Monday, December 26, 2011

Badges for teachers: scenarios (#change11)

In my previous post I outlined an idea I have to make badges work. Here are a few scenarios that might better illustrate what it is I am proposing.

A programmer has been asked by their employer to learn about machine learning. Employee does the course via Stanford's open learning. There is no need for there to be any certification from Stanford because the employer will be able to see if the necessary learning was done. If it was, then the employer gives the employee a badge and Stanford gets a badge as well for that course. By linking the two badges, the credential is transferable.

A employer notices that their new emplyee, fresh out of high school, is very proficient with basic maths and english, as well as being able to learn quickly and think for herself. The employer finds all these traits admirable and decides to award a badge to the student's "overall education" attribute. This badge is automatically linked to all of the employee's past schools and teachers. The employee, realising that there were four teachers that have had a huge impact on her employability, so she awards a badge to each of these teachers.

A parent is looking for a school for her child. She looks at the data for a number of schools, looking at the range of source that the badges have come from. She is able to drill down into the data to see the type employers (industry) have given badges, as well as the number of parents who have given badges, and the number of ex-students who have given badges.

3 comments:

  1. From the perspective I live in I have only one problem. How to prevent teachers not to hunt for badges instead of teaching?

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  3. The idea is that the teachers don't receive the badges directly, they receive them indirectly through employers, community organisations and the like giving badges to the learner. This way the output of the teacher (ie the learner) is assessed. The more educated students a teacher produces the higher their reputation rises. It wouldn't be linked to any particular outcome, just overall education. I think it would be pretty hard to game a system that only really comes into effect after the student has left school.

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