ASEE Recognizes Conference Achievements with “Digital Badges”
ASEE becomes one of the first professional membership societies to recognize conference achievements with virtually stored badges.
The American Society for Engineering Education will recognize professional development by issuing “digital badges” for authors published at the 2013 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition. ASEE joins NASA, Intel, Disney-Pixar, 4H, the U.S. Department of Education, and hundreds of other collaborators in recognizing continuing achievements and lifelong learning through the Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure.
This online system houses an individual’s accomplishments as a “badge,” created and granted by participating organizations—in this case, ASEE. An individual’s badge collection across participating organizations can be used as a coherent and meaningful way to demonstrate capabilities and accomplishments, and can be shared electronically.
From an ASEE member’s account page on the ASEE website, an author can see his or her badge, represented by an icon, and can choose to send that badge to the Mozilla Backpack with one click (registration at the Mozilla site will be require for first-time users). In addition to 2013 paper authors, ASEE has created badges for 2012 paper authors and will evaluate other conference accomplishments to receive this designation.
At future ASEE conferences, accomplishments or indicators such as “Speaker” or “Paper Author” could be accessed from an individual’s online digital badge collection and printed on a physical badge, eliminating the need for physical badge ribbons, saving money and increasing registration efficiency.
Mozilla developed the badge system with support from the MacArthur Foundation. More from Mozilla:
These days, we all learn things in a wide variety of ways, but there are few opportunities to gain formal recognition for these skills. Traditional certifications, like degrees and diplomas, still lack the granularity to show the skills people have — like writing skills for an engineer, or project management for someone with an arts degree. There’s no way to take all those skills and show them off in one place, regardless of where you’ve earned them. Open Badges changes that. It takes digital badges to a new level and makes them more powerful, networked and credible.
ASEE is happy to join a growing list of influential organizations taking part in this endeavor and aid our members in their professional development efforts.
