A Badging Update in Higher Education - A conversation with Daniel Hickey
Channel: Center for Online Innovation in Learning
Date: 2015-11-10

Unlike conventional credentials, open digital badges can contain specific claims about learning, detailed evidence supporting those claims, and links to additional claims and evidence. This wealth of information can then circulate in digital networks and be annotated and curated by the earner. Proponents argue that this new way of recognizing learning will be both transformative and disruptive to Higher Education. One of these proponents, Dr. Daniel Hickey, has been scanning the higher education landscape for examples of the exploration, experimentation and implementation of badging as a micro-credentialing strategy while leading the Digital Badges Design Principles Documentation Project sponsored by a MacArthur Grant.

During this COIL Conversation Dr. Hickey highlights the challenges and successes of badging initiatives from around the country and provides insights gleaned from his two year study of badging practices across the 30 awardees in the 2012 Badges for Lifelong Learning Initiative. He then uses those insights to frame the potential for badges at Penn State and beyond.

Daniel T. Hickey is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator with the Learning Sciences Program at Indiana University and a Research Associate with the IU Center for Research on Learning and Technology. He and his colleagues are completing a two year study of the badge design principles that emerged across the thirty awardees in the 2012 Badges for Lifelong Learning initiative and have launched a new effort to expand innovative uses of open digital badges in higher education.

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