Open Badges:Promotion and adoption of

the standard in Finland

Eric Rousselle Discendum Oy

Groningen Declaration, Malaga 5.5.2015

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Discendum Oy

• Finnish eLearning service developer and provider• LMS-platforms• ePortfolio-services• Open Badge Factory and Open Badge Passport• Our clients: businesses, higher education, associations

and public sector• Member of the Badge Europe! -project

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Erasmus + project: openbadges.eu

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What is Open Badge Factory?

• A cloud-based issuing platform and management system for Open Badges developed by Discendum in a project founded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (9.2013 – 6.2015)

• Built to support the need of large organizations:– Strong management features (Users’ roles, reports, etc.)– Scalability and high quality hosting– Centralized creation of badges but distributed issuing

• 289 user organizations from 44 countries have issued 19 000 badges

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Open Badges in Finland

• 12 400 badges issued by:• 25 schools (Secondary and Higher education)• 20 projects• 20 associations• 7 training companies

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Adoption of the Open Badges standard in Finland

• The Open Badges standard has generated a ”surprisingly” strong interest in Finland

• However, a large adoption of the concept requires time and recourses

• Associations have been early adopters and are already designing a badge system

• Higher education organizations’ interest has been raising

• Some polytechnics and high school networks have already started to design and issue badges

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Open Badges in the Finnish education sector

• Starting with teachers’ continuing education: Open

Badges to recognize ICT skills of teachers (oppiminenonline.com)

• Open Badges for students– Skills not recognized by formal education credentials:

• Soft skills, project management, tutoring, mentoring, academic skills, etc.

• Some preliminary plans to use Open Badges for:– Recognition of prior learning– Supporting competence based learning / phenomenon

based learning– International student exchange programs– Recognizing some achievements

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Don’t forget badge earners!

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What can I do with my badges?

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Conclusion

• The discussion about Open Badges and the development of the standard has been dominated by the issuer point of view.

• Now, it’s time to explore the potential and value of Open Badges from the earners’ perspective.

• The Open Badge Passport is a project, where we will explore how the interaction between earners, issuers and customers can increase the value of badges.

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Thank you!

eric.rousselle@discendum.comTwitter: @eric_rousselle

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Some useful links

• http://openbadges.org• http://www.badgealliance.org/ • https://openbadgefactory.com• https://openbadgepassport.com• http://openbadges.eu• http://openpassport.me (DML Trust Challenge, Open Badge

Passport)