Using Digital Recognition to Build a Distinctive Identity and Reputation for Derby Learners Munib Hadi – Head of Academic Innovation Hub email:
[email protected] Matthew Leach – Academic Innovation Hub email:
[email protected] Adam Bostock – Academic Innovation Hub email:
[email protected] Phillip Gagen – Academic Innovation Hub email:
[email protected] Rebecca Rawson – Academic Innovation Hub email:
[email protected] Vision of Learner Achievement The Academic Innovation Hub is a newly established department within the University. The department is tasked with leading on the scoping, development and communication of exciting and sector leading Academic Innovation technologies, pedagogies and strategies that would help inform academic practice across the University. As a leading teaching University, the University of Derby’s ambition is to be at the cutting edge of delivering quality learning and teaching to our learners and to make our learners stand out. The Academic Innovation Hub team have been looking at a future profile of our learners. This includes ways on how we can make our learners and graduates distinct and unique by developing their digital reputation, and providing them with tools and means through which they can showcase their learning achievements – along with the quality of teaching they receive and social learning throughout their learning journey at University of Derby. We believe if we are able to provide our learners with such tools through which they can evidence all of the above to an external audience, than we can start to develop a distinct and unique profile for our learners that would also set our learners apart from other graduates in the eyes of enterprises and businesses. In the picture we see a typical graduate that comes out of a University with a paper degree in their hand. If you scan the image with the Aurasma app you will see a future University of Derby graduate whose micro learning achievements are recognised through use of digital badges that are evidenced and can be checked by an outside audience. The picture also highlights how a social learning platform allows our learners the ability to showcase their social learning activity throughout their University life. All of this is available to them even after leaving the University.
Badges Digital badges can be described in most general terms as ‘an online representation of a skill you’ve earned’. They are seen as being influenced most heavily by gaming – hence the increasingly common umbrella term of ‘gamification’ under which they are commonly placed. The most recognisable part of a badge is normally a graphical image of some sort, that typically has a style or pictography that relates to the skill that is has been awarded for. However the key part is what is associated with that image. Since the image itself could easily be copied and distributed, a mechanism needs to exist which connects the specific learner that earned the badge, with details such as the issuer and criteria. ‘Badge Anatomy’ by Class Hack. Creative Commons license CC BY The current dominant system is Mozilla Open Badges, which provides an open technical standard that any organisation can adopt. The Hub is looking at developing the facility so that the University is able to grant such digital badges for our learners’ micro learning and extra curriculum activities. These would allow our learners to showcase their achievements to an outside audience and would be able to keep these credentials for life.
Social Learning Terms such as social learning, informal learning, social constructivism, and communities of practice are now firmly established in the lexicon of higher education. The Hub will be looking to support student activities in these areas, initially focusing on providing students with tools to record and share the social learning that is already happening. The University has had a mixed experience of using ePortfolios in assessment contexts, but it remains widely accepted that a student’s final qualification does not convey the full picture of the learning that will have taken place. Initiatives such as the Futures Award help to build a more complete picture, but we feel that there is still a huge amount of learning that is not evidenced and at risk of being overlooked or forgotten. Initially the Hub will be exploring platforms such as Mahara – which allows students to engage socially, while capturing those interactions and allowing students to compile and structure them as a portfolio of evidence. There are lots of interesting challenges in this area that could also be explored, as students use a wide variety of digital authoring tools. How could they combine work from Office 365 with Google documents, or activities on social media with those in independent discussion forums; and the persistent issue of integrating physical-world activities and artefacts. If you are keen to keen to shape the discussion and thinking around developing our learners profile and digital reputation, then you are invited to engage with the activities of the Academic Innovation Hub.
The Hub is looking to create an open dialogue with colleagues to discuss other possible ways on how the University can develop and distinguish our learners and enable them to build a distinctive ID/Reputation. The Hub’s first use of badges will be in the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that it is leading on. These badges have been designed to have a common visual theme that associates them with the University of Derby; but also has some variation between courses. The first few MOOCs will be running on the third-party Canvas platform, and so the badges will be issued through an associated plugin called CanvaBadges. This has the benefit of proven system that is quick and easy to use; but lacks the control and ownership that we are hoping to gain in the long term from issuing our own badges.
www.derby.ac.uk/learningenhancement
59917 RH LTC2015
Example badges available on the “Bridging the Dementia Divide” and “Digital.Me MOOCs”
