Taming wild geese - open badging for global competences.

T.MacKinnonUniversity of Warwick

● Challenges of Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) well documented(e.g. Guth, Helm & O’Dowd, 2012; MacKinnon, 2013)

● Complexity of shared accreditation explained (Aguirre & Quemada, 2012)

● Added value of participation in OIE accepted

● Potential of OIE to serve goal of virtual mobility in HE acknowledged

O’Dowd and Ware (2009) Taxonomy of Tasks:

● Information Exchange Tasks where participants provide their partners with information for example about their personal backgrounds and their home cultures.

● Comparison and Analysis Tasks requiring learners to exchange information but also to go a step further and carry out comparisons or critical analyses of cultural products (e.g. books, surveys, films and newspaper articles).

● Collaborative Tasks requiring participants not only to exchange and compare information but also to work together to produce a joint artefact or reach a joint conclusion.

Role of Badge Benefit of the badge

Creator (awarder)

1. As a motivator /

2. To promote engagement /

A solution to the 'motivation issue' for open courses that have no formal assessment (or at least teacher

marked qualification-related assessment). The drop-out rate for such courses is much higher than for

traditional courses (even up to 90-95% of registrations).

4. As a meaning maker /

5. Signifier of learning objectives

Badges can help describe what is important and can be constructively aligned with learning outcomes.

Achievement of a badge may be seen as evidence that an outcome has also been achieved

8. As a valuer

Both the existence of a badge and uptake of it by learners, can help confer value to something that is clearly

import to the awarder (otherwise why create the badge)

9. As a symbol of identity /

10. As a means of association

Helps tie the learner to the awarder and in so doing deepens the association between them and others

holding the badge. For social or political groups for whom the goal of a qualification/award is not the primary

purpose, badges can provide shared goals (or other foci) around which badge-seekers and badge-achievers can

associate.

The motivation question• Badges can be “a clear way of expressing what is valued by a

community”. Halavais 2011, p. 269• Tasks which provide constructive alignment with desired

learning outcomes and are situated within the relevant learning context can offer “a powerful new way to motivate learning” (Hickey & Zuiker, 2010).

• Using badges to recognise the incremental acquisition of sub skills needed to carry out OIE tasks can help to gradually build essential digital literacies to combat the “new digital divide” Brandtzæg et al., 2010

• The psychology of collection is a powerful force, use responsibly!

large scale virtual exchange Warwick/Clermont Ferrand, France used to pilot open badges and OIE

OIE tasks available in uni-collaboration.eu

“...the future belongs to those who learn to work together with other groups without regard to location, heritage, and national and cultural difference” (Grandin & Hedderich, 2009)

DeSeCo report OECD

Changes in activity and posting over time

A proposed framework for open badges in OIE

Thank you!

Hauck, M. & MacKinnon, T. (in press). A new approach to assessing Online Intercultural Exchange: soft certification of participant engagement and task execution. In: R. O’Dowd and T. Lewis (Eds.) Online Intercultural Exchange. Routledge.

@warwicklanguage@OULanguages

KEY REFERENCES:• O’Dowd, R. and Ware, P. (2009). Critical issues in

telecollaborative task design. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 22(2), 173–188.

• Cross, S. and Galley, R. (2012). MOOC Badging and the Learning Arc. Blog post 16 November 2012. Retrieved 15.05.2015 from: http://oro.open.ac.uk/42038

• Deci, E.L., Koestner, R. and Ryan, R.M. (2001). Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in Education: Reconsidered Once Again. Review of Educational Research, 71(1)1–27.