Online Educa Berlin 2015

Open Badge Network (OBN) held its second multiplier event on 2nd December at Online Educa Berlin 2015 (OEB2015). Online Educa Berlin is the global, cross-sector conference on technology supported learning and training. In December 2015, over 2,000 participants travelled from more than 90 countries for three days of discussions, debates, labs, demos and special events, to network with international experts and to meet with suppliers and service providers from all over the world in the OEB exhibition.

The OBN multiplier event was a full day pre-conference workshop (see: session FD4) dedicated to Open Badges for Individuals and Organisations. The workshop was organised by Ilona Buchem (Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin) and Michal Nowakowski (Institute of Sustainible Technologies – National Research Institute, Poland).

Open Badges appear to be a great and flexible tool for employees to capture skills and achievements. At the same time, they can be valuable for organisations. The key aims of the workshop were to:

• introduce Open Badge Network by showing the guiding values, aims and output it addresses i.e.: enhancing employment opportunities, enabling wide recognition of on-demand workplace skills, creating the conditions for the recognition of formal and informal learning achievements, familiarise the participants with the Open Badge concept based on a new technological standard of describing and documenting skills and achievements,
• present real life examples of Open Badges including existing and possible applications with a focus on the use case of effective team building in an organisation,
• provide practical insights into the design and practical use of Open Badges from the perspective of individuals and organisations through an interactive, task-based workshop.

We enjoyed vivid discussions with over 30 international participants and would like to thank everyone for their input and creative ideas! Special thanks go to Eric Rousselle from Discendum, FL for introducing Open Badge Factory and Open Badge Passport as well as to Prof. Vladan Devedzic from University of Belgrade for introducing the GRASS project.

Thank you also to our colleagues Lilia Infelise (Artes), Erik van den Broek (DUO) andDr. Ireneusz Wozniak (ITeE) for participation and support!

You can find the slides from OEB2015 in SlideShare: