DMLbadges

HASTAC helped organize this series of conversations about digital badges on ConnectedLearning.tv. 

Today, more than ever, traditional modes of assessment fail to capture the learning that happens everywhere and at every age. Digital badges are a powerful new tool for identifying and validating the rich array of peoples’ skills, knowledge, accomplishments and competencies. Join us throughout the month for a series of webinars and Twitter chats on why a wide range of learners are turning to digital badges as pathways to new academic and economic opportunities.

Ah, webinars. Those quirky virtual mainstays of the 21st century. HASTAC produced a series of webinars for the Badges for Lifelong Learning grantees over the past year to share work and bring in featured guests. The following list includes many of the webinars we offered, ranging from topics such as effective badge design, assessment, badges and the college admissions process, badges and motivation, the sociology of badges, peer project critiques, and open town-hall-style discussions. 

In 2013, the Mozilla Open Badges team worked with the city of Chicago Mayor's Office, the MacArthur Foundation and many other youth-serving organizations to launch an amazing and exciting learning campaign called the Chicago Summer of Learning (CSOL).

At the 2013 Digital Media and Learning Conference, Connie Yowell and Cathy Davidson particpated in a panel reflecting on badges for lifelong learning and the fourth Digital Media and Learning Competition. Below you can see a video of both of their remarks, and we have also included the presentation from Cathy's talk.

In this webinar, Jeff Atwood, founder of Stackoverflow.com, a popular and highly respected reputation and badge system that has been online since 2008, talked about the sociology of badges in the Stack Exchange and shared his experience building, tweaking, and growing the reputation system and the community around it.

During this webinar, we featured Judd Antin, a social psychologist and User Experience Researcher at Facebook. His expertise is in motivation and incentives for online collaboration and participation in social media. Judd has also done extensive research on trust and privacy online, and more recently has focused on understanding the power and pitfalls of gamification. Prior to his move to Facebook in May 2012, Judd was a Research Scientist in the Internet Experiences Research Group at Yahoo! Research.

Featuring a brief recap of the Badges for Lifelong Learning Project Roadmap, plus a “round-robin” with Planet Stewards, Pathways for Lifelong Learning, and My Girl Scout Sash is an App, projects that shared the work they’re doin