Keen former virtual exchange practitioner, Teresa Mackinnon, lends invaluable support to UNICollaboration in terms of technical support and advice. Online she’s known as @Warwicklanguage as she’s a now-retired former Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and an Honorary Life Member of the Association for Learning Technology.
Teresa is also a founder member of UNICollaboration and as a virtual exchange practitioner during her career, she was responsible for organising the ‘Clavier’ exchange programme. This programme ran for many years between Warwick and French institutions and is a very large network going back to 2010.
Why Open Badges in Virtual Exchange?
“Open Badges are really interesting,’ says Teresa, as she shares some research she undertook with the Open University’s Mirjam Hauck.
“The point of them for UNICollaboration and virtual exchange was to help support the development and normalisation of VE at the time, and to support the recognition of participation. During the Erasmus Plus Virtual Exchange initiative, known as E+VE, we investigated how to best use them.
“In the book Online Cultural Exchange, shown in the below image, there is a chapter on soft certification which is essentially about badges.
“We tried to identify the challenges of normalising VE and make sure we recognised participation. We wanted the potential of virtual exchange including its relevance to student mobility acknowledged in a meaningful way.
“Things have moved on very quickly and at the time Open Badges weren’t very well known. Things are much better now and the Open University has researched how best to design them too. Mirjam and I investigated this at the time and this book illustrates the ecosystem we designed that helped to achieve our aims.
“Many different people are involved on many levels when implementing a VE and we wanted that to be acknowledged and recognised – students as well teachers and supporting staff. They give of their time and conversations need to be had. There is so much multilateral work going on before, during and after a virtual exchange.
We then brought this into our E+VE initiative and developed the ecosystem here.
Badges Beyond EVE
Teresa explains that although E+VE wound up at the end of 2020, UNICollaboration has continued its mission with training in virtual exchange and raising awareness of the pedagogy with the Badges.
“Badges are evolving all the time as new elements of VE develop, so now we have a Suite of badges. These include a member’s badge and institutional members can have them too. We continue to recognise participation in webinars and training.”
UNICollaboration pays for the maintenance of a platform as badges are digital hard-baked information comprising many layers. They are not merely images.
“We use Open Badge factory and we have issued 1,580 badges since 2020. Many recipients have shared their badges on their LinkedIn profiles (61%) to demonstrate their involvement in a VE. We can also find each other using the badges and share the things we have done to earn them. Our badges are a good fit with developing digital fluency and assessment using tools such as e-portfolios.
The best places to showcase Badges
“Open Badge Passport is where you can open a free account’, explains Teresa, ‘so you can collect, share and show them. You can manage everything about them using this platform. You can put them in your email signature, or your website, or any social media, for that matter. The platform enables you to download accompanying text that helps to explain the digital content of each badge and you can connect and explore others who have done the same. It’s a very useful tool.
“If you have your ‘passport’ with all your badges, you can migrate wherever you want and take them with you. A recent example is when people on X have migrated towards Bluesky as this is how social media works. Channels arrive and disappear, but you can take everything with you using a platform such as this.
“You can print off a pdf if you want, and have a hard copy of your history in VE on your CV. You can scan the QR code and that takes people to the web page you’ve created with your history on it,” says Teresa.
Badges within UNICollaboration
UNICollaboration is a recognised and verified member of the ecosystem and endorsed by E+VE.
“We have a deep historical link and many of our members have been with us from the beginning. But newbies can easily jump onboard.”
Teresa says that it’s really important to know that the community is active and developing.
“At UNICollaboration, we support open recognition and that’s because there is a community here working together. Businesses and governments are interested in online credentials that work.
“Open Badge Passport is a free wallet for collecting and sharing and most importantly, it aligns with our philosophy that all learning is useful and should be recognised. Learning is not the property of anyone. We align with Open Technology at UC and we believe that learning belongs to the learner. You take your badges wherever you want and tell your story.”
Further links – Open Badges slides can be viewed here
More on an Open Recognition wallet can be viewed here