The document discusses lessons learned from piloting the Open Badge Factory (OBF) open badge management system. Key points include: - OBF saw interest from vocational and educational organizations but badges' roles in formal education remain unclear. Adoption requires education about badges' concepts. - Only 12% of earners stored badges in the Mozilla backpack due to complexity and lack of usefulness for work contexts. A badge passport micro-portfolio was suggested as a better alternative. - Creating meaningful badge systems requires strategic planning - it is not as simple as making test badges. A "badges first" approach integrating badges into simplified portfolios was proposed.

1. What have we learned from Open
Badge Factory statistics and user
feedback?
Eric Rousselle
Discendum Oy

2. Discendum Oy
• Finnish eLearning service provider
• Our clients: educational, vocational establishments and
companies
• Our services:
– Optima and Totara LMS
– Kyvyt.fi ePortfolio
– Open Badge Factory
• Mahara and Totara partner
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3. Open Badges Concept in a nutshell
• Developed by the Mozilla Foundation
• ”A digital badge is an online representation of a skill you’ve
earned. ” – Source: openbadges.org
• Granular, user centered, portable
• New online standard to recognize and verify learning (Open
Badges Infrastructure)
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4. Open Badges Anatomy
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Source: http://www.openbadges.org/en-US/about.html#how-it-works
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5. Roles of the Open Badges concept
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Source: http://www.openbadges.org/en-US/about.html#how-it-works
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6. Backpack and displayers
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Source: http://www.openbadges.org/en-US/about.html#how-it-works
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7. 10.7.20147

8. What is Open Badge Factory?
• An Open Badge management system provided as a cloud
service
• OBF has been designed to serve organizations
• Core ideas:
– Trusted badges / verified issuers
– Strong management features (roles and reports)
– Distributed issuance of badges (Open API / Plugins)
– Advanced features such as:
• Badge requests
• Milestone badges
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9. Open Badge Factory is an open
innovation project
funded by The Finnish Funding Agency for Technology
and Innovation
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10. Project partners and advisers
• Discendum (development and coordination)
• The Teacher Training School of Turku University (piloting)
• Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius (research and
consulting)
• OK Study Center (piloting)
• IlonaIT Oy (piloting)
• Raisoft Oy (piloting)
• Learning Agents Inc. (adviser)
• Mozilla Foundation (adviser)
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11. The OBF project schedule
• Started officially on 1.8.2013
• First version released on 15.1.2014
• Piloting period from January to December 2014
• Release of the final version December 2014
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12. Organizations piloting OBF
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• About 120 pilot organizations from 22
countries
• 34 organizations from Finland:
– 14 non-profit / vocational
– 13 educational
– 7 business

13. What did we learn?
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Source: http://www.openbadges.org/en-US/about.html#how-it-works
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14. Our sources
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Source: http://www.openbadges.org/en-US/about.html#how-it-works
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• Finnish pilot organizations and partners’ feedback
• Earners’ feedback (Discendum’s badges)
• Potential customers’ comments
• OBF statistics about Discendum’s badges
• OBF system level statistics

15. At a general level
• Open Bagdes concept seems to generate interest worldwide
• About 70% of OBF issuer organizations are vocational
organizations
• Schools and universities (about 25% of OBF users) show a
growing interest, but in the world of formal learning the role of
badges is yet to be clarified
• Open Bagdes is a new concept, most potential badge issuers
and earners have never heard about it
• We have got encouraging feedback from business sector
organizations but getting them involved requires case studies
and references
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16. OBF’s sysadmin statistics
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17. Some facts
• Creating a test badge is easy, but creating meaningful badges
and badge systems requires strategic thinking, planning skills
and team work – That takes time and requires resources!
• Only 12% or earners have put their badges in their backpack.
Why? This average number does not reveal the entire truth
but it’s a fact that
– Earner’s need to get some information about the concept before
they get their first badges
– The process of receiving a badge in the backpack and displaying
it is for many earners far too complex and meaningless
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18. An alternative to the backpack?
• ”Where do our employees store and display their badges? In
the Mozilla backpack? Are you serious?”
• The main issue with the backpack is not the complexity of
receiving a bagde, but the fact that it’s just a technical
repository. It’s meaningless at least in the working life’s
context!
• A good alternative to the backpack is a badge passport,
which could be developed as an easy-to-use micro-porfolio.
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19. A ”badges first” approach to portfolios
• Could be an alternative to heavy academic portfolio practices
• As criterion-based trust statements, open badges can make
portfolios more meaningful and simplify the work of their
authors and ”consumers” (searchability)
• The first step could be simple: gathering badges in the
passport
• The second step: organizing and displaying views
• The third step: reflecting and building the big picture, building
a substantial portfolio
• Key words are: simplicity and usability
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20. The OBF micro-portfolio
• Simplicity:
– Receiving / rejecting badges with one mouse-click
– Easy displaying of badge pages (links, embedded code)
• Community features:
– Groups
– Networking based on badges (search, skill profiles, skill gaps…)
– Endorsements
– Leader boards and gaming features supporting motivation
• Other:
– Multilingual badges
– Resume
– Importing / exporting of badges
– Open Source and development on Drupal
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21. Seaching for skilled earners
Issuers Earners Audience

22. Competence map / goals / gaps

23. Information and contacts
Openbadgefactory.com
eric.rousselle@discendum.com
heli.karjalainen@discendum.com
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