Badges and Personalized Learning

I went to two sessions at Educause that were on the topic of Badges and Personalized Learning. It was interesting to see how different institutions are incorporating the ideas. In addition we can gain from their "lessons learned."

In general, badges for learning are earned as skills are recognized, demonstrated and validated.
Northern Arizona is using the concept of badging for personalized learning. They offer high quality degrees at a lower cost than the traditional route but are targeting at students who need a customized approach that wouldn't fit in the "traditional approach."  The courses are self-paced and online. The will be assigned a faculty mentor but the course is not set up to be facilitated. The unique feature of this nontraditional approach is that students can start anytime and any day. In other words, it is not tied to a semester or particular calendar. The student takes as long as they need to finish the course. The payment is on a subscription model where for $2500 per 6 month chunks they can take as many courses as they can in that time frame.  The entire program in this approach is approved and backed by the Higher Learning Commission. Another unique feature that was worked out with the HLC is that instead of students earning credits the students earn badges for competencies. Now the cool thing about this "outside the box" approach is that if you get aligned with community employers and find out exactly what competencies they are looking for who they hire this can be a direct fit for adults getting the training they need to be 'employable.' In addition, there can be a partnership with the employer and the school for a direct fit.
Here is a blog post on the WCET blog by Dr. Fred Hurst on the topic of Personalized Learning.
http://wcetblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/northern-arizona-university/

The next session I went to on the topic of badges was from Kyle Bowen from Purdue University. Purdue has rolled out a pilot for badging system for learning. Kyle pointed out that one of the challenges of badging is how to share badges with potential employers. He suggested a Badge portfolio or passport.
Badges should recognize skills and abilities. Perhaps you can have sets of skill levels such as gold, silver and bronze badges to categorize the extent to which they know a skill.  Badges can capture prior learning or prerequisites as well. The folks at Purdue are running pilot and are accepting applications for instructors to participate in order to learn more and experience the badging concept.
Go to http://www.itap.purdue.edu/studio/ and then click on "visit the passport studio" to learn more about it.

http://badges.jemartin.com/badges-in-education