On 8th March 2016 The University of Southampton is hosting the Open Badges in Higher Education Conference aimed at raising awareness of the huge amount of activity both in Higher Education and in the commercial world for Open Badges. Discussions and workshops will investigate the use of alternative credentials for recognising achievements of skills and co-curricular contributions within the student experience.

The University of Southampton is currently inviting proposals for contributions to this exciting event. Submissions will be accepted until early January 2016. If you would like to express your interest or would like further information on contributing to this event please contact Katie Eason on ke@soton.ac.uk or submit your proposal on the form below.

We also encourage you to register for your place at the conference now as places are limited.

What is an Open Digital Badge? The Mozilla organisation created the Open Badge interface that allows anyone to adapt and provide digital badges for any activity. They are usually displayed within a platform like a blog, or can be hosted within displaying platforms.

What do they look like? Badges are essentially online certificates that can hold lots of data. They are interactive images (hence the term ‘badge’) that when clicked open up web pages with information. A typical badge provides the name of the organisation that issued it, when it was issued, what it was issued for (a list of criteria that needed to be met) and a link to evidence that supports the award. The value of any award or badge is with the person that earns it. If a badge is issued with no value then it will not be displayed, no one will know it exists. Rather like a paper based award now. If the person who receives it doesn’t ‘value’ it then they will not tell anyone that they have it.

Why Badges? When you give a certificate to a student then it belongs to you and the person receiving it. This is a one to one relationship and although may be of value to the person who has been given it, it would need to be made into a digital artefact for it to be seen by anyone else. As part of our students digital identity authentic recognition from a university or employer via an open badge means students can build up their online presence with expertise and valuable recognition. Even if a student issues another student a badge, it may still hold value, and may be recognised as valuable by an employer if the badge was in recognition of great team work.

Badges will also provide us with data. Types of activities, skills and evidence of activities around competences. Open Digital Badges are used extensively across the UK to support the recognition of skills within schools, colleges and universities. Employers are increasingly turning to Open Badges as a method of gaining appropriate attention for skills that they see as important for skills that they see as important for their organisations and as mechanism for encouraging interest in their activities, raising awareness of their mission and functions. Large employers are already advertising and using badges