York University
Project Description
The York University Online Digital Badging System has been an integral aspect of the forward momentum of the BEST Lab. The Digital Badging system motivates the engagement of students by gamifying the education process, but also by creating a digital road map for the educational expectations with smaller qualifying badges acting as guide posts that allow students to self-evaluate and adjust their teaming strategies. The digital badging activity embraces curricular and co-curricular activity.
The flexible nature of the badging concept allows the accredited integrity of the overarching degree system to be respected, while allowing small modifications to education requirements. It allows for the awarding of micro-credentials both with a course and through alternate experiential education activities.
Interestingly, it has allowed us to develop and create a dialogue with industry and workplace partners who can be given a voice in badge development, aligning specific learning outcomes with workplace requirements. This allows industry partners to highlight skills and abilities they desire, and universities to build new graduate capabilities to address current shortcomings. One of the benefits of this is it allows for rapid prototyping of specific badges (see below) without the need to overhaul the entire degree system. This speeds up the implementation of academic change, allowing the educational process to be changed pre-emptively and proactively.
For example, York has developed a strategic partnership with IBM (an industry partner with noted internal success employing digital badging) to deploy digital badges. Lassonde School of Engineering currently has 36 co-op students at IBM in Markham. This partnership has been enhanced by MTCU/MAESD funding of the Catalyst Skills Initiative (which includes IBM and many other academic and industry partners). The first two digital badges being developed in this partnership are for resilience and refection—determined to be critical skills in enhancing innovation and creativity (linked to another BEST eCampusOntario project).
We are optimistic that with the development of a formal badging process, the integration of badging into co-curricular student records, and rapid acceptance of industry partners, the Digital Badging initiative at York University will have the strength to change the future of education.
Badging System Structure
We present two contrasting new digital badges—one experiential (participation) and one skill-based—as examples of the new ways in which micro-credentials are transforming our approach to education and creating both experiential education and appropriate skills development.
Experiential Badge—Resilience
The resilience badge developed in partnership with IBM is designed to recognize the education value derived from failure and the ability to continue and persevere by learning lessons from failure. Much of the innovation work we do demonstrates the inherent