Findings from Research/
Evaluation
Implementation of Open Badges in Education
Graeme Boxwell - [email protected]
Learning and Teaching Development Service, Newcastle University
On the 23rd of June 2015, a survey was sent out to educational institutions via UK mailing lists,
and globally via Twitter inviting institutions to answer three questions about their implementation of
Open Badges. The three questions were:
Can you describe what stage of the implementation of Open Badges are you at?
What areas are you considering using Open Badges for?
How are you planning to issue the Open Badges?
The survey was kept open until the 26th of June and there were 58 responses. The responses
came from 47 Higher Education institutions, 5 Further Education institutions, 1 adult learning
provider and 1 ‘other’. 4 institutions provided two separate answers to the survey.
The majority of the responses were from UK organisations, with 51 either providing the name of
the UK institutions, stating the country they are based, or leaving that question blank. There were
6 organisations based outside the UK.
The results of the survey show that there is a lot of interest in the use of Open Badges, but the
majority of institutions are at an exploratory stage. The concept of Open Badges seemed to be
accepted as a valid one, but there were several issues raised that are inhibiting the adoption of
Open Badges. These issues fall into two main categories:
1) Institutional level consultation
While some academics are using badges within modules, there were only two institutions
where badges had been implemented fully across the institution with a policy or framework to
support this implementation.
THE CENTRE FOR RECORDING ACHIEVEMENT 104 -108 WALLGATE, WIGAN, WN3 4AB |
18