Digital Badges... coming soon to Moodle near you

Will digital badges be the next big thing? They are taking center stage at UC Davis as students in a new major in sustainable agriculture develop digital portfolios and earn badges while schools such as Harvard and Indiana University experiment with them. Purdue has even developed its own platform for badges, one that integrates with the Mozilla Open Badges project. Read about these and other schools dabbling in badges here.

The concept is a fairly simple one. Individuals earn digital badges by demonstrating skills just like a scout might earn a traditional badge for volunteering; however, with digital badges comes the ability to embed data including the issuer and criteria for earning the badge, making it more meaningful. In addition, digital badges are portable -- put them in your digital "backpack" and display them on any platform that supports them (e.g. Twitter, WordPress, a growing number of personal and professional social media sites, and even learning management systems).

Moodle 2.5, which should be coming to LCC in December 2013, will support digital badges and will be compatible with Mozilla Open Badges -- exciting news for those who are already experimenting with badges in teaching or who wish to start.

Will your students earn a badge for "summary writing," "fractions mastery," "creative writing," "online learning skills" or "information literacy?" The implications for pedagogy are multifarious!

Photo by looseends