Essentials we are issuing digital badges. Badges are an alternative form of credentialing popular in informal learning contexts, while some academic institutions have begun to use badges within courses/programmes as well.  Demonstration of specified learning outcomes are represented visually by a “badge:” a digital image displayed on a website. The use of badges is one manifestation of “gamification” in learning contexts. Some individuals are motivated to earn badges, and the accumulation of badges does make evident to other learners and to facilitators how engaged an individual is with the learning context.

While individuals or organizations may create and distribute their own digital images for their learners, proprietary and open source badging systems have begun to emerge as well. The Mozilla Foundation has established the Open Badges initiative which specifies a standard for digital badges allowing learners to earn digital badges from multiple organisations supporting the Open Badges specification. As part of this initiative Mozilla have developed a Backpack which lets learners collate Open Badges they have earned from different issuers in a single place.

Badges earned on this site can be added to your Mozilla Backpack, but this like the collection of badges is optional.

If you would like to register for a Mozilla Backpack account visit https://backpack.openbadges.org/